Elvie’s has Chef Hunter Evans in charge of the kitchen. He was a finalist for the 2024 James Beard Best Chef South award (a semi-finalist in 2025). With his partner Cody McCain, they opened Elvie’s in 2020 and the Mayflower Cafe in 2025. Elvie’s served seasonal cuisine highlighting local farmers and fishermen. The building was a restored home in Belhaven and the food was highly influenced by by the Evans’s grandmother, Elvieretta Good, from New Orleans. The good-sized place was longer than wide with counter seating at the bar and bench seating opposite small 2-tops along the wall. Parking was on the street or there was a free lot down the hill behind the building. The room was not highly decorated with dark wood windows breaking up the off-white walls. Lots of light fixtures but the overall room was still fairly dim with a good amount of crowd noise. They’d tried to dampen this with sound panels on the ceiling and cloths on some tables but it still can be noisy when full. Part of the kitchen was exposed but most hidden by the counter and walls. With a full bar it was surprising how limited the wine list was, offering mosly low or high price point bottles. Of course the first wine we picked our server couldn’t find and so we ended up just buying by the glass, which all added to the time the meal took. It was easily over 45 minutes to get our first glass let alone food. I liked the concept and the menu read well but the food was mixed. We were there for dinner but they are open Tues through Sat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Set-up
Food
The Jumbo shrimp cocktail came with housemade cocktail sauce. Six large over-cooked shrimp were hung on the bowl of cocktail sauce. Their exteriors were quite dry which seemed like they had sat around for awhile. Even so they were fine with the tasty sauce. A couple saltines sprinkled with paprika were also on the plate if you needed a way to eat more sauce, but overall they were a disappointment.
Oysters Elveretta was made with artichoke, parmesan, and bacon then topped with a piece of French bread. Named for Chef Evans grandmother it was a soupy thing that should have had a spoon to serve it. The varying oyster size also would have benefited from cutting them. Nevertheless it was a tasty mess and good to dip the toasted bread into.
Redfish Almondine was covered with almonds and capers in a sauce of Georgia brown butter, charred lemon, and parsley. The fish was sitting on a pile of buttered lettuce. It was good but the amount of lettuce was too one-dimensional and disproportionate to the fish size.
Grilled Amberjack was served with a sauce ivoire beside roasted local cabbage topped with citrus. The good sized piece of amberjack was nicely meaty and much better with the sauce, which came in a pitcher so you could add as much as you wanted. It was a great sauce, in that it didn’t overpower the nice taste of the fish. The roasted cabbage was nicely done and blended well with the sauce and orange sections. This was a good plate.
Salted caramel and chocolate brownie was topped with sea salt, vanilla ice cream and benne seed crumble. The crumble was what made this dessert stand out from other similar ones. The crumble had a toffee-like effect which was great with the ice cream and brownie. The crispness was perfect with the dense smooth ice cream and the rich caramel sauce. A standard dessert made outstanding by a simple additon.
If the saltines had been butter-baked, they would have been a treat! We tried to go there when we did our MS state capital walk, but the line was daunting.
The years have not been kind to Jackson.
Oh indeed they would have been! I got what I thought were fried but they could have been butter baked saltines and they were amazing. I remember liking them as much as what they came with. It might have helped those large dry shrimp – wondered how long they’d been sitting uncovered in the refrigeration unit.