GREENVILLE, Miss.—Pamela Hall paced the wooden floors of Doe’s Eat Place, weaving her way around cooks and customers who crowded the open kitchen of the small four-room restaurant. As the sun started to set on the white, aged brick building that evening in 2021, Hall gathered lettuce, tomatoes, onions, garlic, lemon juice, salt and oil from the pantries and refrigerators, placing the ingredients at the end of the counter near a large wooden bowl.
Outside, a vehicle pulled into the driveway, slinging gravel under the front porch. Local celebrity Florence Signa exited the car and climbed the cement block steps of the restaurant in the historic Nelson Street business district of Greenville Mississippi. A sign inscribed with the multi-generational family business’ name in black block letters greeted her as it had for decades. Signa, then 95 years-old, opened the black screen door and stepped through the doorway.
“Welcome to Doe’s!” the employees instinctively shouted while performing their duties.
Hall lifted her eyes, and her gaze fell onto the gray-haired, bespectacled woman.
“Hey, honey,” Signa said warmly, her open arms raised in invitation.
“Hey, Aunt Flo!” Hall replied, her shoes squeaking on the tiled floor as she pivoted and cheerily marched toward Signa, a former matriarch of Doe’s Eat Place who had come to her old stomping grounds not only to eat as a customer, but also to teach Hall how to assemble the eatery’s signature salads. The two hugged and swayed for a couple beats before separating.
“Let me show you how to make the salad,” Signa said, ushering Hall back into the kitchen. From there, Signa began adding ingredients to the bowl, starting with a spoonful of garlic, adding olive oil and lemon juice, and then explaining the precision required to make Doe’s house dressing taste just so.
“It’s all about the measurements,” Signa instructed.
Hugging one side of the bowl, Hall replicated the family recipe, tossing the salad until the vegetables were evenly coated with the housemade dressing. The two women plunged forks into the bowl and gave it a taste. Pleased expressions stretched across their faces as they locked eyes. “It’s good!” Signa praised.
A Kitchen Like No Other
More than four years later, Pamela Hall has still been making salads in the same sacrosanct way since her lesson from Aunt Flo.
“It feels amazing to hear people say my salads taste just like hers,” Hall said. “It was a great experience for me to actually see it in person. She trained me, and my salads have been good ever since,” Hall told the Mississippi Free Press on May 14.
Hall’s salads have been such a hit among customers and family that she received a special stamp of approval.
“Her grandkids have been here twice since I’ve been working here, and they were like, ‘Ooh, this tastes just like my grandma’s salads.’ That made me feel so good. And they left me a really big tip,” Hall said with a laugh.
While Hall started at Doe’s in 2015 by washing dishes in what is coined “the hole,” she knew that she wanted to work her way to the action that is in the kitchen.The epicenter of the establishment, the open-format kitchen sporting has not changed since 1941 produces hearty meals like the Doe’s well-known 32-ounce steaks, Italian meatballs, hot tamales and broiled shrimp.
Unlike many restaurants, the main kitchen area of Doe’s features an open kitchen that both customers and cooks are able to walk through as they find their red and white checkered tablecloths.
Flyers, old family photographs and community memos adorn the walls inside, all permanent artifacts in the antique Italian eatery. Doe’s kitchen is a place where affectionate pats and laughter flow freely, maintaining an amiable spirit that welcomes its customers, who get to sit close to the action.
“The atmosphere in the kitchen is wild, crazy,” Hall said. “The employees, we talk mess while we’re working, you know? We have fun. It’s a good place to eat, and if you come, you wanna be in the kitchen with us. You’re going to laugh.”
Doe’s Eat Place is an establishment where co-workers are like cousins and kin, no matter their color—the kind of place where “Hey, baby, how you doing?” is a common greeting, and “I gotta go pick up my grandbaby” is a universally understood farewell.
A Juke Joint on Nelson Street
Doe’s Eat Place orchestrates a daily performance of flavor, food and family that has captivated hungry visitors since 1941. Dominick “Doe” Signa III, the third-generation owner of the restaurant, has been performing these ceremonies for more than two decades.
