Phillips Grocery

541A East Van Dorn Ave., Holly Springs, MS - (601) 252-4671

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Posted By Michael Stern on September 25, 2008 3:32 PM

Located in a two-story wood-frame house built as a saloon in 1882, Phillips became a grocery store in 1919, and has built a reputation on hamburgers since the 1940s. Some customers buy them to go, but there are comfy seats here, too: a short counter with stools, a handful of old wooden school desks, and a few odd tables (including one really odd one made from the cross section of a huge tree trunk); outside on the front porch, a couple of picnic tables provide a view of the railroad depot.

The menu is written on a blackboard that lists side dishes including fresh-from-the-freezer Tater Tots and morsels of deep fried, bright green okra enveloped in a golden crust. Corn nuggets are something special -- bite-size fritters with lots of kernels packed inside a sweet hushpuppy-like jacket. You can get spicy or regular French fries. And if a Moon Pie off the grocery shelf isn’t your dish for dessert, Phillips also offers fried pies for a dollar apiece. A fried pie is a folded over half-circle of dough fried until reddish brown and chewy, enclosing a heavy dollop of sugary peach or apple filling.

Hamburgers are presented wrapped in yellow wax paper inside a bag for easy toting; and when you peel back the wrapping, particularly on a half-pound Super-Deluxe, you behold a vision of beauty-in-a-bun. It is a thick patty with a wickedly good crunch to its nearly blackened skin. Inside, the meat is smooth-textured and moist enough to ooze juice when you gently squeeze the soft bun wrapped around it. The flavor is fresh, beefy, and sumptuous: an American classic.

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