Down Home: 4 Places for Soul Food

BULLY'S RESTAURANT - 3118 LIVINGSTON ROAD

For over 28 years, Bully’s Restaurant has been serving the community with delicious soul food.

Specializing in soul food and barbecue, diners fill up on entrees like beef tips, pigs’ feet, ham hocks, smothered oxtails, barbecued ribs, southern fried catfish and chitterlings. Daily specials rotate and include smothered liver and onions, red beans and rice with sausage, spaghetti and meat sauce, baked chicken and dressing, meatloaf with tomato gravy and chicken tetrazzini.

The side items are downright southern, too, with options ranging from mac and cheese to sweet potatoes, string beans, dressing, fried green tomatoes, fried okra and everything in between.

Bully’s is open Monday through Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm daily.

GLORIA'S FAMILY RESTAURANT - 2430 BAILEY AVENUE

Gloria’s Kitchen is a longtime Jackson soul food restaurant. They follow home style cooking and use traditional ingredients for their preparations.

Chicken Tetrazinni, Fried Chicken Tenders and Lemon Pepper Wings are some of the popular items from their menu. Smothered pork chops and fried catfish are also highlights on the menu.

Specials include a two-piece dark meat chicken dinner with roll for $2.99 or eight-pieces of drum sticks for $5.99. Soul food plates start at $11.80.

SUGAR'S PLACE DOWNTOWN - 168 WEST GRIFFITH STREET

Sugar’s Place Downtown is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner so that you can get your soul food fix with chicken and waffles or a heaping plate of fried catfish.

If you stop in for breakfast, served from 7 to 10 am, choose from a full breakfast platter with eggs, grits, bacon or sausage and a biscuit; Sugar’s Waffle Meal; Sugar’s Omelet Meal; Chicken & Waffles; Texas Toaster Sandwich; Sugar’s Biscuit Sandwiches; or Sugar’s BLT.

For lunch, customers can “build a meal” by choosing one meat and two vegetables. Meats include fried catfish, fried pan trout, baked chicken, fried chicken wings, chicken tenders, and fried pork chop. The veggies vary daily, but you can expect things like greens, lima beans, mac and cheese, green beans, candied yams, coleslaw, fries, corn and more. Other lunch entrees include pan trout and catfish sandwiches, cheeseburgers, catfish and shrimp po’boys, chicken po’boys, club sandwiches, smoked ham sandwiches and salads. Daily lunch specials are also available and change with the days of the week. Finish off your meal with a slice of cobbler.

BIG APPLE INN - FARISH STREET AND NORTH STATE STREET

For several decades now, the Big Apple Inn has been serving soul food and delicious sandwiches, but their legacy and claim to fame is something a bit different – pig ear sandwiches.

It didn’t start out that way, though. In the 1930s, a maned named John Mora would roll his hot tamale cart up and down Farish Street and eventually earned enough money to open the Big Apple Inn.

When the store first opened, Mora made trips to the local butcher who was getting rid of pig ears and Mora took them and figured out how to cook them. From there, the pig ear sandwich at the Big Apple Inn was born and it is still being served to this day, along with tamales, under the direction of Geno Lee, Mora’s great-grandson.

The menu is simple and has not changed much over the years. Slider sandwiches include smoked sausage, pig ear, hamburger, hotdog and bologna. Complete your meal with a side of hot tamales to get the full experience.