“There’s kids now that I was cooking for that were brought in as babies in a stroller. Now, they’re in sixth, seventh and eighth grade. The parents of those kids were babies when my dad cooked,” Doe told the Mississippi Free Press during a visit for a steak dinner May 11.
A prominent Italian family in the Greenville area for generations, the Signas have made a permanent home of 502 Nelson Street, in the heart of Greenville’s historic Black business district since the early 1900s when Doe’s great-grandfather Carmel Signa opened a grocery store named “Papa’s Store.”
In 1927, the Mississippi River breached into the Great Flood of 1927, devastating most of the Greenville community and the state at large, affecting nearly 200,000 Mississippians. The rainwater flooded a total of 41,673 homes, destroyed 21,836 buildings, and damaged 62,089 other buildings. While the flood caused tremendous damage to Greenville, the Signas’ store remained standing, but was forced to close.
To provide for his family, Carmel Signa turned to bootlegging, a booming business during Prohibition. As the Nelson Street community started to rebuild after the flood, Signa turned the grocery store into a juke joint for Black people.
While Black Deltans danced in the front of the juke joint, Signa’s son and daughter-in-law, Dominick “Big Doe” Signa and Mamie Signa, cooked food in a kitchen in the back. Because of Jim Crow laws, white people who wanted to be served food had to go behind the restaurant to eat.
In the back of the grocery store Mamie perfected a recipe she had been given for hot tamales, the Delta adaption of the traditional tamale. One day, a doctor friend of the family suggested they should cook steaks to go alongside the locally famous tamales.
“Mama and Daddy were selling the tamales, and one of their doctor friends said, ‘Why don’t you sell some steaks since you’re selling tamales?’” Charles Signa, one of the couple’s older children, recollected to the Mississippi Free Press.
In 1941, Big Doe and Mamie opened Doe’s Eat Place, serving tamales, steaks, house-made salads, hand-cut potatoes and oysters. While the menu has expanded over the years, the restaurant’s familial approach has stayed the same.
Swapping Steaks for Homemade Wine
When Charles Signa was a young boy, he lived in the restaurant for a few years; today’s dining room area was once his bedroom. As the restaurant’s steaks and tamales became more popular, the family moved out of the building to make it a full-time restaurant.
The sacrosanct salad is another tradition from in the earlier years of Doe’s Eat Place. Mamie Signa created an in-house salad dressing that used lemon juice and olive oil, and she would serve the side by hand to go alongside 32-ounce steaks and the meal’s accompanying fries. Mamie Signa continued this tradition while raising her and Dominick’s four kids until she passed away in 1955 at age 41.
After Mamie passed, “Big Doe’s” sister-in-law Florence Signa became the new matriarch of salad and southern hugs for regular guests at Doe’s Eat Place. Remembered as Aunt Flo, she became the new handler of the restaurant’s salad bowl soon after unexpectedly joining the kitchen’s crew one night during a first date with her future husband, Frank “Jughead” Signa.
While the initial plan was to go to the movies for their first date, Jughead asked Aunt Flo to come help at the family restaurant by frying potatoes.
“I come in, right over there, and fried potatoes all night,” Florence Signa said in an interview with Southern Living on Oct. 17, 2017.
For 70 years, Aunt Flo, who was also the first Hot Tamale Queen for the Hot Tamale Trail in Greenville in 2012, served Doe’s Eat Place customers until she passed away in 2022.
Today’s family owners, Dominick and Barbara Signa, used to have a home right behind the restaurant. On Sundays, the women would cook a dinner of Italian dishes and prepare for the family’s weekly meal together. Having connections to an Italian community right across the river in Lake Village, Arkansas, the Signas would travel across state lines to purchase and barter for fresh produce, especially tomatoes.
“I mean they made everything from scratch,” Doe Signa said. “… I know stories of my dad and uncle driving all the way to Lake Village just to pick up tomatoes and bring them to the store to make our spaghetti sauce.”
