A Biloxi restaurant sends John Grisham gumbo every Christmas. How’d the tradition start?
He usually calls to thank Bobby Mahoney for the seafood that arrives each Christmas from Biloxi, but this year celebrity author John Grisham sent him a story.
The tradition of sending seafood for Christmas began more than 20 years ago, “Probably since ‘The Runaway Jury’ was printed,” Mahoney said.
Grisham released that book in 1996, and every year since Mahoney fills a holiday cooler with Gulf Coast seafood from Mary Mahoney’s restaurant in Biloxi. He packs it with shrimp and house specialties like crawfish etouffee and oyster stew, and always with the restaurant’s famed gumbo.
UPS or Fed Ex delivers it to Grisham in rural Virginia in two days.
“It’s just something we do,” Mahoney said; an enduring “thank you” to Grisham for including Mary Mahoney’s in two of his books, “The Runaway Jury” and “Partner,” released a year later in 1997.
“Every year he sends me a new book,” Mahoney said. “I’ve got about 20 or 30 books,” he said, each signed by Grisham with messages like “Bob Mahoney — My family thanks you again and again for the Christmas care package. Ho! Ho!”
This year Grisham sent Mahoney a Christmas story he wrote and read at his church.
“Our minister loves books and reading, and each year he puts together a Christmas reading night that has all manner of old and new stuff,” Grisham said in the typed letter to Mahoney.
A taste for Cajun
Mahoney was so delighted, he posted the letter and one page of the story on Facebook.
With all the autographed Grisham novels on his shelf, Mahoney said, this short story is a personal treasure.
Grisham describes growing up in a family of hungry boys with a mother who wasn’t an inspired cook. The family moved for one delicious year to Cajun country in southern Louisiana, he wrote, where a friend’s mother introduced him to shrimp and chicken gumbo with andouille sausage.
Like a pot of gumbo, Grisham added ingredients to his story. He told about the red beans and rice, the next thing Miss Claire cooked for him, along with jambayala and her incredible fried oyster po-boys.
College at Mississippi State introduced him to friends from South Mississippi, Grisham said. “We roamed the oyster bars and po-boy shacks along the Gulf Coast, and they rekindled my love for the cuisine,” he wrote.
After graduating from Ole Miss law school, Grisham practiced in the Jackson area and served as a state representative before becoming a full-time author.
His South Mississippi ties remain strong. He collaborated on about four books with the late Will Denton, a trial attorney from Biloxi who took on the insurance companies. Grisham returned to Biloxi in 2004 to deliver the eulogy when Denton died, said Denton’s wife, Lucy Denton.
The next year, when she lost everything to Hurricane Katrina, Grisham offered her a place to live. She also has a stack of signed Grisham books since then. He didn’t just help people he knew — the author’s Rebuild The Coast Fund raised $8.8 million for Gulf Coast relief following Katrina.
‘Christmas Gumbo’
Grisham set two novels on the Mississippi Coast, “. . . and in doing so discovered my favorite restaurant, Mary Mahoney’s Old French House, the oldest restaurant in Biloxi,” Grisham wrote in his story.
Mahoney recalls Grisham asking him, “Would you mind being in the book?” before including the restaurant in “Runaway Jury.”
Mahoney, known as a skilled poker player and whose new sideline is raising race horses, chuckles as he recalls telling Grisham he didn’t mind.
For Mahoney, his menu lists which dishes made it into the books. A plaque with excerpts from both novels hangs on the wall of the restaurant, along with photos of the many celebrities who have dined there.
For Grisham, his short story tells how a Cajun and creole care package from Bobby Mahoney is delivered each Dec. 23.
“Its arrival is greatly anticipated around our house, and if Fed Ex is running late the entire Grisham clan goes into panic,” he wrote.
For more than 20 years, the family has followed the same ritual, he said. His wife Renee unpacks the gumbo, puts it in a pot and turns the burner on low before they “hustle” to church for the Christmas Eve service.
“Christmas Gumbo” is the title of the story and Grisham finishes it with: “And while we worship, and celebrate the birth of our savior, and sing carols, and spread glad tidings of great joy, and hark the herald, somewhere in the deep recesses of our minds during those cherished moments we can almost smell the Christmas gumbo.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
