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Interviews by Amy Evans.
This project was produced in conjunction with the Smithsonian's
traveling exhibit "Key Ingredients"
and
is sponsored by the
Mississippi Humanities Council,
the
Yoknapatawpha Arts Council,
the Southern Foodways Alliance, and
the Lafayette County City of
Oxford Public Library
Mistilis Restaurants
Oxford, MS
Family in restaurant business from 1920s through today
"There was no poultry plant [in Oxford in the 1930s], and all of the chickens were kept alive out on the back deck of the [my father's] restaurant. They had a big loading dock. And they kept chickens alive in crates -- they'd have them six, seven crates high full of chickens. And the chef would go out and throw corn to them once in awhile. And when... they got an order for chicken... they'd kill the chicken and dip them in boiling water and picked him right there." -- Angelo Mistilis
Tom Mistilis arrived in the United States from Greece in the early part of the twentieth century. After making his way through a steel mill up north and a bus station cafe out west, he eventually made his way to Mississippi. With a fellow countryman at his side, Tom Mistilis came to Oxford and quickly set up shop. From a cafe on the campus of the University of Mississippi in the late 1920s, to his son Angelo's own restaurant forty years later, the Mistilis family has blessed Oxford with some memorable recipes. Angelo became known around town for his smothered hamburger steak, and he can still be found filling hungry bellies. This time he's working alongside another North Mississippi legend: Martha Starnes of Starnes Catfish Place. Today, you can find them both at Abbeville Catfish, just a few minutes north of Oxford, working the crowd and serving some of the best food around... all over again.
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 this link. (Adobe Acrobat Reader required)
Subject: Angelo Mistilis
Date: July 20, 2004 @ 11:30 am
Location: Mr. Mistilis's Home - Oxford, MS
Interviewer: Amy Evans
Were you born in Oxford?
In the house on, uh, on what is now Martin Luther King Drive, uh, it was North, uh, North Fourth -- North Eighth Street [later corrected to North Seventh Street]. But, uh, that's where I grew up. Went to University High School.
Do you have brothers and sisters?
Uh, yes, I had one sister, deceased, and two brothers.
And what are there names?
Ben and Steve.
Okay, and your parent's names?
Tom, was the short name. His real name was Athos Nathis Celepas Mistilis [Mr. Mistilis did not know how to spell his name, so this spelling is a guess], and he is from a small island in the Mediterranean called Kastellorizo. And, uh, my mother's name is, uh, Georgia Skinner, and they met in, uh, Meridian, Mississippi, and married. But my dad left home -- left the island, when he was fifteen and traveled all over Europe and, uh -- on a steam ship, working to New Orleans first and didn't like it, so he went back to Belgium. I mean, went back to Marseilles, France, and then went to over to Belgium and caught another steamer out and ended up in, uh, Boston. Uh, he worked in Boston a little while and ended up in Philadelphia and, uh, worked in the steel mills. And he was living in a -- above a little tailor shop. And, uh, this is like nineteen, uh, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, and uh, the tailor told him -- you know he didn't speak English very well, and he was having to work a lot, so the tailor told him, said, "Tom, you'll die in the steel mills up here. Go south. You'll love it. The weather's better, the people are friendlier, and you'll do well in the south. But don't stay up here." So he went from there -- why, I don't know -- to San Angelo, Texas. And he worked in a bus station cafe there. And he worked his way across the coast to end up with four other Greek boys in Meridian, Mississippi, in a restaurant called the Cal -- the, uh, Palace Sandwich Shop. And one of the [restaurants] in Jackson, uh, Alex was, uh, one of his partners, and he was partner with another man named Spiro Villatos. And they're ones -- Spiro and my dad moved to Oxford. And, uh, I think Spiro came up first and called, and then my dad came up. But they lived on, uh, uh, Martin Luther King Drive... And, uh, Dad's partner lived next door. I think that house has been torn down. But they had a -- a -- a small building on campus, sits right there where the pharmacy building. And in that small building they had, uh, two stories. Upstairs was a, uh, post-office where William Faulkner worked, a haberdashery and a barbershop. And underneath -- in the basement -- was a sandwich shop, and that's what my dad and Spiro had.
Do you know what date this was?
