Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [116]
Any time you order a biscuit at Mamie’s, it comes hot from the oven. Its knobby golden surface has a gentle crunch, and although the inside is fleecy, it is not fragile. While it is delicious plain or simply buttered, you can also get it topped with sausage gravy or sandwiching streak o’ lean or fried chicken. Its greatest glory is to be pulled into two circular, gold-topped halves so it can sandwich a slice or two of deliriously flavorful country ham grilled until its rim of fat becomes translucent amber and the brick-red surface starts to turn crisp. The power of the ham—its complexity, its salty punch, its rugged chewy texture—is perfectly complemented by the fluffy biscuit around it.
Mary Mac’s Tea Room
224 Ponce de Leon Ave.
404–876–1800
Atlanta, GA
LD | $$
We lifted a fried chicken breast off the plate and bit into it. As the crust crunched, juices spurted everywhere. Full-flavored, inside and out, dark meat or white, this just might be the best fried chicken in the South.
Mary Mac’s Tea Room inspires superlatives. Originally opened in 1945, it is an old-fashioned urban lunchroom in the heart of Atlanta that offers a broad menu of dishes that exemplify Dixie cooking at its best. You can start your meal with a bowl of pot likker—that’s heaps of soft turnip greens wallowing in their flavorful cooking liquid—sided by a corn bread muffin. Entrees include such classics as baked chicken with cornbread dressing, pork barbecue with Brunswick stew, and country-fried steak with gravy.
The list of side dishes is a joy unto itself; many customers come to eat a four-vegetable plate with no meat at all. Stand-outs include a sweet potato soufflé that is spiced Christmas-sweet, macaroni and cheese in which the noodles are suspended in an eggy cheese soufflé, fried green tomatoes, hoppin’ John, and crisp-fried okra.
An airy place with soothing pastel yellow walls and tables covered with white oilcloth, Mary Mac’s offers old-style tea room service, which is great fun. When you sit down, you are given an order pad and menus. Once you’ve made your decisions, you write your own order and hand it to your waiter or waitress, who, in the meanwhile, has brought you an immense tankard of what the menu lists as the table wine of the South—sweet iced tea.
Melear’s
Hwy. 85
770–461–7180
Fayetteville, GA
BLD | $
Melear has been a big name in Georgia barbecue since 1927, when John Melear opened a smokehouse in LaGrange. The Melear’s south of Atlanta goes back more than forty years, and is open seven days a week, even for breakfast Monday through Saturday.
Pork is the meat of choice, chopped, mixed with a bit of peppery vinegar sauce, and served in a sandwich, on a tray, or as a dish with the irresistible name “bowl of pork.” The sandwich is notable because it comes on grilled slices of bread (as opposed to barbecue’s usual spongy-white companion slices), adding a nice crunch to the sandwich experience. The same pork, but more of it, is the anchor for a full-bore barbecue dinner that also includes potato chips, pickles, white bread, and rib-sticking Brunswick stew. Extra-hot sauce is available, and it is good, but Melear’s pork has a fine, subtle flavor that we believe is better complemented by the mild version.
To accompany Melear’s classic “Q” the proper beverage is iced tea—dazzlingly presweetened, as is the custom in this part of the country, presented in tumblers that are a full foot tall and about half again as wide at the mouth. When you get to the bottom of this tub, it is refilled on the house, and it will continue to be refilled for as long as you are parked in a high-backed chair at one of Melear’s aged wood tables eating barbecue.
Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room
107 W. Jones St.
912–233–8970
Savannah, GA
L | $
West Jones Street is a boulevard of antique brick houses with curving steps and graceful cast iron banisters. At eleven o’clock each morning a line begins to form at 107. Although there is no commercial sign outside, the serious student of Roadfood can tell you