TUPELO, Miss. (AP) — One day, Chris Whiteside came to the
realization that he was tired of working in a plant. So he quit his
job at Cooper Tire and decided to open Whiteside’s Restaurant.

“I wanted to try something on my own,” he said. “I didn’t know
anything about cooking except what I did at home. But when we
bought it, some of the cooks came with the business and they’ve
taught me a lot.”

The building has long housed restaurants that feature
Southern-style, down-home cooking, such as Spencer’s
Restaurant.

And when Chris and his wife, Donna, opened their restaurant in
August 2006, they didn’t want to change that tradition.

“A lot of people come here just for the vegetables,” said Betty
Whiteside Guyton, Chris’ mother and a full-time employee. “That’s
all they get sometimes.”

Others come for the meat.

“The beef tips and gravy on Tuesdays is good. That’s one of the
main things we order,” said Michelle Kyle, who has plates delivered
to Franklin Collection for herself and her co-workers at least once
a week. “And their fish on Fridays is the bomb. It’s awesome.”

The restaurant draws customers from all backgrounds: hospital
employees, plant workers, businessmen, construction workers, city
employees and retirees.

“We have businessmen in suits and ties and working men in filthy
clothes all sitting and eating together,” Guyton said. “But I’d say
we kind of cater to working people.”

Chris and Donna, who is the cafeteria manager at Shannon
Primary, have come up with a regular weekly buffet menu that seems
to please customers. Occasionally, they’ll change things up with
the seasons, but in general it goes like this:

— Monday: Country-fried chicken and baked cheese spaghetti.

— Tuesday: Beef tips and gravy and fried chicken breasts.

— Wednesday: Hamburger steak or meatloaf and chicken
casserole.

— Thursday: Fried chicken tenders and roast beef and sometimes
chicken and dressing.

— Friday: Fish, barbecue and ribs.

To that, they add vegetables such as purple-hull peas, mashed
potatoes, lima beans, squash dressing, corn, green beans, fried
okra, fried squash and fried green tomatoes.

For $8.19, which includes tax, you get a meat, three vegetables,
dessert and tea. They also have a regular menu, which includes
sandwiches, burgers and salads.

“I make most of the desserts,” Guyton said. “Every day, we’ll
have one dessert, maybe two, if I don’t think we’ll have enough of
the first one.”

Some of her specialties include peach cobbler, chocolate
cobbler, blueberry crunch, red velvet cake, lemon cake, Boston
cream pie, banana pudding, old-fashioned rice pudding and apple
cake.

“We do a little more involved cooking than some of these other
places,” she said. “Maybe it’s because we’ve got the time. Who else
in town is going to roll out and cut dumplings and stand over the
stove and drop them in boiling broth?”

In October 2008, the family decided to open on Sundays for three
hours to serve a buffet-style lunch. Other family members who work
at the restaurant are Alice Satterfield, Guyton’s mother, who’s the
only one allowed to make the chicken and dressing; and the
Whitesides’ daughter-in-law, Mary Elizabeth.

“Sunday has grown like crazy,” Guyton said. “When we first
started, we used to just stand around here looking at each other.
Now, we can hardly seat everybody.”

One pair of Sunday regulars is Sue and Heywood Washburn of
Tupelo.

“They do have good vegetables that are seasoned very well,” Sue
Washburn said. “And their fried chicken is very good, mighty tasty.
The men just love it here.”

Heywood Washburn said not only are the meats and vegetables
good, but the meal is reasonably priced at $7.50 plus tax.

“That’s a fair price,” he said. “And what it lacks in ambiance
it makes up in taste.”

The restaurant also does a booming business for breakfast Monday
through Saturday.

“We probably serve 50 or 60 at breakfast,” Chris Whiteside said.
“There’s the round-table crowd that comes in every morning – law
enforcement officers and whoever wants to sit with them. We have a
lot of retired gentlemen come in here.”

The breakfast menu includes eggs, breakfast meats, omelets,
biscuits, pancakes, French toast and side items.

Chris Whiteside usually opens the restaurant in the mornings and
gets breakfast started.

But it’s Donna Whiteside who mans the grill every other Sunday
as well as Saturdays. When one of the grill cooks quit, she jumped
in the kitchen and learned the basics from one of the other grill
cooks.

“I really like it,” she said. “There’s not one day that’s the
same as another. It’s always different. And working with Chris is
interesting. I’m used to being around him at home, but at work,
he’ll try to tell me how to do something or I’ll get bossy with
him. It’s a tug of war. Sometimes I win and sometimes he does. We
just try to do what’s best for the restaurant.”