It was in twenty-six -- twenty-seven.
They didn't know anybody else in Oxford when they came? Or did they?
No.
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And
you have no idea why they picked Oxford?
No... But they made a -- they -- they were very successful in that, and then the University, uh, built this first [Student] Union. And they were going to have them run it and give it to them, but then they decided to let the athletic department have it. So, uh, they moved from there the old Star Laundry building [now Star Package liquor store], and it was an old fashioned nineteen-thirties restaurant. And, uh, all male waiters. Um, wood burning stoves. Upstairs, a dance hall where the girls came and, uh, went up the lattice and danced and drank bathtub gin. And they had a real big fight one night because one of the boys got thrown out. And he went back to the campus, and they came back and tore the place up. So they moved up onto the [Oxford] square, and [the new cafe] was called the College Inn. And they were there during the, uh, Second World War. And then in nineteen, um -- nineteen forty-six my dad moved down into the middle building where the Oxford Eagle is and then into the two end buildings with the glass -- purple glass front? That was his restaurant.
What was that called?
Mistilis's.
Well, the place in the -- the Star Package building over there, um -- you know [by] the [old] depot. What kind of food did they have over there?
Home cooking: roast beef, pot roast, fried chicken, country fried steak, uh, vegetables -- a lot of vegetables -- uh, ham and eggs. You know, the breakfast fare. The usual stuff.
Did your dad do all the cooking -- he and his partner?
[Y]eah, he was a -- he did most the cooking all the time. Uh, he was, uh, never trained officially, but he spoke eight languages and, um, was a master chef. Back in those days you didn't buy anything prepared... If you wanted crab cakes, you made them. If you wanted uh, uh, chicken croquettes, you made them. You did all your -- all your seafood. You stuffed all your crabs, uh -- stuffed crabs yourself. You peeled and de-veined and fried all your own shrimp. It was all -- you make your own doughnuts -- you made everything. Th -- there was no such thing. And kit -- uh, uh, I used to as a boy -- there was a killing farm out, uh, east of town. It was Metts' -- named Metts' Farm. And I used to ride out on a pick-up truck with side beds on it, with a friend of my father's, and we would go out and sit on the rail, and he'd pick out his -- his, uh, cattle that he was going to cook. And he'd pick it out on the hoof -- the cattle and the hogs -- and, uh, he would pick those out and that afternoon they would be delivered. And they brought them in on the side of the pick-up truck with these big high wooden sides. No net over Ôem [laughs] -- no anything. Just right from the -- right from the farm to town... And nobody ever got sick. And chickens. There was no poultry -- p -- poultry plant, and all of the chickens were kept alive out on the back deck of the restaurant. They had a big loading dock. And they kept chickens alive in crates -- they'd have them six, seven crates high full of chickens. And the chef would go out and throw corn to them once in awhile. And when you -- they got an order for chicken, you'd -- they'd kill the chicken and dip them in boiling water and picked him right there. So that's, uh, fresh food.
I'd say. So, you talked about when people came and -- and tore the place up over there by the depot and then your father moved the restaurant downtown... Was that because of that incident that they moved?
[Y]eah, it was torn up, so they just moved up into the middle of town. Yeah.
Okay. And so what -- what did that restaurant start out being? How was it different?
That restaurant was where the chickens were kept on the back, and we bought the meat. And in those days in the summertime, when the watermelons came in, these big trucks would pull out in front, and they would get a line of guys going, and they would throw the watermelons all the way through -- from the street all the way through the restaurant into the coolers in the back. It was really, uh, it was not something you thought about then, but now you think how it was pretty neat. You know, pretty -- -pretty nice experience. But they had, uh, flat iceboxes. No refrigeration. And all the food and -- and stuff were kept iced down, and -- and the drinks were all kept iced down. And ice for your drink -- drinking water and tea, uh, you chipped it off of a twenty-five to fifty pound block of ice. And they had the bin and everybody -- all the waiters had there own personal ice picks. And you didn't use anybody else's ice pick. And they'd ch -- everybody had this nice little way of chipping ice, you know, and it was -- it was really neat. It was neat.
What did the rest of the inside of that place look like?
