Pickles and Grits

…and other standout food at Tupelo

Above: Tupelo chef Rembs Layman prepares satisfying fare: here, fried catfish.

TUPELO 
1193 Cambridge Street

Cambridge

617-868-0004

http://tupelo02139.com


Open for dinner
Tuesday-Saturday 5-10

The food at Tupelo is wonderful, my dinner companions and I would say, with just a quibble here and there. The mashed potatoes, the pickles, and the cheddar grits live in memory—no kidding—and I doubt you can get better fried oysters anywhere on earth.

The place is small, has dark-red-and-cream walls, and retains from Magnolia (its predecessor Southern restaurant in these confines) the colorful murals of New Orleans, the copper-topped tables, and the homely informality. Tupelo is deservedly popular. When it’s full, it’s very noisy and conversation becomes a chore. No reservations are taken for later than 6:30 p.m., and you may have to huddle by the bar with a beer or glass of wine to wait for a table. Tupelo may be a happier place for the resilient young than for the chronologically challenged, who may prefer a more comfortable trough. 

Things get off to a bad start when your friendly waiter plunks down on the table your water glass—a wide-mouthed, quart-size jar filled with water (but no ice). This touch, if intended to be down-home, misses its mark. 

After ridiculous comes sublime. Those fried oysters ($10), a starter, are crunchy on the outside and explode with briny flavor within. They come with a moderately nippy remoulade and slices of delicate, smoky, house-made pickled cucumbers and onions—a gastronomic high point. In season, the pickles give way to fried green tomatoes. Another starter is turkey meatballs ($7) in a spicy sauce “with French bread for mopping up.” A third is watercress salad with roasted pear, herbed goat cheese, and candied pecans ($7).

A vegetarian might follow that with flavorful champagne crepes filled with ricotta cheese and fresh basil with a tomato vinaigrette ($14). 

The roasted half chicken ($16) is bathed in a bourbon-maple barbecue sauce that its consumer in my group thought disguised the chicken overmuch. It comes with maple-flavored spaghetti squash, greens, and sweet onion pickle.

Cheddar grits of mild taste and pleasing granularity sing in delicious harmony with inherently bland but perfectly pan-fried catfish and accompanying tomatillos and piquant remoulade ($16). Charleston’s Post and Courier allegedly once proclaimed that “a man full of grits is a man of peace,” and so why is it that grits aren’t gobbled up world round?

Rembs Layman, the maestro in the kitchen, orchestrates beef brisket ($17), slow-cooked in red wine and fork tender, into a symphony of tastes and textures: a drizzle of horseradish cream, vinegary collard greens cooked just off wilting, and marvelous mashed potatoes. No secret ingredient; they are made with plenty of butter and cream and a touch of chives. 

Don’t overlook the tart key lime pie or the definitive pecan pie with ice cream ($7 each) if you have room for dessert.

Tupelo’s food is a bargain: four people, a bottle of wine, a couple of beers, and the tip, for less than $200. Another option: call ahead and get all menu items to go home with you, although it would seem a shame to keep any of this food waiting.

Above the pass-through window to the kitchen hangs a drawing that is meant to depict Elvis Presley, and there’s a bust of him in the kitchen. The King was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. I bet he would have enjoyed this place.

Read more articles by: Christopher Reed

You might also like

Studying ChatGPT Like a Psychologist

Cognitive science helps penetrate the AI “black box”

Reparations as Public Health

A Harvard forum on the racial health gap

Unionizing Harvard Academic Workers

Pay, child care, workplace protections at issue 

Most popular

Diagnosis by Fiction

The “Healing Quartet,” by “Samuel Shem,” probes medicine—and life.

AWOL from Academics

Behind students' increasing pull toward extracurriculars

Who Built the Pyramids?

Not slaves. Archaeologist Mark Lehner, digging deeper, discovers a city of privileged workers.

More to explore

Darker Days

The current disquiets compared to Harvard’s Vietnam-era traumas

Making Space

The natural history of Junko Yamamoto’s art and architecture

Spellbound on Stage

Actor and young adult novelist Aislinn Brophy