Many of its patrons have unique stories to tell about the Crystal Grill in Greenwood. This I know: Through more than a decade of living, working and dining in the Mississippi Delta, the food never disappointed.
Neither did the joie de vivre.
The eatery in that city’s heart of downtown closed July 9. The Crystal rose from humble beginnings almost a century ago to become one of Mississippi’s finest restaurants — perhaps not as well known statewide as some others but certainly high on the ladder of quality and diversity of food and drink.
Patrons visited the Crystal Grill for fine food and beverage, but they also enjoyed the delightful sense of celebration existing in that space. Deltans have always enjoyed an environment of conviviality and the Crystal’s strongly rivalved most top-scale Mississippi restaurants in that regard.
As a magnanimous nod to the support of the Greenwood community, the Crystal’s final owners, Johnny and Beverly Ballas, told the Clarion-Ledger that they would donate the building to a community kitchen organization.
They also thanked folks across the breadth of the Mississippi Delta for their patronage. It is well-known that bon vivants of the region think nothing of traveling an hour or more from home to regale each other socially, while wining and dining themselves and friends.
But, these are tough times for restaurants due to high food prices and labor shortages and another giant among them has fallen.
This is the second long-established and thriving restaurant that Greenwood has lost in recent months. The Crystal Grill’s closing followed the relocation to Oxford of Lusco’s, another upscale eatery that lured customers from across the Delta.
In my experience, only Lillo’s in Leland and Doe’s in Greenville can match their Greenwood counterparts in food quality and merriment.
The Crystal Grill began operations under that name in 1936, three years after Lusco’s debut. Johnny Ballas, now 72, followed forebears in the business.
I defy restaurant historians to come up with two dining establishments in this state that offered more variety in menu and beverage offerings than these two. The Crystal advertised itself as featuring foods of American, Mediterranean and Italian styles and was capable of delivering all of them with frontline quality.
The place was celebrated for its desserts, with “mile-high pies” as a customary sobriquet. Johnny Ballas was pictured in an article in the Greenwood newspaper about the closing holding a slice of “the Crystal Grill’s lemon icebox pie in 2015, soon after People magazine named it the best pie in Mississippi.”
Quoted in the article, Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams “echoed the widespread sentiment in town as word of the closure spread, saying, ‘I was devastated when I heard that news this morning, and … sad because it is such a huge part of our history.’”
Both the Crystal and Lusco’s featured beef and seafood fare of unequaled quality — surprising, perhaps, in the case of seafood because of the distance from their source, the Gulf of Mexico.
Another similarity of these venerable businesses concerns a period many years ago when they recognized the regimen of the day and received only white customers, as did most other mainline Mississippi restaurants.
Wrote the Greenwood Commonwealth: “Called simply ‘The Crystal’ by many, it operated at one point during the civil rights era as a private club for white patrons only, reflecting the city’s resistance to desegregation. Decades ago, though, it abandoned that practice and welcomed patrons of all races.”
That period of darkness thankfully disappeared long ago and ever since, the Crystal Grill and Lusco’s were bright, shining examples of luminance among Mississippi’s best enterprises of their type.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Most Popular
Comments / 0