Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [115]
A tip of our hats to Roadfooder Anne Peck, who clued us in to Len Berg’s, which has been Macon’s favorite downtown lunchroom since 1908. If we were to make a list of those restaurants that epitomize the glory of café lunch in Dixie, Len Berg’s would be at the top—a great place to eat a civilized, inexpensive, and delicious southern meal.
The menu varies daily and as vegetables come in and out of season, but you can count on fried chicken with steamed cabbage and stewed apples on the side, meat loaf with mashed potatoes and a heap of likker-sopped turnip greens, shrimp Creole on rice with hamhock-flavored snap beans, creamed corn, and bright hunks of flavorful garden tomato. Every meal comes with warm yeast rolls and corn sticks.
For dessert, the macaroon pie can’t be beat, and there is bright, sweet strawberry shortcake, but if you come anytime after June 1, there is only one proper way to end a meal—with Len Berg’s fresh peach ice cream. Every summer, Macon citizens watch the newspaper for a small advertisement that says simply, “H.M.F.P.I.C. You know where.” Translated, that means, “Home Made Fresh Peach Ice Cream”…and everyone who likes to eat for miles around does know exactly where.
Please note that the original Len Berg’s is open only for lunch. A newer, take-out restaurant with the same good food (but without the vintage charm of the little dining rooms and white-coated waiters) is at 2395 Ingleside Avenue, and is open from 11:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M., Monday through Saturday.
Love’s Seafood
6817 Basin Rd.
912–925–3616
Savannah, GA
D | $$
Overlooking the Ogeechee River south of the city, Love’s has been a destination for catfish lovers for some sixty years. It’s been remodeled and expanded into a big, comfortable family restaurant with an especially inviting glass-enclosed porch with a dramatic sunset view.
The menu is huge, ranging from appetizers of alligator fingers and terrific calamari, crawfish étouffée and seafood gumbo, to steaks and seafood platters of all kinds, but it is catfish that’s the big draw. For under $20, you can get an all-you-can-eat platter that is sweet and fresh and moist inside a crisp gold crust. It comes with potatoes, rice or grits, vegetables, and big steamy hush puppies. If you’re here with a date who also has a big appetite, Love’s offers a Captain’s Platter for Two. That includes catfish and adds flounder, shrimp, oysters, scallops, and crab balls.
Warning: If you are impatient and want to eat on a weekend night, Love’s can be a problem. A wait for a table of thirty minutes or more is not uncommon. Such is the price of success.
Mamie’s Kitchen
1294 S. Main St. NE
770–922–0131
Conyers, GA
BL | $
Jack Howard started in the biscuit business in 1962 when he opened a small eat-shack in an industrial section of Atlanta. Named for a skillful cook he then employed who was able to fry sixty dozen eggs in a morning, Mamie’s Kitchen has since expanded to four locations east of the city. “In the early days, I used to go to the mountains and buy big cakes of butter from the farmers,” Jack recalls. “I brought jars of preserves they made and put them on my tables. My slogan was, ‘I am rolling in dough.’”
When we ask Jack to explain why his biscuits are so good, he says, “We don’t roll them with a rolling pin; we don’t cut them with a can; we don’t make them from a recipe.” He lifts a hot one off its paper plate and cups it in one hand, using a deft twist of his other hand to separate its top and raise it like he’s a Tiffany jeweler showing what’s inside a ring box. A buttermilk-scented cloud of steam wafts up. “This is what you call a ‘scratch biscuit,’” he continues. “It is made from nothing but White Lily flour, buttermilk, and lard. Pure, refined lard,” he emphasizes. “Enough of each goes into a big bowl where your biscuit maker kneads the dough, but not too much. She knows when to pull one off, pat it out, and put it in the pan.” Six days a week, 1,500 to 2,000 biscuits are made this way at Mamie’s Kitchen of Conyers, from before the doors open at 5:30 A.M.