Foodways Tours

The Hot Tamale Trail

2 days · ~160 miles · from Greenville, MS

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Start

Greenville, MS

Days

2

Distance

~160 miles

Length

Foodways Tours

Themes

🍽️ Food · 🎶 Music

The Delta's strangest, greatest food story: hot tamales — wet, spicy, paper-wrapped, by the dozen — rooted in migrant field labor a century ago and beloved ever since. Eat the corridor the Southern Foodways Alliance documented.

This trip chains: The Blues Highway

Day by day

Day 1: Greenville, tamale capital

Doe's Eat Place (the 1941 original — enter through the kitchen), Hot Tamale Heaven for the rivalry round, then sides: Leland and Indianola for blues with your dozen. Overnight Greenville; October's Delta Hot Tamale Festival is the high holy day.

Day 2: Up the river road

North on MS 1: the White Front Café in Rosedale (Joe's hot tamales, an institution in a shotgun storefront), then Clarksdale for Hicks' world-famous — finish in Memphis comparing notes and napkins.