Former waitress Susie reopens Annex restaurant in Pascagoula

PASCAGOULA -- You can have breakfast any time. They don't even make a big deal about it.

This is the Annex restaurant, an iconic diner in the Pascagoula landscape for decades.

It's on the corner of Pascagoula Street and U.S. 90. And it has reopened under new management -- well, mostly new.

Susie Boykin has been around for awhile so calling her new sounds odd.

She knows the customers; she knows the business.

She had been a waitress at the Annex for a short time back when Sylvia owned it. It was Sylvia's Annex for 42 years, until Katrina.

Then after the storm, Sylvia sold it. It has had at least five owner/managers since then, some of them former waitresses.

Now it's Susie's Annex.

It has been open for a week and Sylvia has already been back to check it out.

Susie explained it this way: "It's like her baby. She raised it up and wants it to thrive."

Through successive owners, if there's been a complaint, "all the old customers call Sylvia, like she can fix it," Susie said. "She's hoping I'll do good."

Susie plans on it. She has help from her son Corey Boykin, who manages a restaurant at one of the casinos, and she has good cooks, she said, at least one of them she got from the truck stops.

Susie knows what works for the Annex. The customers are generational -- people who have come all their lives and brought their children, who bring their children.

"This is a money-maker if you have good food and you open when you're supposed to," she said. Her hours are 5 a.m. to 2 p.m.

She won't put on a dinner shift until she knows the restaurant will support it. It's better not to add hours too soon, she said, because if she does and has to cut back, "people will say 'don't go down there, you never know when they're open.'"

Watching the progress

She bought the business in October. Her favorite aspect of it is the people.

They stopped regularly last month, when she had it closed for cleaning out. The whole inside got an overhaul -- tables and booths were spray washed, walls painted.

While that was going on, people stopped to ask when she was going to open, checking to see how she was coming along.

That included a couple from Vancleave who were eager to eat their 50th wedding anniversary meal at the Annex when Susie reopened, "because when they got married, this is where he brought her to eat after the service."

Susie stopped the interview with the Sun Herald to say: "I need to say something about my friend, Linda Couch Cousins, who has come here five times from Panama City to help us get ready," she said. Linda and Susie have been friends since birth, born 30 minutes apart at Singing River Hospital 51 years ago.

"This is really what she's always wanted to do," Susie said. "It's her dream."

'I did without'

Workers from all walks of life flock in at noon. Susie calls some of them by name. Even if she doesn't know their names, she knows their faces and will sit at a table and visit.

An insurance man takes his usual table in the back corner. Danny, who owns the health-food store, orders a midday breakfast at a front table.

In the back room, Raymond Langford has a table to himself. He retired and now drives a school bus.

He's been coming to the Annex "a long time," and was glad to see it reopen.

What did he do when it was closed?

"I did without," he said.

What's his favorite food?

"Whatever they have for lunch."

Susie sat with him for a few minutes. He had a big salad in front of him that he hadn't started on yet.

She could be overheard saying, "Why didn't you order breakfast? You can always get breakfast."

This story was originally published December 8, 2015 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Former waitress Susie reopens Annex restaurant in Pascagoula ."