Cooper Miller was a picky eater as a kid—he didn’t know much about food and didn’t care much either. Then his family took a trip to Breckenridge, Colorado, and everything changed at the Briar Rose Steakhouse.
One of his dad’s friends ordered escargot. Cooper remembers thinking, “What in the world is this?” A dare made him try it, and guess what? He loved it.
“It opened my eyes and my horizons to be more adventurous,” Cooper says.
He never thought food would become a career… the original plan was to manage hotels on some exotic island. But reality kicked in, and off he went to Mississippi State to study business management for *checks notes* six years.
“At one point, my advisor looked at me and said, ‘Graduate, or go home,’” he laughs.
His college buddies were waiting tables at a restaurant in West Point, so Cooper joined them as a dishwasher. When the fry guy got sick, he took over—and got his butt kicked.
“They would pack 400 people in there, and all the apps were tiny things that had to be fried individually,” Cooper says. “I made it through, had a good time doing it.”
He noticed the camaraderie. Different groups of people working toward a common goal, then having a beer and laughing about it afterward. “Something about that madness—I might be a little mad—attracted me,” he says.
He applied for a line cook job in Starkville. They offered him the executive chef position.
“I had no business taking it, but I did,” he says. “I realized it could be an actual career. I realized I needed to go to culinary school because I had no clue what I was doing.”
So he graduated in 2005 with a bachelor’s in business management. Afterwards, his wife started applying to culinary schools for him without telling him. Next thing he knew, acceptance letters were coming in from all over the country.
“I’m an only child and a momma’s boy,” Cooper says. “Atlanta was the closest one.”
Le Cordon Bleu in Atlanta was intense—he’d start at six o’clock every morning, lined up with his shirt pressed and shoes shined. He likens it to the military: If you didn’t have all your stuff, they sent you home.
He graduated summa cum laude, top of his class. (Couldn’t graduate State to save his life, but Le Cordon Bleu? No problem.)
Cooper stayed in Atlanta about a decade and worked all over the place with some really cool chefs—James Beard guys, a stint with Richard Blais at Food Network, Ford Fry, King and Duke, JCT Kitchen, and the Georgian Terrace Hotel, when they reopened it around 2010, right across from the Fox Theatre.
“I worked with a lot of badass chefs and really tried to absorb anything I could from any of them,” Cooper says. “They were all different but all super talented. I soaked it up and learned from the best.”
He didn’t want to leave and didn’t think he ever would, but then he had a daughter. “I wanted her to be around family and cousins and grandparents.”
So home to Mississippi, he went. When Cooper moved back, he worked at another restaurant in downtown Tupelo. Forklift had opened a couple of years earlier, and when he was walking around the neighborhood one night, he liked the decor—it reminded him of the restaurants in Atlanta with that modern industrial look.
He went in and had one of the worst experiences he’d ever had in a restaurant.
A lightbulb went off. “I just found my next project,” Cooper thought.
He did some digging, found the owners, and gave them a call. They thought he was crazy.
“I said, ‘Hey man, I’m going to save your restaurant,’ and they said, ‘Who the hell are you?'”
That was eight years ago. Taking over Forklift was an undertaking, but Cooper set his standards high from the get-go and decided they weren’t going to be like everyone else. The goal: unique spins on Southern, French, and Creole classics but with a little twist. He wanted a super casual atmosphere with super good food.
“People still want to eat good but don’t always want to get gussied up and all that to-do,” Cooper says. “We encourage people to come in flip-flops.”
The seafood program at Forklift is top-notch. Cooper hand-picks fish and oysters three times a week—Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Stuff from Alabama, Mississippi’s Great Holy Ground Oysters. He keeps the mix fresh: amberjack, redfish, grouper, snapper, rockfish. They dry-age all their beef in-house up to three weeks.
But the best seller? The patty melt.
“You might think, ‘Patty melt? What in the world?’” Cooper says. “I said if we’re making a patty melt, we’re going to make the best patty melt.”
It’s got sourdough bread, a big 10-ounce patty smashed on the grill, an exotic mushroom mix, caramelized onions, a big slice of tomato, and melty Swiss cheese.
“It’s just to die for,” Cooper says.
He wants everyone to rave about the steak or the fish, but nine times out of 10, people on the street say they love the patty melt. “It’s what pays the bills,” Cooper says. “It lets me keep the high-end fish and steaks.”
Other staples include the short rib, shrimp and grits, and the fried chicken. “It’s the South on a plate,” Cooper says. “Greens and yams and cornbread and fried chicken.”
In 2022, Cooper won the Mississippi Seafood Cook-Off and earned the title of Mississippi’s Seafood King. Not bad for a kid who used to be a picky eater.
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| This article is presented in partnership with Tupelo CVB, a Modern South Founding Partner.
