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ORAL HISTORY

Annie Isaiah

Isaiah's Busy Bee Cafe

Annie Isaiah is the daughter-in-law of the late Georgia Isaiah, who opened and operated Isaiah’s Busy Bee Cafe in Oxford from 1971 to the late 1990s. After marrying Georgia’s son, George Isaiah, Annie began helping Georgia with hosting and waiting tables. With only four or five tables in the small restaurant, most of the customers were regulars associated with the University of Mississippi.

Born in Oxford, Georgia spent thirty years cooking for two chancellors at the University of Mississippi. When she finally retired, she still had the urge to feed her friends and neighbors and opened her own cafe, Isaiah’s Busy Bee, on Christmas Eve 1971.

For the next twenty or so years, Georgia served a daily menu of a meat and two vegetables. She plucked vegetables from her garden, fried chicken, and baked pound cakes to the delight of the greater Oxford community.

Mrs. Isaiah is gone and so is her cafe, but memories of this woman and her glorious food still swim in many hearts and stomachs of her former regulars around this small college town.