Julep Restaurant and Bar

I love me some Julep. I won't lie. I've written about them. I've reviewed them. If the world was a fair place, some major food reviewer would leave the whole New York-Dallas-Chicago-San Francisco-L.A. scene and find his way to Jackson, eat at Julep, and write about it as if its the Second Coming. That may be overstatement, but not by much.

Jackson’s own Julep Restaurant and Bar has been selected by USA Today as one of Ten Great Places to “feast on crispy fried chicken.” With September National Chicken Month, it is a timely honor for the restaurant, which specializes in “family-friendly contemporary Southern cuisine.”
Derek Emerson, chef and co-owner of Julep, says of the honor: “It feels good. It’s pretty exciting to be recognized nationally like this.”

The article, which is in the Friday, September 12 issue of the weekday-only newspaper, says that at Julep, “Fried chicken gets the respect it deserves.” Listed on Julep’s menu as Blackwater Farms Fried Chicken, the chicken is fried crispy and tossed in a honey-rosemary glaze.
Blackwater Farms is a Mississippi-based business located just outside of Meridian. They are the sole supplier of chickens to Julep. The birds are all field-raised.

USA Today’s Shawn Sell and John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, selected the Ten Great Places. Edge is a fried chicken aficionado and is the author of Fried Chicken: An American Story, which will be published in 2004.

Julep was the only Mississippi restaurant selected and one of only four restaurants chosen from the South. The other Dixie restaurants are Jacque-Imo’s in New Orleans; Watershed in Decatur, Georgia; and the Inn at Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee.

Julep is located at 1305 East Northside Drive, just off I-55. It opens at 11 am Mondays through Fridays, 8 am on Saturdays, and 9 am on Sundays.

Ten Great Places is a regular feature in the newspaper, appearing every Friday. The article can be found at USA Today’s online issue at: http://www.writersownwords.com/fckeditor/editor/%22http://www.usatoday.com/travel/vacations/great/2003/fried-chicken.htm%22