Bearing Fruit at Big Apple Inn

Peeling back the layers of history gives this Mississippi café owner his purpose

Once a bustling epicenter of Black business and culture, Farish Street in Jackson, Mississippi, has seen its share of ups and downs—but through it all, Big Apple Inn has been a mainstay. The original was opened in 1939 by Juan Mora, who had arrived in Mississippi from Mexico earlier that decade to work for a railroad company—he found his place, instead, on Farish Street, selling tamales from a cart. Eventually he took over a brick-and-mortar space, which became a beloved gathering space where Freedom Riders and Civil Rights leaders occasionally converged alongside the neighborhood’s Black and immigrant residents. Activist Medgar Evers once rented an office above the café, and jazz musician Sonny Boy Williamson once lived upstairs. On the menu since opening have been the restaurant’s famed pig ear sliders and “smokes,” or smoked sausage sandwiches.

Geno Lee is the fourth-generation owner of Big Apple Inn, which moved to a building across the street in the 1950s and now includes a second location in North Jackson. And though Lee’s legacy is intertwined with the café, he traveled a winding road before claiming it.

“My mother was born in the Philippines, but her mother was very poor and couldn’t afford to raise her, so she put her up for adoption,” Lee explains. A Black chaplain, who was a major in the US Army, and his wife adopted Lee’s mother—due to his post, they traveled all over the world. Lee’s mother eventually landed in Jackson around the time of the Civil Rights protests and became an organizer, as well as a Freedom Rider—she was arrested several times because of it. When Lee was born in 1965, despite his father’s deep roots in Jackson, the couple had seen their share of violence and turmoil in the segregated South—the small family set out to live elsewhere, trying Missouri, where things weren’t much better, and eventually landing in Germany, where they worked as educators in an American school. 

“I grew up speaking German and traveling all over Europe,” Lee says. The family’s old green Volkswagen van took them to France, Holland, Spain, and beyond, where they’d spend several months each summer. “Everywhere we went my mother said, ‘We’ve got to try the cuisine here!’ We’d be sitting by the beach eating paella in Barcelona, doing cheese tastings in Holland, and sitting at back-alley restaurants in Paris. That’s where my interest in food really began, with her,” he says.  

Lee’s family returned to Jackson when he was in high school. He went on to seminary school but became disillusioned with the Catholic Church and later took a job in insurance and investments. It was around that time when his uncle, who had taken over the Big Apple Inn from his grandfather and great-grandfather, had a stroke. There was talk of closing the café until his grandfather approached Lee’s father (a school principal at the time) to take it over. 

“My dad came to me and said, ‘Can you help me run the restaurant?’ We both quit our jobs. He took the day shift; I took the night shift,” Lee says. “It was just a little hole in the wall but it was beloved by the community. We couldn’t let it go.”  

Since then, Lee has carried the torch, changing very little. The pig ears are made the same way, in a pressure cooker, and the sausage, which turns bright red when cooked, still comes from the Mississippi producer Red Rose. You’ll also find a burger, a hot dog, and a bologna sandwich on the menu, all for less than $3 each. And there are tamales by six or a dozen, a nod to Lee’s great-grandfather. With this simple list of options, Big Apple Inn remains a Mississippi institution.  

For Lee, sharing the legacy of his family, as well as the history of Farish Street and this corner of Jackson, has become as essential as slinging sandwiches. “Hearing the stories of the role this place played in the Civil Rights Movement, and of who came in and out of here—one day I just had an epiphany,” Lee says. “I started to tell the stories and the more I told them, the more I realized, that’s my role. That’s what I will continue to keep working on.”

Pig Ear Sandwiches + Homemade Hot Sauce

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