From SoCal to the South, I discovered that the Delta's hot tamales could be a bridge to the flavors of home.
When I moved to Memphis in 2021, brown asphalt roads, muggy air and an empty airport clearly signaled I wasn’t in L.A. anymore. It was my first time living outside South-Central, and I was incredibly homesick for months.
The Southern Foodways Alliance, a research organization at the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, has been collecting oral stories of tamale makers in the state. The center developed the Greenville has coined itself the Hot Tamale Capital of the World. For the last 10 years, the Greater Greenville Housing and Revitalization Assn. has thrown the Delta Hot Tamale Festival, a celebration that includes blues music, pageants and tamale judging based on taste, texture and consistency.
As to why Greenville became a hotbed, Harmon believes his family was the innovator, with a recipe so secret that he has his employees sign noncompete agreements.Back in the day, a young Harmon and his siblings would wake up early, in the thick air of a Delta morning, and travel from town to town with their father, selling tamales from a pushcart made out of bicycle parts.At the time, his father, Willie, was working in a factory, but his entrepreneurial spirit drove him to sell tamales part-time.
The stand goes back further than that, however, with family friend Josephine “Aunt Jo” Mickens selling tamales provided by local food entrepreneur Lester Dotson. Harley said Dotson saw Mexican cooks making tamales in Memphis and decided to get into the business, augmenting the recipe to make it “with soul.”
“It’s a flavor you can’t explain,” said Ellis, adding that he’s been a patron since the 2000s. He stopped to order half a dozen mild tamales. “That’s what keeps you coming back.”
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