“Pull Up a Chair” in Jackson, Mississippi

Mississippi is known for the Delta blues. For storytelling. For the kind of hospitality people write books about. It’s also getting a reputation for world-class cuisine, especially in Jackson, Mississippi.

StyleBlueprint’s Pull Up a Chair host, Jenna von Oy, traveled to Jackson to sit down with Chef Chaz Lindsay of MICHELIN-recommended Pulito Osteria, to find out more about the local food scene, his take on Italian cuisine, and the story behind why he opened three establishments in the Belhaven neighborhood of Jackson.

Belhaven is one of the city’s oldest and most walkable areas, and it’s one of those places that feels like a fairy tale. On Friday afternoons, the main street closes to traffic and remains closed until Monday morning. Pulito Osteria sits on the corner, anchoring the street from inside a former laundry facility, which is where the name comes from — Pulito means “clean.” They used to wash sheets in the building. He makes sheets of pasta. He explains it in the episode better than we can!

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Chaz grew up a few blocks from the front door and calls himself “a Belhaven boy, born and bred.” He also trained as a ballet dancer, turned down a year-round spot at Houston Ballet, and wound up in Italy on an olive farm. Olive oil from that farm is the exact one that Pulito uses … 10 cases a year.

Jenna sits down with Chaz for three dishes: a tomato salad with produce from Two Dog Farms (the tasting ends in a way nobody sees coming!), then a dish that Chaz lovingly calls the pepperoni pasta. And as the final dish, he makes salmon poached in the fat rendered from that ragù, finished with pickled ramps. As if that’s not enough, they finish with a “round of brown.” You’ll simply need to watch it to see what this is all about!

Over bites and sips, Chaz gets into why he came home after 10 years away, why a MICHELIN nod is “a blessing and a burden,” what hospitality really means to him, and where to go if you have one weekend in Jackson and want to do it right.

It ends with a toast to a city he says has been underestimated long enough.

Watch the full episode here, on YouTube.

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See more about the Pull Up a Chair series, and all of our featured restaurants and neighborhoods, here.