The restaurant is a quintessential slice of Americana 

 

You don’t need a time machine to step back into a different era in Vicksburg. 

Just pop open the front doors at Goldie’s Trail Bar-B-Que and bask in the glow of a time forgotten.

A long bar shoots across the back of the restaurant, plush maroon stools accenting the room filled with tables, chairs and window booths. The smell of smoked barbecue explodes in your nostrils as soon as you walk inside, to be greeted by an oak barrel with clear jars of that famous Goldie’s barbecue sauce on proud display.

The restaurant looks and feels like a quintessential slice of Americana.

A sizeable collection of Civil War memorabilia lines the wall. Old pictures, medicine bottles and guns donated for display by Corner Medical Center owner Joe Gerache provide the restaurant with the ambiance of a mom-and-pop Mississippi diner in the 1960s.

In fact, that’s what Goldie’s started as in November of 1960, nestled comfortably on the banks of the Mississippi River where Ameristar now stands. The restaurant has moved twice more since then, the last time in 2007 to its current location off N. Frontage Road. But while the location has changed, the quality of the food hasn’t.

“That’s something that we’ve tried to do over the years. We never mess with the quality of our food. We try to sell top quality food and our business, we’re a small mom-and-pop business,” manager Randy Wright Jr. said. “We’re all about the local customer and getting people to come back again and again is what’s kept us open for this many years.”

The restaurant has been in Wright’s family since the very beginning, and he and his father, Randy Wright Sr., continue to run it in the same style that made it a staple of Vicksburg since those opening days.

“We’ve been very fortunate. The city of Vicksburg has been very good to us for a lot of years and it’s been great,” he said. “We have a lot of local customers, a lot of regular customers, who come and eat with us every day. It’s been really great.”

Before the clock strikes 11:30 a.m., every booth is filled inside with hungry patrons, and if Goldie’s could bottle the smell that permeates throughout the room it would sell for more than the barbecue sauce.

It’s this sauce, slightly tangy and thick with Texas-style influence, which keeps people drooling and coming back for more. Slather it on anything and you’ve got yourself a worthy meal. Goldie’s agrees, which is why its barbecue is some of the best in Warren County.

Everything in the restaurant is carefully cooked on a smoker in the back by chef Shannon Shelley, who has been a part of the Goldie’s family since 1999. When the old cook retired after 30 years with the restaurant, Wright promoted Shelley from bus boy to man the kitchen. Wright calls it the best business decision he’s ever made.

The restaurant’s ribs fall off the bone, as does the chicken. Shelley thinks it’s because the smoker uses hickory wood to soak into the meat.

Whatever it is, it’s worth going back for. This is barbecue in its most basic and glorious form. There are no gimmicks, no secret menu items, no razzle-dazzle. This is the restaurant your grandpa loved and now you do too.

The shortest tenured waitress in the restaurant has been working at Goldie’s for nine years. A cook in the back has been working at Goldie’s for longer than Wright has been alive.

“We like to feel like we offer a great atmosphere and good quality food. The bottom line is, we’re serving the people of Vicksburg,” Wright said. “Every now and then we get people who stop in, being right here on the interstate, so we get people from out of town some. But mainly we’re serving the people of Vicksburg.”

Goldie’s has been serving the town of Vicksburg for 55 years.

And if that barbecue sauce has anything to say about, they’ll be serving it for 555 more.