Madison resident Cloe Sumrall opened a fusion restaurant called Coco's Multi-Culti in Cultivation Food Hall in Jackson on Monday, May 17.

The menu at Coco's includes loaded hummus, miso ramen bowls, polish dogs, thai coconut soup, pork belly BLTs, shrimp rolls, turkey and pear paninis, blueberry grilled cheese, smoked salmon toast and more.

"I've loved working with food ever since my grandparents would let me join them in the kitchen as a kid, and I even have my own garden for growing fresh food and seasonal items," Sumrall says. "I've been following Cultivation Food Hall ever since it opened and wanted to bring something to it that had a southern flair along with flavors you might not ordinarily find in restaurants here."

Sumrall previously served as a member of the management team for Cultivation and worked as a cook at the food hall's Americana and Yo Mama's restaurants.

Coco's Multi-Culti is open Monday through Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and is closed on Sundays. For more information, call 601-487-5196 or visit cultivationfoodhall.com/cocos.

Ice's Corner Adds New Sushi and Poke Bowl Menu

Ice's Corner (376 Ridge Way, Flowood), a Flowood restaurant that specializes in rolled ice cream, smoothies and boba tea, recently expanded its offerings with a new sushi and poke bowl menu. With Poke Stop at Cultivation Food Hall temporarily closing while it moves to a new location, Ice's Corner will be one of few places for Jacksonians to enjoy poke bowls.

The new menu includes California rolls, smoked salmon rolls, crab salad rolls, eel rolls, tuna avocado rolls, shrimp masago rolls, maki rolls, nigiri, sashimi and more. Customers can also customize their own poke bowl, a type of sushi roll served in a bowl, with a choice of proteins, mix-ins, sauces, toppings and more for $13.50 per bowl.

Ice's Corner is open every day from noon to 8 p.m. For more information, call 601-321-9784 or find the restaurant on Facebook.

Mississippi Arts Commission Community Response Grants

The Mississippi Arts Commission recently gave grants to eight community organizations throughout the state as part of its competitive Community Response Grants project. MAC gave the funding to the communities so they could produce high-impact arts events and other projects adapted to the challenges of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a release from MAC says..

Organizations eligible to apply for grants included Mississippi-based non-profit organizations, municipalities, schools, libraries and other units of local government. MAC’s Community Response Grants provide up to $10,000 for the creation of arts-focused, socially distanced events such as public art, art exhibits or performances, significant arts-related virtual programming and arts-focused community visioning.

The winning organizations included The Arts in Bay St. Louis to produce “Wall to Wall,” a socially distanced public art festival in which artists paint murals on local businesses in Bay St. Louis; the City of Laurel to partner with the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art and Laurel Arts League to hire visual artists to paint city traffic boxes focused on telling the story of Laurel; Fred Carl Jr. Small Town Center in Starkville to partner with an elementary school to design an arts-focused outdoor learning environment and to produce a statewide toolkit to replicate the project; Friends of Thacker Mountain Radio in Oxford to produce an outdoor production of “Thacker, Live” radio show with Jim Dees and the Yalobushwhackers; Opera Mississippi in Jackson for the production of “Opera in the Air,” a series of five free pop-up concerts across the Jackson metro; Pike School of Art in McComb to produce the McComb Earth Day Festival, which will also promote the city’s new mural project and arts and entertainment district; Piney Woods Country Life School in Piney Woods to produce a concert featuring the Piney Woods School Choir and to produce a Summer Performance Arts Camp; and the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs to support an outdoor concert by Luther Dickenson inspired by Walter Anderson’s 3,000 square foot murals and to support a masterclass for high school students about the process.

For more information on MAC’s grants programs and other services, visit arts.ms.gov.