Many Tamale Trail vendors are featured in this wonderful article by John O'Connor that was published in the August 22 edition of the Financial Times:Ervin’s Hot Tamales sits at the split end of a narrow gravel drive outside the town of Sledge, Mississippi (Pop. 461), about 70 miles south of Memphis. It’s a straight shot to Ervin’s from Highway 61, no more than two minutes by car along Six Mile Lake Road. Unless, of course, Six Mile Lake Road happens to be washed out by flood water, in which case you have to backtrack and follow a sinuous stretch of asphalt past oceans of cotton fields, scrubland and irrigation ditches with virtually no identifiable landmark in sight, until you reach a sharp double bend in the road and happen to glimpse the gravel drive on your left just as you go chicaning past it.
There is no sign outside Ervin’s. In fact, Ervin’s isn’t an actual restaurant. It’s just a small, grey house on a spot of land that has been in the family for nearly 100 years. Out back, at the edge of a fallow soybean field, stands a tin-roofed shack where Edna Ervin and her 85-year-old mother, Rosetta, make about 850 hot tamales a week, which they sell in bundles to local grocery stores. Continue reading...
