When Misty Logan arrived in Coffeeville, Miss., with her husband Jarred “Tadpole” Logan in 2011, the tiny town in northern Mississippi had little more to its name than a few gas stations, dollar stores and other small businesses, a post office and a small public school that must serve all grades K-12 for local children.
The town, which only had around 900 people during the most recent census, lacks a bank or grocery stores, forcing residents to travel roughly 20 miles to Grenada for many otherwise unavailable services. The streets are lined with buildings that, while considered historical sites within the state, are nonetheless empty.
Shortly after moving in, Logan began helping her husband’s parents, Lynnda and Jerry “Frog” Logan, operate a small liquor store they owned called Coffeeville Package Store. In 2013, Jerry Logan passed away, after which Lynnda Logan decided to close down the store. Misty Logan spent several years working for a bake shop called Cloud Nine until one day in 2019, she and her husband decided to look into opening a restaurant of their own as a way to bring business back to Coffeeville.
The Logans found an old building in town that had housed a restaurant called B&B BBQ, named for a couple Logan only knows were named Beverly and Bill, some 20 years before Logan came to Coffeeville. The building, which had changed hands at least twice since the original restaurant closed down, still had a dirt floor and old picnic tables inside when the Logans bought it and started renovations. Their new restaurant, The Ville (18 Front St., Coffeeville, Miss.) opened in 2019, which for the Logans meant they unfortunately opened just as COVID-19 pandemic set in, forcing them to quickly adapt to keep the fledgling business going.
“The timing certainly hurt us, but I knew that B&B had been takeout only and figured we could pull that off ourselves,” Logan says. “The only way we were going to do that, however, was to make sure we had the kind of food we knew everyone would be wanting in such a time, which is the kind your grandma might have made that you can’t make yourself. We started putting out ads offering things like sausage balls, banana bread, banana pudding and any other kind of comfort food we could put together, and enough folks came for the takeout that we were able to skim by.”
Logan’s self-described “hole-in-the-wall diner” survived the pandemic and has continued to offer its own brand of comfort food in large portions to Coffeeville and visitors from across Yalobusha County. Logan, her husband and the staff at The Ville also dedicate themselves to doing everything they can to help the residents of Coffeeville get by in a town lacking in many amenities others may take for granted.
‘You Can’t Be Mad in My Kitchen’
The Ville places a strong emphasis on barbecue and burgers, weighing out and hand-patting their own patties fresh daily, with the smallest starting at a quarter pound. The restaurant serves specialty burgers such as the Humpty Burger, topped with bacon eggs, and the Mac Daddy, which is topped with homemade macaroni and cheese and chili. The restaurant’s burgers won it a Top 5 Beef Burgers award from the Mississippi Beef Council in 2022.
In addition to burgers, The Ville has its own recipes for smoked pork butts and butt rub, baked beans, stuffed pork chops with jalapenos and cheese, and other barbecue staples. Another of the restaurant’s specialties is “Swamp Thing,” a topping for foods such as nachos, burgers or quesadillas made with white cheese dip, boudin, crawfish tails and shrimp.
On the first Wednesday of every month, The Ville has a special breakfast night featuring items such as giant pancakes, biscuits with homemade chocolate gravy and a “hashbrown mountain,” topped with peppers, mushrooms, cheddar cheese and white gravy. Every other Wednesday after the first is Soul Food Night, featuring comfort food staples such as pinto beans, corn bread, turnip greens, roasts and more.
“We get people coming from Grenada, from Water Valley, from Oakland, especially on weekend nights,” Logan says. “We attract tables full of families where everyone knows everyone, coming out here to enjoy music and good company. We also cater plenty of barbecue and smoked meats because people love what we do.”
As the owners of one of the only major businesses in Coffeeville, the Logans do everything in their power to support their community and provide essential services to its residents. Chief among their efforts is their work as members of the Coffeeville Volunteer Fire Department. The original firehouse in Coffeeville had already been shut down some two years before Logan and her husband moved into town together. Some time after The Ville opened, a man named John Beshears—owner of the Coffeeville Courier newspaper—approached the Logans and other residents as part of an effort to reinstate the firehouse as a volunteer organization.
Beshears and Jarred Logan led efforts to renovate the firehouse and repair the disused fire engines, with Beshears now serving as chief and Jarred Logan as assistant chief. Logan and other staff members at The Ville also coordinate to gather and donate items such as bulk ice or Gatorate to the fire station.
Misty Logan also organizes an annual event called the Zack Boyd Memorial Toy Drive, which benefits a charity called Dream Riders Biking for Children, as well as annual school-supply drives and a Christmas event in which The Ville staff members collect letters for Santa Claus from local children.
In addition to helping Coffeeville’s children, Logan also personally visits the homes of all of the town’s elderly residents and collects lists of groceries and essential items they need, then makes the 20-mile drive out to Grenada to shop on their behalf.
“We have to do whatever we can to help out precisely because there is nothing here,” Logan says. “These people would have to go so far otherwise and a lot of them can’t manage it.”
For Logan, positivity is one of the most important things she and the staff at The Ville can offer to Coffeeville’s residents, and she aims to provide as much of it as she can every day.
“We have a rule in my kitchen that everyone here follows, which is that you can’t be mad in my kitchen or have an ugly attitude while cooking my food,” Logan says. “If you cook like that people will be able to tell. The workers here are my family and are folks who need love for themselves as well, and the best way I know to help people and show them love is to feed them.”
For more information on The Ville, call 662-709-2135 or visit the restaurant’s Facebook page.
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