Say Dixie: Enjoy Every Sandwich

VALLEYWACKERS: R. C. Curtis and Moon Pie Curtis toast the bye week at the B.T.C Old-Fashioned Grocery in Water Valley.

Appreciating life at B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery.

When the late Warren Zevon was dying of cancer, he appeared on his old friend David Letterman’s show. Letterman asked him if knowledge of his imminent demise had taught him anything about life and death. Zevon answered that he’d learned how much you’re supposed to “enjoy every sandwich.”

I didn’t even need that sage advice to remind me to savor the sandwich I had today at the B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery in Water Valley.

I have come to discover that many of our readers are familiar with the B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery in Water Valley but many others still are not. The B.T.C., operated by husband and wife Kagan Coughlin and Alexe van Beuren, not only purveys a wide variety of locally sourced produce, breads, meats, and much more in the way of groceries, but also serves breakfast and made-to-order lunch in its back area, dubbed the Red Apron Cafe.

On a gorgeous day like today, it’s a no-brainer lunch trip from Oxford, satisfying the stomach before cruising Main Street’s art galleries. I went with the Say Dixie sandwich (pictured below, half eaten), an impressive combination of chicken breast, pimento cheese, and (crisp) Sriracha cole slaw, with bread-and-butter pickles on a ciabatta roll.

I ambled back home with all the wakefulness I could muster just in time to fall into a nap. Send lawyers, guns, and money.

The B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery is at 301 North Main Street in Water Valley.

— Tad Wilkes, tad.wilkes@hottytoddy.com

The Say Dixie sandwich at the B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery.