Jackson Free Press

When Gary Howard Jr. moved from New Orleans to Winona, Miss., he decided to bring a little bit of the culture of his home city back with him.

Howard Jr., 42, and his son Gary Howard III, 23, have been operating their family businesses, Small Time Hot Dogs and Small Time Street Eats, across Mississippi since 2012, when they moved from New Orleans to Winona after Howard Jr.'s mother, Vickie, who lived in Winona with his father, Gary Howard Sr., fell ill in late 2011. Howard Jr. was the first to move out to Winona, and he decided to start selling New Orleans-style food-cart hot dogs. Gary Howard III joined his father at the new business around eight months later.

"Growing up in New Orleans, you see tons of Lucky Dog and other hot-dog stands (and tamale stands) everywhere, and I just love them and couldn't find anything like that here when I moved," Howard Jr. says. "Any time I eat anything, I end up wondering how I can make into a hot dog, and I try and get my friends and family to try it, too. I saw a great market for something that offered that here in Mississippi."

Small Time Street Eats is a food truck, while Small Time Hot Dogs is a cart that can be towed behind a truck or pushed by hand. The operations share a menu, though the food truck offers additional items such as fried green tomatoes with homemade Cajun crawfish sauce, fried pickles with homemade ranch dressing, and daily specials such as crawfish sausage jambalaya, alligator sausage, seafood gumbo, fried Oreos and more.

The hot dog cart offers all-beef sausage and hot dogs, hickory-smoked pulled pork barbecue nachos and barbecue sandwiches, and specialty hot tamales that Mark Azlin, a Delta chef and friend of Howard Jr. who owned the Bourbon Mall restaurant in Bourbon, Miss., before it burned down in 2012, prepares. Customers can also try any of seven specialty gourmet dogs such as a Southern dog with slow-smoked pulled pork and coleslaw, a Ragin' Cajun dog with Cajun crawfish sauce, a Reuben dog with Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing, a buffalo-wing dog with wing sauce, blue cheese and celery salt, and a French onion dog with potato sticks and French onion dip.

"Not everything I've ever tried ended up being a hit, like this hummus dog that didn't go over very well for example," Howard Jr. says. "But other things, like this bacon and barbecued pineapple Hawaiian dog we made, people follow us around for stuff like that. ... At the end of the day, the important thing for us is that we love to serve and make people happy with what we make, and we've never given someone a hot dog and had them not smile back over it. It's more than just food for us; it's our life."

Since August 2015, the Howards have been making regular appearances at Fondren's First Thursday. They have also taken part in other events in the Jackson metro area, including Stray at Home this past May, and try to make an appearance in this area at least once a week. Small Time has permits to operate in nine counties throughout Mississippi, and the food cart and truck have managed to garner more than 10,000 fans across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Howard Jr. hopes to be able to upgrade all of his food carts into food trucks in the near future and is expanding into preparing exotic sausages such as rattlesnake and ostrich ones.

For more information, find Small Time Hot Dogs on Facebook and Instagram.