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Welcome to The Crown Restaurant Home of Taste of Gourmet!
We are featuring a Weekly Special Salad or Sandwich- This week we're serving a Southwest Salad and the newly added menu staple Fried Catfish Po-Boy! Come for lunch and enjoy our delicious classic menu items or one of our weekly specials. Retail items from The Crown including our own Classic Catfish Cookbook and lots more have been added to the on-line ordering section! The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, Mississippi is OPEN and an experience you do not want to miss. Visit the King and Eat at The Crown, we're just three blocks from the Museum, in downtown Indianola.
In the News Country Living magazine's May 2010 issue includes words and a picture of our Mississippi Mud Pie in an article about regional desserts. It looks heavenly, and you can try this yummy dessert during lunch at The Crown Tuesday - Saturday! Saveur magazine included The Crown in their October 2009 issue, one of six Mississippi restaurants featured. The article "Southern Glories" on pg. 20, boasts "The Crown- The Catfish Pate and Catfish Allison (a whole fillet grantineed in a scallion cream sauce) have kept this Indianola restaurant going strong for 33 years!" The Crown was chosen by 2009 Delta magazine readers as "Best Place to Do Lunch and Shop" ........Thanks so much ya'll! A great 2008 travel article in the Los Angeles Times tours Indianola, the Mississippi Delta, the new B.B.King Museum and The Crown. Follow writer Kay Mills' advice and come to visit Indianola! The June issue of Bon Appetit has included The Crown in their Mississippi Delta tour article with a great description of our Catfish Allison and a picture of our Delta Fudge Pie! And we are loving all the comments from people who have just seen us on the Travel Channel's Taste of America: Mississippi Delta show with Mark DeCarlo! Good Food Does Get Talked About!
The Crown is located in downtown Indianola, Mississippi in the very heart of the Mississippi Delta - the home of our exciting multi-million dollar B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center!
Our Story (as told by Jennifer Roughton Schaumburg) In 1972, my parents Tony and Evelyn Roughton, out in the middle of a cotton field in the hot Mississippi Delta, opened the doors of The Antique Mall, and began importing 18th and 19th century country antiques from England. In 1976, to draw more customers out to the country, we opened The Crown, a tearoom, serving lunch and afternoon tea, in an English pub setting using antique tables and chairs. We served only one entree with a salad bar, and we passed dessert from table to table on a wooden Victorian tea cart.
In 1980, we added a gourmet Catfish dish to the menu, and around here we call it the other catfish- we cook it every which way BUT fried! Southern Living magazine and CNN visited Indianola to do stories on the Catfish industry and featured The Crown and our great foods - Southern cooking with a French heritage! We created our Catfish Pate for a Catfish farmer's daughter's wedding reception and in 1990 that Pate won the Best Hors D'Oeuvre Award at the International Fancy Food Show in New York! Other products have also won awards and honors including the feature on Food Network's Food Finds and Bobby Flay's Food Nation, and on Turner South's Blue Ribbon show. Those programs are still showing from time to time. We have very definitely been blessed! Antiques are now secondary to the foods we produce, but you can still buy your dining room chair or the brass candlestick on your table or the Victorian Salt Cellar right off your table. The walls of the Dining Room are covered with paintings by local artists, and the Gift Shop is filled with original pottery and handmade jewelry. Our children's toy and book corner feature classic toys that are so hard to find - china tea sets, slinkys, musical instruments - a trip through your own childhood or your mother's. Back to Books, our cozy little book store, features our own cookbook, Classic Catfish, of course, as well as a great variety of books by Mississippi authors and artists. We moved The Crown into town a few years ago, when Taste of Gourmet, the Direct Selling company that we founded, needed more room for expansion in the country! We had learned at The Crown that putting a bite of Smoked Catfish Pate or Praline Pie or Delta Bisque into someone’s mouth was a “sure fire” way of selling him on the product – and that realization, in 1996, was the beginning of Taste of Gourmet. What a dream! Selling directly to the customer - taking a taste of the delicious foods we've created and produced, into homes and offices all over the country, and letting the customer savor our products at a Tasting, the perfect way to sell our delicious foods! We hope you'll come to Indianola to have lunch with us at The Crown! My mother will be there, making sure you feel welcome and maybe even have a taste fof what's new from the kitchen. She likes nothing more than having "fun in the kitchen" - that's what she and my dad call experimenting on a new recipe or a new product. Come see us! You'll feel welcome at The Crown, in our little town of the bayou and the blues! Oh, I forgot to tell you and I hope you already know that Indianola is the hometown of B.B.King, the King of the Blues. In September of 2008, Indianola opened the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center right downtown - just 3 blocks from The Crown. The Museum is a marvel and a Must See for all ages! Open Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm. Ya'll come to Indianola! We look forward to inviting you into The Crown! If you can't make it to Indianola, just order some of scrumptious goodies on this website or attend a Tasting hosted by one of our Consultants. We feel that every Tasting is an extension of our own home and kitchen, and we welcome you to share our hospitality! Jennifer Roughton Schaumburg
Home of Taste of Gourmet 662-887-4522 We invite you all to visit Indianola, our beautiful little town on Indian Bayou, and join us for lunch at The Crown! We are open Tuesday through Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm, serving lunch from 11 am to 3 pm. If you can't make it in time for lunch, you can always stop by for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie, available all day! Wi-Fi is free at The Crown...so come by to do your work and enjoy our atmosphere! If you are part of a tour bus planning to visit The Delta, ask your organizer to call us. We take great care of tour groups for lunch! The Crown is filled with original art, classic children's toys, shelves of books about the Blues, the Delta, cookbooks, samples to nibble....so much to enjoy! Come see us soon, we'll be looking for you! |  |
For thirty-four amazing years we've served lunch at The Crown to wonderfully loyal customers and friends. The recipes we have created continue to become a part of Taste of Gourmet's "menu" of glorious foods. The Crown's guests are still our "taste testers," as we constantly experiment with flavors, creating new, exciting products that you can buy through this website and through Taste of Gourmet Consultants nationwide! The Crown has been host to the Food Network, Turner South, Southern Living, CNN, Travel Channel, Bon Appetit -so many other writers and journalists. 
I keep saying WE because it was, and still is, very much a family business. I was the little girl pushing that Dessert Cart from table to table on Saturdays and during the summers - serving slices of Fudge Pie and Plantation Pie and Lemon Pie. We still serve those same desserts, plus a few more from our Dessert Table at The Crown. Today those pies are also available in a Mix for you to take home and make for yourself!