It was tin ceilings and, uh, old Hunter ceiling fans and -- and a lot of mirrors and big tall high-backed mahogany booths that -- that was one of my jobs on Sunday was to -- my brothers and friends would go in, and we would polish all the booths. They were very intricate, you know. And we would spend all afternoon polishing those with, uh, Old English wax. But it was, uh, it was a neat place. You came in, there was a long counter and, uh, you didn't -- you didn't go in and -- food came out pretty quick, but it wasn't like -- it wasn't like you just ran in a got something, unless it was lunch, you know, that was already prepared food.
Were
you open for breakfast?
Oh, yeah... From four in the morning until ten, eleven at night.
What was the clientele like during those times?
[A]lways students. They had a lot of Oxford people, of course, ate there. But you got to understand that there weren't that many cars in those days. And, uh, when we moved down [the street] to what is across the Federal Building now -- the old Oxford Eagle building -- uh, back in the early fifties -- then see, not everybody had a car. And uh, so when they would come up down to Dad's restaurant, there would be like -- there was always like six to eight people in the car. You know, riding to town. But, uh, I can remember back in -- when they were in the Star Laundry building, uh, Star Package Store building. Back in those days they had a railway express here. And when the kids came in, they came in on trains. And they would bring these big steamer trunks. Because they didn't go home you know. You came in the fall, and you stayed until Christmas break. And then you came back after Christmas break and just stayed until June. So they had these big steamer trucks and -- uh, trunks, and they would go down -- and they had red caps -- and they would load all these on these big -- on this big old big T-Model truck and go up to campus. And sometimes they rolled them up. But it was, uh, it was a nice time. A nice time alive. A nice time to be alive.
[W]ell at the restaurant was there, uh, like a signature item that was -- you would say was specific to your dad[?]
[A]lways steaks, uh, soups, uh, good hearty basic things, you know. Soups and stews and chili and -- and great breakfasts, you know. And food in those days was not -- it was natural food. Not -- you didn't -- you didn't worry about what was in it. You didn't worry about what had been preserved and what had been shot into it and what had brought back the color and the life and the life of the food. It's, uh, this was just natural food, you know.
------
Well from the College Inn to Mistilis's, um, when I've heard people speak about that restaurant, they call it a Greek diner. Um, would you say that's -- that's not true or --
I don't think that's -- I don't think that's an appropriate reference to it. It was Mistilis Cafe when we were down there. And my dad had split up with his partner and uh, uh, they had a very famous spaghetti dish. Um, I just can't imagine how much we sold.
Was it a traditional -- what everybody would consider spaghetti? Or something different?
No, it was my dad's recipe, and today I have people who would buy the -- the -- the meat sauce by the -- by the bottle if I would bottle it for them... It was, uh -- we did our spaghetti a little different. Uh, you cooked your spaghetti, and when it was done -- I don't mean al dente like what you have nowadays, where you got to chew your head off. This spaghetti was spaghetti that was cooked just perfect. And then it was run over with cold water to run the starch off. And we didn't use oil in it, I don't know where that came from. But we would run cold water over it, and it would -- you would cover it with water and put it in the walk-in cooler. And we had huge skillets. And when we got an order for spaghetti, we would take it out of the water -- your cold water -- and we would put melted butter in these big skillets, and we would put that cold spaghetti in, and we would role it in that butter until it was hot and pour it in a long dish and pour the spaghetti sauce on top of it. And it was just -- and we grated our own fresh Romano cheese. And it was fantastic.
When did you start working there?
Oh, too young to remember. I really don't know. I don't -- I just -- it was family all the way. You were in the family and you worked. So it was, uh, no questions asked. [Laughs]
And
your father taught you how to cook?
Yeah. And how to cut meat. We cut all our own beef. There wasn't a piece of meat that came into that place that was already cut. You know, we used to buy it by the side and uh, I learned to butcher and we -- we made everything. We didn't have all these little machines to do all that stuff. We -- we just did it, you know.
Did your mother cook at home?
Oh, yeah. My mom was a fantastic cook. She's gone now, but she was a great cook.
What kind of things would she cook at home?
Oh, I -- my favorite was a -- was a dessert pizza. It was an apple pizza, and it was just unbelievable. And of course, she made the traditional baklava and stuff like that -- Greek stuff. And she made absolutely marvelous wine. Clear as it could be. And she made a white wine out of green tomatoes, and it was fantastic.
