I’D RATHER CHEW GLASS THAN TALK ugly, but crunch, crunch—here we go. I’ll never forget the first time I heard those words or who said them. It was my coworker Justin Jordan in the Crescent City Grill during cash-out.1 The moment I’d walked through the doors of the Grill, I knew I’d found a group of folks like me.
I’m a proud community-college kid, so by the time I got to a four-year college, the sorority life was out of the question. I was sharp enough to know that I could never be the junior who gets into a good sorority. It was fine, though. I graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. I broke my daddy’s heart when I didn’t go to Mississippi State, but he had two criteria for choosing a senior college: (1) He wasn’t paying out-of-state tuition; and (2) he wasn’t paying private-school tuition. He thought that meant Mississippi State was locked in, but I found a loophole in Southern Miss. It was four and a half hours away, and South Mississippi felt like a different state than North Mississippi.
I finished my two years at Southern Miss and didn’t want to leave. I made a few right turns in life and ended up working for Robert St. John. In Mississippi, Robert is an institution, a fierce supporter of eating local, buying local, and living local. In the early 2000s, his restaurant on Hardy Street in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was three restaurants in one. The Mahogany Bar was in the middle. The Crescent City Grill, the casual-dining restaurant, was on one side, and the Purple Parrot, the fine-dining restaurant, was on the other.
Robert created something special in that building. We were a family. In the restaurant business, there’s often a line of demarcation between the front- and back-of-house staff,2 but not there. We worked hard, but we worked together.
That restaurant became my sorority, and everyone in that building became my family. Justin stayed, worked hard, and is now a general manager and full-fledged member of the St. John family. I, on the other hand, started dating a customer, fell in love with the customer, and then followed that customer all over the South. Of course, I’m joking. I don’t regret a single step in my journey. I would leave again, but I’d work there a million times over.
It’s been over twenty years since I worked there, and we still keep up and support each other. We cheer when one of us wins, and we mourn when one passes. The Crescent City Grill was and still is a special place. It’s the home to the best corn-and-crab bisque in the world, the famous Sensation Salad, and the birthplace of Crunch, crunch—here we go!
1 Cash-out happens when the waitstaff turn in their receipts, cash, et cetera, before they leave for the night.
2 Front-of-house is everyone you see in the dining room while back-of-house is everyone behind the scenes making sure you have the best meal of your life.