Tomatoes were not the only product traded in Lake Village. “My grandfather would go to Lake Village. They had Italian friends that would make homemade wine, so they would swap out steaks for wine,” Doe added with a laugh.
The current owner finds joy in following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps when it comes to the restaurant and its constant theme of family.
“To be a part of it, I am so thankful for that,” he said. “I don’t know what I would be doing if I didn’t have it. Being so deep into my family, especially my grandfather’s generation. They were all involved.”
‘Cuts Like Butter’
Since starting as a small restaurant selling hot tamales, steaks and salads, Doe’s Eat Place has grown into a franchise with 10 locations across five states, including one in Biloxi, Mississippi. While the newer locations have more of a modernized feel, the original Doe’s Eat Place has stayed true to its humble beginnings.
“People love to be able to sit in that kitchen area and watch all the action. Seeing the fries being cooked and the salad being tossed and the employees interacting with them. It’s just another part of eating at Doe’s. It’s like sitting in the kitchen watching your mom or grandma,” Doe Signa, III said.
While the open kitchen challenges health and safety codes in the Mississippi because of possible overcrowding in operations, Doe’s has been able to keep this unique feature in their eatery due to their longevity since 1941, Barbara “Shug” Signa, the wife of the late Dominick “Doe” Signa Jr., said. As a result, they are exempt from some newer zoning ordinances unless they ever stop and revive operations because they are protected by the grandfather clause.
“The only reason we can have an open kitchen is because we have never closed. If we were to close for like a week or so, we would have to close the kitchen,” Shug told the Mississippi Free Press on April 7.
Following in the footsteps of Mamie and Florence, Shug also made salads in the restaurant using the lemon-olive oil recipe.
“My mother made salad, and so that’s where I learned how to do it,” Shug said. “But coming here in that big bowl, I had to be (mindful) of the measurements. You just have to taste it. It’s just olive oil and lemon juice and garlic. That’s all it is. I love it.”
With family tradition and culture at the heart of its cuisine, Doe continues to make the steaks the way his dad taught him in the very beginning.
“My dad taught me how to cook a steak 22 years ago. Dad took me and showed me. … I remember him telling me, ‘Cook it to where you think it’s supposed to be cooked, and then I’ll check it,’” Doe recollected.
The family restaurant has earned national recognition for the size of its steaks and the hospitality of its staff. In 2007, the restaurant became the first restaurant in the Mississippi Delta to receive the James Beard Award, an esteemed award for culinary excellence in the United States. Since then, other Mississippi restaurants have also earned or been considered for the honor, following in Doe’s footsteps.
Carolyn Baker, the director of alignment at the Washington County Economic Alliance, took the Mississippi Free Press to the award-winning restaurant while on a tour of the Nelson Street district, which her organization is working to rejuvenate. “The steaks are so good you don’t need any sauce. They are so tender and juicy. It cuts like butter,” Baker said during that visit.
Baker’s tour of the restaurant and the historical context of its importance on Nelson Street throughout the 1900s showed the deeply rooted connections the Signa family has had with the Greenville community over the past century.
“They’ve been here forever. Right on Nelson Street,” Baker said.
Baker, a Black Greenville native, knows Nelson Street fondly for its thriving Black businesses and lively music scene in the mid 20th century. Doe’s Eat Place greatly contributed to that culture through food and music.
In addition to hungry community members, Doe’s Eat Place has seen its fair share of celebrities and socialites traveling to Greenville the famous steaks. “You know Jerry Jones that owns the Cowboys? He used to fly in here and come here to eat,” Shug said.
A staple in the Greenville community, Doe’s Eat Place continues to thrive as a hub for family, culture and really big steaks.
“I think that (Doe’s) brings people home,” Shug concluded.
Doe’s Eat Place’s Mississippi locations include Greenville and Biloxi. The original Greenville location is open from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and is closed on Sundays. The Biloxi location is open from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays and from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, while being closed Sunday through Tuesday. Learn more at doeseatplace.com.
