Mississippi is known for everything from Southern comfort food (soul food) to fresh gulf seafood and barbecue. Increasingly, Mississippi chefs are embracing farm-to-table, seasonal ingredients, and creative menu items at their restaurants. Chefs are embracing the recipes passed down by their elders while also taking inspiration from global cuisines to create a bountiful spread of healthful, innovative, and—yes—traditional menus.
Vestige
Though tasting-menu restaurants have long been associated with expense accounts and bucket lists, more approachable ones like Soigné have become vogue among young Southern chefs with big ideas and small budgets. Located in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, four miles across the bay from Biloxi, this unpretentious Gulf Coast restaurant’s cuisine is an unexpected departure from the usual southern fare. Ocean Springs native and owner-chef Alex Perry and his Japanese wife Kumi Omori marry their backgrounds to create south Asian dishes using locally sourced produce and sustainable seafood plucked from local waters. Vestige’s market-driven tasting menu is based on what’s in season and available. Sample dishes include whipped cheddar cheese with peach and black sesame conserves, and Gulf red snapper with preserved gooseberries, wild onions, nasturtiums and oroshi pepper. A James Beard semifinalist in 2019 and 2022, Perry has been instrumental in helping shape, if not redefine, the gastronomy of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast.
Mary Mahoney's Old French House Restaurant
Mary Mahoney's Old French House Restaurant has been a coastal Mississippi mainstay for three generations. Located in a home built by French colonist Louis Frasier in 1737, the main restaurant opened in 1964 and has subsequently achieved national acclaim as a fine-dining establishment, serving political leaders, celebrities, and guests from all over the world. Mahoney herself became a local celebrity and was invited to share her dishes at the White House. The menu is shaped by Cajun- and European-inspired seafood enhanced by memorable local flavor. Bob Mahoney, Jr., one of the restaurant's owners, circulates throughout the restaurant telling jokes from table to table. The restaurant is famous for its seafood, particularly crab-stuffed fish and broiled crab claws. One of their signature dishes, the Queen Ixolib, is named after the restaurant's location (Biloxi) spelled backward. It's a fish filet stuffed with shrimp and crabmeat au gratin.
Mary Mahoney’s Old French House Restaurant opened its doors at 110 Rue Magnolia in the Biloxi Historic District on 7 May 1964 and has subsequently achieved national acclaim as a fine-dining establishment, serving political leaders, celebrities, and guests from all over the world. Mahoney herself became a local celebrity and was invited to share her dishes at the White House.
We'd be remiss not to highlight the local brewery delivering the laid-back, friendly culture of the Mississippi Gulf Coast by way of a six pack; Chandeleur Island Brewing Company, named for the uninhabited chain of islands just off the coast, embodies the creative spirit of the region in brews like their Gulf Sour Series, with flavors like guava jelly and passion fruit-mango, to IPAs, lagers, and Belgian wits. And, if you choose to sip on a Shark Tracker Wheat Ale (perfect on a summer day), you're helping to fund Mississippi State's hammerhead shark tracking program on the Gulf of Mexico.
For a guide to all of the restaurants and culinary offerings in the Coastal Region, go to visitmississippi.org/flavors.
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