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1 5 1 Y E A R S YO U N G
Weidmann’s is Worth the Wait
A VACCINATED RETURN TO RESTAURANTS, STARTING WITH MISSISSIPPI’S OLDEST
By Chris Turner-Neal
H
ow I’ve missed restaurants. I am an enthusiastic eater but a middling cook, a problem I have solved by only dating men who cook well, excelling at conversation so that I am always invited to dinner parties, and going to restaurants, a three-pronged strategy that kept me happily fed until recently. In February I had it confirmed that I’d gotten a vaccine in a clinical trial, and immediately hopped in my car for a whirlwind solo road trip: I saw the Shiloh battlefield, the highest point in Mississippi, and, most coveted of all, the inside of a restaurant. Weidmann’s, a Meridian fixture and the oldest operating restaurant in Mississippi, marked my reentry into an actual indoor restaurant after my unhappy exile. I couldn’t have chosen better. Weidmann’s had been recommended to me by a friend whose former position as a civil-rights lawyer had involved a lot of crisscrossing the South and working up an appetite upholding the Constitution. Weidmann’s stood out as a favorite of the restaurants she’d explored, and her glowing reviews put it on the top of my list of places to visit when I
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got to Meridian. Well, I didn’t go that direction for a while, and then I couldn’t go that direction for a while, and all the while the idea of Weidmann’s blossomed in my mind. Established in 1870 by a Swiss immigrant, the restaurant is not only the oldest in Mississippi but among the oldest in the nation: Charles Frazier, the current operator, estimates that it’s among the thirty or forty most senior of the nation’s eateries. (For a bit of context, Weidmann’s is older than thirteen states). It’s existed in different buildings in Meridian and even decamped briefly to Hattiesburg to serve hungry soldiers mustering for World War II at Camp Shelby, but has flourished in downtown Meridian since 1923, welcoming visitors with a bold neon sign over the sidewalk. Frazier has helmed Weidmann’s since 2010, when the investment group that held the operation recruited him as an owner-operator. Mindful of the major spot the restaurant holds in the city’s psyche, but not a native himself, Frazier began his research, perusing old menus and talking to people who remembered Weirdmann’s from the fifties and sixties—and in a few cases, even longer ago. The previous operator
