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BOURBON MALL
The Bourbon Mall experienced a fire in October 2009. Information on reopening is not available at this time. My dad used to buy [hot tamales] from a little black lady there in town and bring them home on the weekends sometimes. Etta's Hot Tamales. Etta is not around anymore [but] she was in Leland….And I remember going to this old house, and she would slide open a window in the house and serve you out of a little window they’d cut in the wall. – Mark Azlin The Bourbon Mall has catered to the citizens of Washington County for decades. It’s been a general store since the 1920’s. Mark Azlin bought the place in 1998 and turned it into a restaurant. Surrounded by cotton fields, it is a remote destination. Offering a porterhouses and live Blues in amid pleasantly ramshackle surroundings, The Bourbon Mall is a favorite haunt for many. But it’s the hot tamales the really set the place apart. Mark put hot tamales on the menu as a nod to his Delta roots. As a kid he remembers his father buying hot tamales from Miss Etta, up the road in Leland. But an experiment in the Bourbon Mall’s kitchen led to hot tamales landing in the fryer. Mark claims that The Bourbon Mall put fried tamales on the Delta map. He serves them with a side of ranch dressing for dipping, and the affable bartender will hand you a roll of Tums for dessert.
--- What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here. Subject: Mark Azlin, owner, The Bourbon
Mall-Bourbon, MS --- Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Wednesday, June 29, 2005, and I'm at the Bourbon Mall with owner, Mark Azlin. Would you mind, Mark, saying your name and also your birth date for the record, if you don't mind?
So you can tell me a little bit about the history of the Bourbon Mall? Well it was originally an old store built in the late 1920s and--and it was operated as an old store all the way up to the 1990s, and it was closed down. And a gentleman opened it back up and was using it as--as a store and also selling lunches when I bought the place in [nineteen] ninety-eight. I bought it with the plans of turning it into a restaurant. Now when you say store, do you mean like commissary or general store or--? Just--just like a general store for the area…It was [called] the Bourbon Mall when I bought it. --- Are you from this area? I'm from Leland--seven, eight miles away. Okay, so you grew up in the Delta. Did you grow up eating hot tamales? Yes, uh-huh…My dad used to buy them from a little black lady there in town and--and bring them home on the weekends sometimes--Etta's Hot Tamales. Etta is not around anymore; she was in Leland. [I]f you could talk about your memories of eating them as a kid, what was it about them that you remember? Was there kind of a mystique to them or was it an every day kind of--? Well, no. No, I can--it's kind of funny that you say this and all but--but the old wives tale--and this is what I remember about eating tamales as a kid. I'm being honest here. You asked and I'm answering honestly. [Laughs] My dad used to bring them in from this little black lady who had a house there in Leland and--and he used to laugh every time he brought them and said we're going to eat some more of the neighborhood cats tonight. And it's kind of a little folktale--is--is tamales are made out of your local cats. And--but that--believe it or not, that's what I remember as a kid. You're the third person today who has shared that same Delta myth. Really? [Laughs] Yeah, but I mean, that's what I remember
as a kid. But my tamales are all beef, no cats. [Laughs] Well how is it that you got interested in the restaurant business and serving hot tamales? Well the restaurant business is something I've always wanted to do and--and I try to keep as many of the Southern local foods that--that--that are known in the South. Fried green tomatoes--you know, you go to a lot of restaurants, but they look at you and think you're crazy if you ordered fried green tomatoes, but--fried pickles is another one--something different. Well in the South, if it's fried it's better, you know that. And so that's why we--we fry the tamale. And far as I know, we are the first ones to ever fry a hot tamale and sell it, you know, as far as--I've had several that copy me, but I don't think any--I don't know of anybody that's still doing it. And so we are the--the home of the fried hot tamale. Was it something that just happened on a whim in the kitchen one day? You just thought you'd try it? Yeah, actually it did. One of my cooks was in the--my brother-in-law came in one day and he mentioned something, “I wonder what one of those things would taste like fried.” And one of my cooks said, “We'll find out.” And he fried it, and the guy loved it, and he kept coming back every week and tell him to fry him some more--fry him some more. He would tell his friends about them, and he kept telling his friends about them. And then I got to the point where people would come in all the time asking for them. And I said, “We'll go--we'll go ahead and put them on the menu.” When you knew you wanted to serve hot tamales, is it a recipe that you developed on your own or you got from somewhere, or how did that work? Actually, I experimented--I talked to several people that didn't mind sharing a few things with me, and I started the process there. And then I've got a several Mexican people that work for me and--and they've added a twist to it. They showed me how they make them; it's completely different but I--I've kind of--I'm using some of their spices and some of their things to where I--I think I've got it perfected, but you can always change it. You know, [in] cooking you're always changing. I mean--I mean I like to change it; I don't like the same thing over and over. But I feel like I got a pretty good product, anyway. Can you speak a little bit to how your Latino employees have--how--how what they make as a hot tamale is different from what is in the Delta? Well in Mexico they have these--these peppers they use that are--that--that's a little different than what your--your local people are going to make of them. They have that--they have their own seasonings that they use in Mexico that--you can buy them now in grocery stores. You have sections in grocery stores now that you go in and get a lot of these seasonings that you normally wouldn't find. And--and just--they have their--I don't want to go into too much detail, but they have a way of doing things, and also they--everything is hand-done in Mexico. They--they like to--everything is just hand-done, and they're quick, efficient, and--and roll them out. Do you have an idea if their tamales they make at home are pork tamales, because generally they--? Well they do make a pork tamale, but I--I don't make a pork tamale. I've tried theirs; they made them for me in the kitchen and--but I just--it's just not something that--people here are just used to beef tamales and I just--I just don't think that they would go over with--with my clientele just 'cause it's--everybody used to eating--you know, I like trying something different, and I have tried it but I just--it's so completely different, I just--I don't know. --- Do y'all have here an extruder or a machine that you use for the tamales? We have a little--let's see it's not a machine; it's a little press[.] Okay. And do you make them every day or is there a schedule that you keep? No, yeah, we--we--I like to make them the beginning of--of each week and I'll take them, and I'll freeze them. And as I need them, I'll take them out and cook them. And that's one key to the fried hot tamales I'll tell you, is to keep the tamale from--from breaking apart, you've got to cook the tamale from a frozen state. Batter at a frozen state and batter--and then--and then I will fry it, which I use a beer batter--it's a batter for the tamales--and flour and fry them. And the beer batter consists of eggs, beer, flour--simple. --- [H]ow many tamales, if I may ask, do you think you serve during the course of the week? Is that a big part of your business, or is it something that's just kind of on the side? Steaks are my big thing. Steak is my biggest thing. I sell…more of that and beer than anything else.
I have--I don't know--I don't know of anybody coming just for that. I mean, I think the steaks are my big thing. --- [Y]ou know, you were talking about growing up in the Delta and having hot tamales and getting them from this--this black woman in town, do you have any idea or hypothesis about how the hot tamales came to the Delta? No idea--no idea, not a clue. --- Well can I ask you again for the record if they sold tamales here at this store before? To my knowledge a tamale was never sold at the Bourbon Mall. Now not saying it wasn't; to my knowledge, I never saw a tamale sold here. --- Well growing up in Leland, did you grow up eating at Doe's [Eat Place in Greenville, Mississippi]? No, I didn't. Mainly because I had three brothers, and I don't know just--we were just a real conservative family. We just--parents never really went out much to eat. We cooked a lot--my mother cooked at home all the time. Did your mother ever make tamales by chance? No, she cooked a lot of foods, but she didn't make tamales. Do you have an idea if your parents had tamales growing up or if they--if they remember eating them? Well I know my dad has eaten a bunch of Etta's hot tamales. That was kind of a tradition for years, just going there and getting them. Outside of that, I never really heard him talk about it. Can you describe what Etta's were like? They were good, but it's--it's--like I said, I was a little kid when I was eating them, but I just remember them being spicy. And I remember going to this old house, and she would slide open a window in the house and serve you out of a little window they’d cut in the wall. [Laughs] So it was kind of different. I can't knock her place; look--look at the Bourbon Mall, a tin building out in the middle of a cotton field. Were her tamales wrapped in shucks or parchment paper? They were--they were [in shucks]. Is that something important to you to--when you had them here to keep making them in shucks and keep that kind of--? Yeah, I like it because it just--to me it just goes with the Delta. I don't know, just sitting out in the middle of a cornfield, you might as well have the corn shucks to wrap around your tamales. --- Well are there other places in the Delta--in or around Leland or Greenville or Bourbon that sell tamales that you like to eat or sample? To be honest with you, I don't go out and buy tamales anymore. If I want some, I just get them from here and take them home and--and cook them. I--I can't remember, since I've had this place, going out to somewhere else and--and buying tamales. Other than I have tried out competitor’s tamales when I've gone out to eat before, and--and I put ours up against everybody's. How would you say yours differ from everybody
else's? Well--how they're different? I don't try to be different;
I just try to be consistent. I want to consistently cook them the
same way where they taste the same every time. You go some places
and they might not taste the same every time. So I try to strive
at having a--a tamale consistently cooked the same way every time.
Well is there something that you want to leave with the people about the Mississippi Delta hot tamales, a tradition or what you're doing here or what you plan to leave as your mark? I just want to--you know, I'm happy to--to say that we're--as far as I know we're the home of the fried hot tamale and no one else--I mean it originated right here in Bourbon, Mississippi. I mean that's--I think that's my mark on the tamale world is that we're the home of the fried hot tamale. And that's--I mean, I'm just--I'm happy to say that we have accomplished that. [Laughs] --- To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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The Bourbon Mall
Listen
to this 
Mark
Azlin: Okay, my name is Mark Azlin, A-z-l-i-n. And my birth date
is December fifteenth [nineteen] seventy-one.
Do
many regulars come in for the hot tamales, or is that something
that more people hear about and come--?