------
Well,um, the Mistilis restaurant... what were the -- what would you say the years were that that was in operation? After the war through --
Uh, I don't know. They called it the College Inn, but it was still know as the Mistilis, you know. But, uh, Tom and Spiro's. I guess it started the Mistilis era when, uh, when the Second World War was over, and we moved down into those buildings. Those five buildings were owned by a politician and, uh, my dad ended up buying the two end ones that have the glass on them... And I think that probably the -- some of Dad's favorite dishes that people liked were, uh, Shrimp Creole, uh, chicken croquettes he sold by the thousands. And he put them on a French cream sauce, and they were just really -- just really smacking good, you know. That, and, uh, breaded veal cutlets on cream sauce and, uh, of course steaks and uh, he made a -- something that I've always regretted. I used to go up and make donuts with him early in the morning, and we only made donuts like, maybe one a week or once every two weeks. And he made a cake donut that was really big. Like about a four-inch cake -- four or five inch -- and -- real heavy cake donut. And we would make about maybe, fifteen-twenty dozen. And they would be gone -- they were a nickel a piece- and you know, they just went out of there just like that [snaps fingers]. But the cake donut was really good. And I loved his -- his stuffed crab dressing. Um, and of course the roast leg of lamb. But, um, a lot of -- a lot of things like that, they were just -- every kind of food. Now you could get lobster there too. And I think if you wanted lobster -- Maine lobster, we could get that too. So it was -- ice cream -- everything in one restaurant that you wanted. Fresh homemade pies.
Do you remember some of the prices of the entrees -- the lobster and things -- from those days?
I can remember, uh, more about when we moved down into the Mistilis restaurant across from the, uh, school -- elementary school. Um, the War was just over. We had a lot of guys coming back on the GI plan, and I can remember Dad would cut like, uh, a hundred and fifty club steaks and put them on pans right -- and we cooked on the front. And they were -- a club steak with a salad and a drink and potatoes was a dollar and five cents. And spaghetti was fifty cents. A bowl of soup, thirty. A hamburger, twenty -- fifteen, twenty cents. A plate lunch, thirty-eight cents -- forty cents. That's a meat and three vegetables. Quite a difference.
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But I used to serve a -- in my place [Mistilis Restaurant] out there [on College Hill] I used to serve -- my -- my main object -- main meal was a hamburger steak covered with cheese and onions and homemade French fries and, uh -- two dollars and fifty cents -- two forty. And, you know, hamburger meat doesn't cost but fifteen cents more a pound now than it did then. So you see the difference. [B]ut things have changed, and sometimes I think I'm out of the loop. And -- well sometimes I know I'm out of the loop. [Laughs] I don't just think I am, I know I am. But I've got such marvelous remembrances and -- uh, integration started. Uh, we had four children. And when they decided to integrate, uh, we kept our kids -- we kept our kids in the public school. There were big movements for private school. But there was a black administrator in the junior high that, uh, I thought a great deal of, and I had confidence in him that my children would be taken care of and treated right. And I think, uh, that they have all -- knock on wood [knocks on coffee table] -- they have all done very well. And the restaurant, uh, uh, I had just opened a restaurant [Mistilis Restaurant] where the Cedars used to be and now it's, uh, Aden's... Aden's Grill [on College Hill]. My brother and I built that and, uh, it was -- had all kind of names: Steve and Angelo's, uh, uh, Mistilis, later The Bait Shop. My dad had a little block building down on Old Sardis Road. A little block building, seated -- it had three -- three booths, a little round booth, and a table, and a small table up front. Little-bitty building. Just as big as this room [his living room where we're sitting, which is about twelve by twenty feet]. And the kids would get out of their cars and run to get in there. It was unbelievable. I -- he just -- he had a knack with people and food.
When did he have that place out there?
He had that in the sixties, late fifties. Uh, late fifties up through, uh, I guess, seventy?
Did he have that while there was still the Mistilis Cafe downtown?
