'The Originals' of Mary Mac's Know the Secret to Longevity

In May on his new Cooking Channel show "The Originals," celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse is visiting historic restaurants around the country and looking into a question that nags the industry: why do some restaurants succeed 25, 50, even 75 years, while so many others fail?

Jo Carter and Flo Patrick, longtime workers at that Midtown mainstay, Mary Mac's Tea Room, already know the answer. It's about attention to detail and not cutting corners.

To illustrate her point, Carter talks about the time owner John Ferrell tried cooking with corn that arrived in the kitchen in big bags, kernels already sliced off the cob.

"People didn't buy it," said Carter, 72 years old and the restaurant's "goodwill ambassador," aka top hostess. "They know what they're coming for. If it ain't right, John don't want it out there."

After that, the kitchen went back to shucking corn by hand. In June, Mary Mac's celebrates 66 years of serving traditional Southern food and umpteen gallons of sweet tea, "the table wine of the South," all with passed-down recipes now collected in a cookbook. Mary Mac's will be one of the restaurants featured on Emeril's  "The Originals."

Carter and Patrick are some of the originals to the original. Patrick is 73 years old and has waited tables at Mary Mac's since her mother, a server for 15 years at the restaurant, got her a job there in 1973. She's been at the restaurant longer than any other employee.

"I've waited on people and I've waited on their children, and their children," she said. "Been invited to their weddings."

Carter retired from Mary Mac's in 2004 after more than 10 years as a server and moved home to West Virginia. Ferrell, the owner, convinced her to come back. She did, moving back to Midtown near the corner of 5th Street and Myrtle Street. Ferrell even created the Goodwill Ambassador position special for her -- "to check up on the people, find out where they're from, rub their backs and whatever you wanna do," she remembers him telling her.

She took him literally, and now her backrubs are the stuff of Mary Mac legend.

"After I do that, they just fall in love with me. Just like a lady today, she said, 'Don't you pass me by! I've got a crick in my neck and one in my back.' This is a good job for me, and I love it," Carter said.

A minister from Wisconsin once told her she had "healing hands," but maybe it's the other way around: she credits her back-rubbing with helping to shrink her swollen knuckles, which had been feverish with rheumatoid arthritis.

"I went home one day from work, took a shower. And I was putting lotion on my hands and I look down -- my hands were normal!"

Carter and Patrick can tick off a few celebrities that have eaten at Mary Mac's. Off the top of their heads, on a recent afternoon, they named actor Richard Gere, "American Idol" winner Taylor Hicks, the president of Romania, senators, football players and '70s disco-funk stars from KC & the Sunshine Band (Carter laughs when she remembers how the band took a photo with her, and she didn't even know who they were).

Clearly, celebrity doesn't mean much to them, which might explain why celebrities flock to the restaurant -- to get the same warm, down-home treatment as everybody else. Being a people person is key to enjoying the work. All kinds of people. It's those stories that get Carter and Patrick talking and laughing.

One time, a guy came in with a stack of Elvis Presley photos and spread them out all over his table. Then, he stood up and dropped his pants.

"Butt naked," Patrick whispered. Some elderly ladies at a nearby table looked over, she said, and started screaming.

"He was a streaker," Carter explained.

Even if excitement like that doesn't come around too often, no matter. It's the daily stream of people in and out of the restaurant that keeps Carter and Patrick committed to working at Mary Mac's until they physically can't do it anymore.

"When you like people, you have to be around people. I love making people smile, I love making people laugh. You make their day," Carter said.