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ORAL HISTORY
Karen Pinkston, 4th Generation Owner and Cook
Lusco's
In 1933, Sicilian immigrants Charles and Marie Lusco opened a small grocery store. The store evolved into a restaurant that quickly gained a reputation as the place for the Delta gentry to get fresh fish, great steaks, and a dose of Charles Lusco’s homemade wine in the privacy of curtained booths. The fourth generation of Lusco’s, Andy Pinkston and his wife Karen, still make the same great food, in the same great building, and you can now bring your own bottle to drink from behind the same great curtained booths. Visiting Lusco’s is an experience like no other, for it holds within it a patina of age and an unusual array of artifacts, highlighting the uniqueness of the place and making it as much of a living history museum as it is a restaurant–a living history museum that also happens to serve great food. Its location is also part of its charm, for it has remained in a part of Greenwood that has seen far better days. But rest assured, when you visit Lusco’s you will be treated like family and leave with an experience to write home about. Look for Andy Pinkston’s name scrawled in the sidewalk out front, the framed tablecloth Willie Morris made his own, the vintage phone booth in the lobby that came from the old Klein & Blumenthal department store in Greenwood and the collection of photographs in the back hallway.