A Taste of Savannah

We wanted to take Denisa's Mother to some iconic restaurants while she was visiting us in Savannah. We had already eaten at Paula Deen's "The Lady and Sons" restaurant on our first day in Savannah, and wrote about it in an earlier blog. But we had been told about an even more exclusive place to eat that was recommended more than once. Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding House and Restaurant has a great reputation, and we just had to try it. They are only open from 11:00-2:00 on Monday through Friday for lunch. The line begins to form around 10:00, so when we got there around 11:00 we were at the end of the line at the end of the street.

They seat ten people at a time, at community tables. So that very long line moved up by ten for the next ninety minutes as we waited. We were glad that the sidewalk was in the shade, and Betty found a place to sit down! The good news is that ninety minutes gave us plenty of time to meet the people in the line around us, because they would be sharing our dining table. Besides the three of us from Oklahoma, we also had California, Florida, and Indiana represented at our lunch. Once inside, our table was already filled with our food when we sat down. We had generous dishes filled with fried chicken, barbecue pork, and beef stew for entrees. But the table was really crowded because we also had 21 different side dishes--mashed potatoes, cream corn, black eyed peas, rice, brown gravy, rutabaga, squash, cabbage, okra and tomatoes, macaroni salad, sweet yams, collard greens, corn bread, green beans, red rice, potato salad, biscuits, baked beans, cucumber and tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, butter beans, and all the sweet tea we could drink.

Mrs. Wilkes's granddaughter came by our table while we were eating. It was interesting to find out that they feed between 200 and 300 people for lunch five days each week. Every single one of our dishes tasted just right, and we ate entirely too much. Denisa asked each one of our table mates what their favorite side dish had been, and each one picked something different. To top it all off, we were treated to banana pudding or peach cobbler for dessert. It was a feast of monumental proportions, and worth the ninety minutes we waited outside.

On another day (after we had some time to recover from that meal), we went to the Saturday morning farmers' market in Forsyth park. This is the largest of the historical squares in downtown Savannah that we visited earlier. Forsyth Park now was decked out with baked goods, and some of the most beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables.

We thought this was an interesting concept--mushrooms in a bag. The bags are filled with all the ingredients necessary to produce fresh mushrooms in a shady kitchen for the next three weeks. It looked like a science fair project just waiting to happen.

After staying with us for five days now, we have driven Denisa's teetotaler Mother to drink. It looks like she is hitting the bottle for a cold one in Forsyth Park. Actually, if you read the sign on the left carefully, it says she is drinking cold brewed coffee.  We didn't make room in the motor home for a coffee maker since we aren't coffee drinkers ourselves. So our guests have to find coffee any way they can.

Besides cold brewed coffee, we made a great haul of just-picked or just-baked goodies at the Farmer's Market. We found some of the first peaches of the season, and strawberries that were juicy red all the way through. We tried a new version of summer squash--summer ball, Georgia pecans, and a loaf of spinach focaccia bread. But Denisa's favorite purchase was something only available for a few weeks each year--fresh spring peas. We bought out that farmer's entire inventory this week!

No pictures, but we also bought some boiled peanuts while we were in Savannah. We've been eating these ever since Alabama, but we wanted Denisa's Mother to try them. She had eaten "parched peanuts" over 60 years ago, so this was renewing a very old food memory for her.

At the advice of our friends that lived in Savannah for over 20 years, we also ate sea food at their local favorite--Carey Hilliard's and Japanese food at Sakura's. As we ate our way across Savannah, we finally got back to the motor home one day before closing time at the nature center at Skidaway State Park. On our last day in Savannah, we got to see the replica of the giant sloth skeleton that was found in this area. The original skeleton is in Washington DC at the Smithsonian, but an old science teacher like Betty was glad to see the full-scale size of its replica. We know that a giant sloth doesn't match "A Taste of Savannah" heading of this blog, but we couldn't leave him out. This is our last day in Savannah, and we're heading down the road to more adventures!