Delta immigrant’s Hoover sauce is a taste of two cultures

Sunday, November 25, 2012

— Between Inverness and Belzoni on U.S. 49 in the Mississippi Delta there is a sign that says turn this way for Midnight and Louise.

My wife didn’t share the level of mystery I sensed in the pairing of those names — suggesting a romance, a song, a poem — as we passed the turnoff time and again on our way to see our daughter in Madison. Finally I got my chance. I was driving back to Little Rock by myself. I was the master of my schedule.

I turned onto Old 49 and the magnitude of fields of cotton and soybeans enveloped me. I was in Africa and this was the veldt.

Across the street from the only store in Midnight, a mural the size of a pingpong table affixed to the front of a vacant metal building welcomes visitors. In the top left part of the sky-blue picture hangs a yellow crescent moon. A small galaxy of stars floats in the top right. The land is depicted as almost an afterthought — a thin black line broken by a few trees — in direct disproportion to its economic value, but perfectly proportionate to the flatness of the Delta and the vastness of the heavens.

That about says it all, except for the name.

In the early part of the 20th century, a plantation owner put up some of his land when he ran out of money in a poker game. He lost and the winner said, “Well, it’s Midnight and that’s it.” And it is to this day.

Wrapped in somnolence, Louise, while much bigger than Midnight, is what you might expect of an isolated town of 300 in these parts. Long gone are the days when battalions of field hands worked cotton and supported the stores on the main drag, nearly all of which are vacant or serve as plantation offices.

My wife, Jill, soon proved there can’t be more than three degrees of separation in Mississippi.

The next day she was browsing at Carter Louise Antiques in Ridgeland, 60 miles from Louise and in the shadow of Jackson. Owner Eloise Smith has lived in Louise for 42 years.

Jill picked up a Kerr Mason jar filled with a concoction the color of sorghum molasses. On the front was a small white sticker, slightly akilter, that said that the contents are made in Louise by the Lee Hong Co.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Don’t you know about Hoover Sauce?” Eloise replied in mock astonishment. Honey, you must not be from around here.

My wife surprised me with a quart of the sauce when we reunited. On the back, on the same-size white sticker, was the list of ingredients. The first one is soy — Far East meets Deep South — followed by certain flavorings and preservatives, and unspecif ied spices. Price: $17.50.

Hoover Lee was born in a village near Canton, China, in 1934, son of Lee Hong, who gave him an American name. It was taken from the SS President Hoover, which carried the family across the Pacific to San Francisco, where Lee Hong worked off the price of their passage. He intended that they live in Chicago, but he paid a visit to Mississippi to see a cousin in Clarksdale. He took a job doing menial tasks in a store owned by another Chinese man, a Mister Lu, who saw promise in the young immigrant.

Mister Lu knew of a countryman who lived a hundred miles south of Clarksdale pining for the homeland. “Pop and Mister Lu caught a train to Silver City. And from Silver City they hired someone with a mule and wagon and came that nine miles into Louise,” Lee said.

“The fella that had the store, I imagine he was happy to see a coupla Chinese. They been a hundred miles and hadn’t seen any Chinese at all,” Hoover said with a chuckle. “The man said, ‘Lee, you pay the drummer what I owe’ — in those days they called the salesmen drummers because they be trying to drum up some business — ‘you pay the rent on the business and the store is yours.’” Lee Hong bought the store and started putting down roots in the foreign soil.

Hoover Lee has mastered the intricacies of the Delta dialect, which must be as complex as Cantonese. There is not a hint of his origins in his speech.

He says he and his wife, Freeda, have three “cheeren.” Two sons, Stanley, 54, and Timothy, 42, run the grocery; his daughter, Shari, 50, works for a car dealership in Jackson. Hoover and his cheeren are graduates of Mississippi State University. Freeda is an alumna of Mississippi University for Women.

Hoover mixes, cooks and decants the sauce. “I’m steady making Hoover Sauce, yessir,” he says. The couple and their sons live behind the store.

Launching into how he created the sauce, he said, “I like Cantonese roasted duck, and, being in Mississippi, the Chinese ingredient [wasn’t] readily available like it is today,” Lee explained. “I just experimented with it. I haven’t got exactly that taste but I got the taste that was good for me.”

Lee was first elected an alderman, then mayor. He attended monthly cookouts at the volunteer fire department, which is where demand for the sauce started with a slow boil.

That was back in the 1970s. Since then, he says he hasn’t really kept up with sales figures, although he has shipped it to Canada and England. Closer to home, it’s used at two Cock of the Walk restaurants, one in Maumelle, the other in Nashville, Tenn.

More fitting, perhaps, given the sauce’s raison d’etre, the Veranda restaurant in Starkville, Miss., puts it on its “Crispy Duck” entree.

Louise is smack in the middle of the Mississippi Flyway, a duck hunter’s paradise. Still, it’s hard to imagine good ole boys swapping Peking, or Cantonese, duck recipes.

But Google it and you’ll find the sauce in a range of applications, such as a breast of dove marinade, drizzled over boudin-stuffed mushrooms, or used in grilled campground shrimp.

We don’t talk duck or eat it at our house, but our consumption of steak has gone up considerably since we bought the sauce, which I ladle sparingly over my meat.

For me this sauce has a perfect balance between salty and sweet, my two gustatory poles. It achieves a harmonious chemistry that is found in all culinary successes.

But don’t take my word for it. Liz Welch, author of a 2008 Bon Appetit article titled “Mississippi Foodie Road Trip,” recounts making it a point to swing by Louise like a Delta hummingbird and pick up some of the nectar.

Asked what are his plans for his creation after he’s gone, Hoover, 78, plays it close to the vest. He says only that “I’m gonna get all that squared away.”

He does say there’s a good chance you’ll never see it on the shelves of the major retailers — which like to squeeze vendors in return for the chance of hitting it big, maybe real big.

After all, he has already created a niche in Southern cuisine by simply carrying on a Chinese tradition.

If you have a tip, call Jack Weatherly at (501) 378-3518 or e-mail him at

[email protected]

Business, Pages 67 on 11/25/2012