Worth the drive: Part II

Georgia goes uptown with down-home cooking

BY JANE F. GARVEY

As a part of an ongoing series, this month we travel the state in search of the best down-home restaurants. Know of a great place to eat? See the sidebar below and contact us!

Down-home Southern food means different things to different people depending on what part of the South they’re living in. North Carolina still dotes on liver pudding, while she-crab soup defines South Carolina’s and Georgia’s “Low Country,” although the styles in each region are different. East Tennessee serves white kidney beans with catfish. And they’ve been known to do mutton barbecue around those parts.

Georgia has two main down-home cooking traditions, one defined by its Low Country coastline and focused on seafood, and the other more inclined to showcase the fruits of the land and rivers. Variations include fish with grits and sweet, deep-fried rock shrimp, both staples of Southeast Coastal Georgia, while apple bread depends on the fall bounty of North Georgia. Fried chicken and catfish, collard greens, and macaroni and cheese are everywhere, as are barbecue and cobbler.

Although fresh is typically best when it comes to vegetables, turning canned ingredients into great food is a skill that most Southern cooks possess. At the handsome Victorian Coleman House Inn in Swainsboro, Sunday dinner after church features superb fried chicken, freshly made by the personal hand of owner David Thurman. On one visit, the accompanying offerings included a casserole of canned asparagus and a blue cheese sauce, a dish originating with an aunt of David’s wife, Connie, who reports it does not turn out nearly as well if made with fresh asparagus. It was impossible to refrain from making repeat trips to that casserole. Reader Carolyn Brown of Swainsboro agrees with our assessment, and she, too, recommends the fried chicken.

Dublin’s Blue Plate Restaurant is also another good choice, featuring a positively yummy squash casserole, homemade yeast rolls, mac-and-cheese, and all their own pies. The fried chicken is a standout, and the commitment to good-quality ingredients and excellent service are several notches above the norm. The passion for doing it right is palpable. Suggested by readers Carol and Bill Smith of Dublin, they think the family reunion atmosphere and homemade desserts here are tops.

Seafood and fish are another fundamental in Southern cooking. At Mom & Nikki’s in Savannah, Nichol Bush produces a “Smothered Shrimp” dish that’s just stellar when she is able to obtain the freshly caught shrimp that a man brings to her from time to time. When they’re not available, she does use frozen, but agrees that the dish turns significantly distinctive when the fresh ones are used instead.

Along the coast, Barbara Jean’s, a seven-unit, family-run operation (with two in Georgia) that started out on St. Simons Island, draws huge crowds for the extensive menu of mostly Southern fare. Crab cakes and fried shrimp are standouts, but fried chicken with cream gravy and chicken-fried steak have passionate defenders. Even the breads are baked fresh daily. No wonder it’s often SRO (standing room only). A second location in Georgia is on Wilmington Island.

And Sunbury Crab Co. in Midway plates up a terrific platter of shrimp, crab and oysters, and the dinner view at sunset is worth the drive. Be sure to try their crab stew, too. The singular freshness of the seafood, combined with a gorgeous setting-sun view at suppertime, make this stop special indeed. The place looks old, but actually was built from scratch by the owners.

Southern food is so universal even immigrants get roped into it. Greeks coming to the South have done Southern for generations, notably at Evans Fine Foods in Decatur, whose staff is legendary for remembering regulars’ preferences, and The White House in Atlanta’s Buckhead, which mingles Greek down-home cooking with Southern. Anybody who attended the University of Georgia in the 1950s and 1960s remembers Tony’s, whose proprietor, Tony Galis, never lost his accent as he dished up fried chicken and other classics of the regional repertoire.

Now other immigrants are taking up the cause, including Korean-born Donnie Kim, who has launched four Donnie’s Country Cookin’ restaurants in Atlanta. He still owns the one on Clairmont Rd. at Interstate 85 and another near Stone Mountain. Rotisserie chicken, fried catfish and beautiful fresh vegetables are as down-home as it gets.

Below are a few of the great dishes we’ve encountered on this hunt for down-home cooking. Our contributors sometimes gave us recipes based on the concepts of “some” and “a pinch” of this or that, but all of these versions closely capture the essence of what the originals deliver in their respective establishments.

Jane F. Garvey is a freelance food, wine and travel writer from Decatur.

Where to eat

•  Barbara Jean’s, 214 Mallery St., St. Simons, (912) 634-6500; 138 Johnny Mercer Blvd., Wilmington Island, (912) 898-4424, www.barbara-jeans.com

•  The Blue Plate Restaurant, 116 S. Jefferson St., Dublin, (478) 296-1015

•  Coleman House Inn, 323 N. Main St., Swainsboro, (478) 237-9100, www.colemanhouseinn.com

•  Donnie’s Country Cookin’, 2922 Clairmont Rd. NE, Atlanta, (404) 728-1188; 5112 Highway 78, Stone Mountain, (770) 982-0779

•  Evans Fine Foods, 2125 N. Decatur Rd., Emory Commons, Decatur, (404) 634-6294

•  Mom & Nikki’s, 714 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Savannah, (912) 233-7636

•  Sunbury Crab Co., 541 Brigantine Dunmore Rd., Midway, (912) 884-8640, sunburycrabco.wp.net

•  White House, 3172 Peachtree Rd. NW, Peachtree Plaza, Atlanta, (404) 237-7601

What's your favorite?

Let us know about your favorite down-home restaurant in Georgia and the best thing to order from their menu!

E-mail nominations to georgiacooks@georgiaemc.com or mail to: GEORGIA Magazine, Attn: Down-Home Cooking, P.O. Box 1707, Tucker, GA 30085-1707. Please include the name, address and phone number of the restaurant you're nominating, along with your name, address, phone number and e-mail address.