Our Food History Editor, Suzanne Corbett, tells us about a unique restaurant in Mississippi that happened almost incidentally, Doe’s Eat Place.

Save this article about Doe’s Eat Place to Pinterest to help you plan your visit. Photos by Suzanne Corbett. Graphic by RealFoodTraveler.com.

Back Door Hospitability: A specialty served only at Doe’s Eat Place

Good eats and nothing highfalutin’. That pretty much sums up Doe’s Eat Place, the James Beard American Classic restaurant, located in Greenville, Mississippi, whose reputation was made on oversized grilled steaks and homemade tamales. All served home style with unpretentious hospitality to a clientele who were equally welcomed and escorted through Doe’s back door.

Doe’s, a modest white clapboard house tucked into a residential area about 15 minutes from Greenville’s riverfront, was originally a grocery store founded in 1903 by Dominick “Doe” Signa’s parents. After struggling through a flood and prohibition Doe scrapped the family grocery store, making it into a honky-tonk catering only to African Americans. Doe served a simple menu featuring local favorites like buffalo fish and chili. Ironically, the white customers heard about Doe’s food and began arriving at the back door for service. An ironic twist on segregation during the Jim Crow era.

Back door service begun when one of Doe’s customers was a local doctor who began coming for a meal between house calls. Big Doe would cook him a steak and feed him in the back. Pretty soon the doctor brought more customers to the back door, and business boomed. After a few years, the back door eatery became more profitable than the honky-tonk, resulting in the eat place taking over the storefront.

About the same time the Eat Place was taking off, Doe, better known now as Big Doe, was given a tamale recipe. He took it to his wife Mamie who doctored up the recipe and began making them to sell.

“Back then the tamales were all hand made by daddy and mama with their sister’s help,” said Charles Signa who operates Doe’s Eat Place with his brother, Little Doe. “We’ve been making tamales ever since and sell them year-round. In the summertime we only sell about 250 to 300 tamales a week because it’s hot and people don’t eat that many. But in the wintertime, we’ll sell five to six hundred a week.”

A plate of the popular tamales at Doe’s Eat Place.

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Doe’s tamales aren’t like any others you’ll taste in the self-proclaimed Delta tamale capital of Greenville, where each shuck shack uses their own family recipe. Tamales are made with seasoned pork or beef, encased in a cornmeal paste that’s pumped through vintage hand cranked or electric stuffers, wrapped in cornhusks or parchment and simmered in a chili broth. Doe’s tamale construction is similar, but theirs are set apart by their own seasoning blend and wax paper wrap. The wax paper seems to provide a subtle difference in taste and a slightly firmer texture that holds up better under a blanket of chili. It also makes a sturdier tamale, making it a finger-to-fork appetizer. It’s a perfect prelude to Doe’s famous broiler-grilled steaks.

Steaks were added to the menu decades ago when one of Big Doe’s friends suggested that he put steak on the menu.

“Daddy went down to the store and picked up a couple of steaks to see how it would go. They went over good so he kept cooking them. He then added French fries that we cooked in an iron skillet, and Aunt Flo, my daddy’s brother wife, made the salad,” Singa said.

Steaks cooking at Doe’s.

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The menu today hasn’t changed much over the decades – tamales, steak, shrimp, chili, fries, garlic bread and salad. Shrimp, one of the latest menu additions has added 30 years ago, comes either deep-fried or broiled in garlic butter. Steaks are thick cut bone-in rib-eyes, barrel cut fillets, porterhouses and sirloins sized to feed two to four. All are broiled in a mid-century cast iron gas broiler that still glows red-hot in the kitchen corner. Salads dressed with Aunt Flo’s famous dressing. A mix of lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil tossed and served in wooden bowls worn from decades of use.

Over the years Doe’s has opened franchises to a few other cities. However, there’s nothing like experiencing the original in Greenville. The only place where the hungry still enter through the back door.

To learn more about what’s happening at Doe’s, visit their Facebook page.

-Story and photos by Suzanne Corbett, Real Food Traveler Food History Editor