No, this was after... he did that after. He just wanted a bait shop, it just turned -- the same thing always happened to him... No matter what he put in. He -- he could put in a clothing store and he'd, you know, be serving food there in the next thirty days... But, uh, my brother and I had just gone into business on College Hill Road: Steve and Angelo's Drive-In. And [short pause] a lot more people had cars. They were beginning to get cars in those days, so the drive-in business was good. And we had just opened in May. And [James] Meredith came that fall [to integrate the University of Mississippi]. And we were just stuck out there and covered up with soldiers. It was just -- it happened over night. And we watched -- I was standing on the front of the building, watching when the border patrol plane brought Meredith in, and they two or three great big dump trucks loaded with Federal Marshals that escorted them on the campus. Um, my thinking has always been that if they'd have just gone ahead a registered him and let things go, we wouldn't have had all the -- the two deaths that were associated with it and all the destruction... [T]he day he [Meredith] came in -- that night, the girls began to show up at the restaurant in droves, calling home. The campus was covered with tear-gas and it was getting all in their dorms. And they had come out to use my phone, and I had a line there. I don't know how many people used my phone that night. And from then on until I -- I asked them to put it off limits -- my restaurant -- because they were tearing it up -- the soldiers. They didn't have anything to do. They had thirty thousand troops here in this little old town and nothing to do. You know, had the -- the whole airport was covered with tents. You couldn't see the ground. And I brought -- my wife was pregnant. Very pregnant. We had to stop at about seven roadblocks every night coming home. Get out and search the car at each one of them. So it was an ordeal. Uh, we -- I brought a whole bunch of helicopter pilots home to take a bath. They hadn't had a bath in days, and I told them at the restaurant, I said, "Well, y'all just load up, and we'll go to the house and all clean up and get a shower." And, uh, so I did that a couple times. But the food was -- the food at our drive-in was curb service. We had a -- the usual stuff: sandwiches and French fries and whatnot. Inside we had spaghetti and pizza and plate lunches and steaks, and we were doing the same thing. Cutting our own meat and so, uh, it just kept rolling along. And finally I got out of there in [nineteen] eighty-eight. And then turned right around and went right back into the business and -- can't get out of it. I don't know, it's something -- somebody said to me at Abbeville Catfish the other night, said, "Well Angelo, this much just be in you blood."
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Now your working out at Abbeville Catfish, correct? With Pat Patterson? Can you, um, speak to how that developed?
Just, uh, my wife and I helped Pat open Oxford Steak Company. And then he sold it to Palmer Adams. But -- but we -- we went in with Pat. He's an old time friend. And Pat has a knack of opening new businesses, and he always finds people who were successful before to come in with him and help. And that's part of his success with his businesses. But we helped him open that and stayed with him, and I... stayed on with that with Palmer. I cut all his meat over there for him. [Pat] said, "Well I'm going to buy [Abbeville Catfish]." Thing about the Abbeville Catfish, it was closed at the time. I told him, I said, "Well -- " He said, "Will you come up and help me." And I said, "Sure. But, I don't want to do the buffet." ... So Jo Dale and I went up and helped him. And Martha Starnes, which you asked me about, Martha Starnes and her husband had a place -- catfish place -- and you don't remember -- I know you don't know anything about the old Starnes [Catfish Place]. But they made hushpuppies that everybody liked and what they called a dago salad at the time but you -- some people frown on that now, so they call it an onion and tomato salad. And -- uh, the hushpuppies, dago salad, and coleslaw. And so, those are the -- you get those things on the table, plus a bowl of real turnip greens. Not chopped up with the roots. Real turnip greens. You get all four of those things on the table before you get your meal. And it's good. And those come -- are Martha's recipes... And so she just kind of floats around on the front. Jo Dale bakes the -- the, uh, desserts. And, uh, helps run the place on Friday nights. And, uh, she and Martha are out front most the time and, uh, I'm back and forth between the kitchen and out front and, um, just cruising.
------
Do you enjoy being in that part of the restaurant business again?
I must be. Or else I'm stupid or crazy or something... [I]t's just -- it's kind of like a disease. And you get -- you know carpenters and people who are handymen, they get -- they like wrenches and pliers and tubes and pipes and -- and light switches and commode handles and all this handyman stuff, you know. And they -- they like it because they -- they -- they're into tools like that. And I'm into butcher knives and steaks and making stuff, you know.
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