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| GROUND
ZERO BLUES
[Y]ou know, the wait staff loves [the fried hot tamales], and so they recommend them. So people just, you know--who would have ever thought of frying a hot tamale? I mean, you know, we fry everything down here, so why not a hot tamale. – Trish Berry Trish Berry attended the Memphis Culinary Academy. She is the pastry and catering chef at Madidi Restaurant in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Ground Zero Blues Club is a second restaurant venture by the owners of Madidi, Morgan Freeman and Bill Luckett. Trish, originally from Vicksburg, also developed the menu at Ground Zero. As a native of the Delta, hot tamales were important to her. To meet the needs of Ground Zero, Trish tasted tamales from vendors around the Delta. She settled on a man in Cleveland to use for her Delta hot tamales. She also wanted to add fried hot tamales to the mix, but the Delta tamales didn’t fry up well. She settled on a tamale out of Texas for those. So belly up to the bar for a taste and then settle in for some live Blues, Delta-style.
--- What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here. Subject: Trish Berry, catering chef,
Ground Zero & Madidi restaurants- --- Amy Evans: This is Friday, August 19, 2005. This is Amy Evans for the Southern Foodways Alliance. I'm in Clarksdale, Mississippi, at Ground Zero Blues Club and Restaurant with Trish Berry, the Chef at both Madidi and Ground Zero. Is that correct, Trish? Trish Berry: I'm the Pastry Chef and Catering Chef and all this stuff at Madidi. Okay. Would you say your name for the record? Trish Berry. And your birth date, if you share that kind of information. I wouldn't even think about it. It's July fourteenth every year. [Laughs] [Laughs] Okay. And so we have before us an assortment of hot tamales --two different hot tamales—regular hot tamales and then the fried.
Does he give them to you frozen? Uh-hmm, I get them from him frozen. Okay. And then he gives you all the accessories [spices] to then steam them with? Uh-hmm. And these are the fried [tamales]. These come from Texas, and they're by a company called Gebhart, G-e-b-h-a-r-t. They’re somewhere in Texas, and I've used these to fry for years. They're a little bit spicier and seem to not lose a lot of flavor when you do batter them and deep-fry them. So they hold up real well. So that was your idea to put the fried ones on the menu here? Uh-hmm. And how did you get that idea? Well the menu just needed some tweaking. That's why I was lucky enough to be sent down here, and so I've changed the whole menu up and these things. They already had some hot tamales on the menu--not these, but I ran across these and they were good so--. Are you from the Delta originally? I grew up in Vicksburg [Mississippi], went to Ole Miss [the University of Mississippi], live in Indianola [Mississippi]. Okay. And so there's--there are tamales in
Vicksburg that are quite famous, Solly’s…So are Everybody's--everybody's are just a little bit different. I made some in culinary school [at Memphis Culinary Academy] that had raisins in them [Chokes, jokingly] which should be, you know, against the law, but it was a very authentic Mexican recipe. Uh-hmm, and what is it about tamales in the Delta in this region, specifically, that it's—it’s a specific kind of tamale? How do you think that happened? I have no idea. That is a very good question. I'm hoping that's something that I'll read in your story when you get through writing it. I think that's--you do have to wonder. I don't think Mex--I don't think tamales are actually Mexican. They're probably Texican, and we just adapted them. And how they ended up in the Mississippi Delta, I don't know, but they are everywhere. Well, you said you made them in culinary school. So what do you think about the process of making them and all that's required and the labor and the--the time that goes into it, and the people who are still doing it? I'm very happy that the man in Cleveland makes such good ones--a lot of trouble.
Well, under certain circumstances maybe, you know, if it was like a--a Fat Mama's [a restaurant in Natchez, MS that makes hot tamales] situation where that was one of the only things you're going to have and specialize in, yeah. Uh-hmm. And so what is it that's different between the ones that you buy from Texas to fry and the ones that you get from Cleveland? Why is that? Why do you have to get two different ones? Well you'll just have to taste--the ones that we get that are in the shucks and everything are--just seem to be more tender to begin with [from Cleveland, Mississippi]. And this is a lot sturdier tamale [from Texas] and with a whole lot--just a completely different flavor but it's, you know, really spicy, not so hot, but really spicy. It just seems to--the flavor comes through--even through battering and frying. And this [the tamale from Cleveland, Mississippi] might be just a little more--a little more subtle flavor than that. Have you had fried tamales anywhere else? I have not. They have some at the Bourbon Mall in Bourbon--. Okay. Well, see, I used to have a restaurant in Indianola
[which is just up the road from Bourbon, Mississippi], and I started
doing them then. I think the But you have yours [here at Ground Zero] in nice bite-size pieces; it makes for good bar food. Yeah, yeah. Do you sell a lot of these late at night? A lot--a lot. We probably sell more fried than regular. Do a lot of people--because Clarksdale is such a tourist town, do a lot of people come in and have no idea of what to think about this? Oh, yeah. They have--you know, and the wait staff loves them, and so they recommend them. So people just, you know--who would have ever thought of frying a hot tamale? I mean, you know, we fry everything down here, so why not a hot tamale. Do you like eating them yourself? I have eaten several. [Laughs] I've eaten several. All right. Well we'll have our little taste test here. Do you have any parting words about the history of tamales in the Delta or--? I do not. How you like to eat them? Usually when the weather is a little cooler. But these are good any time--the fried. Do you have in the Delta a place that you like to always stop and get them when you're on the road going somewhere or going to Indianola? I stop in Cleveland and buy these from this man there. I don't know why he doesn't want his name used, but far be it for me. Got enough business. [Laughs] All right. Well thank you, ma'am. Taste away. --- To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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Ground Zero Blues
Listen
to this 
Uh-hmm,
two different kinds. We call these served Delta-style, which are
just regular corn shuck-wrapped tamales, made by a man in—the
little corn silks are everywhere--made by a man in Cleveland [Mississippi],
who would like to remain nameless for some reason. These are some
of the best tamales around here, and I've tried them all, trying
to see which kind to carry. This is a different brand [the fried]
that we--anyway, let--let me stick with the Deltas. They--we just
serve them steamed kind of in their own brine he gives you--he gives
us a little chili powder and salt and garlic powder mix to put in
the water, and we just cook them real slow. But we make sure that
they're steamed really good because if the masa that's around them
is not steamed good, then they're tough and gummy and, you know,
and not like they're intended to be. But these are cooked good,
and they're tender and puffed up and ready to go.
there--is
there much of a difference between the hot tamales down there to
up here that you can tell?
You
would never consider making them in a restaurant where you work?
Bourbon
Mall started doing them sometime all around the same time.
