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Welcome to Savannah, America's Most Beautiful City
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By Cima Star |
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There’s little question that Paula Deen, owner, founder and lady of The Lady and Sons, is a world-class publicist and promoter. She’s on television daily, and hardly a day goes by that her name doesn’t pop up in half a dozen magazines and papers nationwide. Her books are everywhere. Her name is a byword with virtually every hotel concierge, travel agent, tour guide. Her Horatio Alger story of paper bag lunches hawked out of her home kitchen, to a popular restaurant in downtown Savannah, to national fame, is now legendary.
So it’s no surprise that the lines of people patiently waiting to get in are ever-long even early weeknights, typically slow for most downtown Savannah restaurants. What did surprise me was that the food and service in her new, much larger, three-story emporium, is not only good as as it was, but maybe even better. If you want traditional, old-fashioned Southern food, this is the place, folks. From the Fried Green Tomato appetizer to the Pecan Pie, the menu is Old South to the core. The Steak and Pie, a unique combination of beef tenderloin and mushroom ragout surrounding a small, luscious tomato pie, is a winner. So are the Fried Lobster, served with the famous oh-so-creamy, whipped potatoes, Shrimp and Grits, Pan Seared Tilapia, and Chicken Pot Pie. Since I normally do not care for the steam table sameness of buffets, no matter how elegant the restaurant or how high the price, I’d never tried the one here. Bad mistake. It’s the volume of business, I guess, that allows every tray of food to taste as though it had been made to order. To kick off the meal, the smiling waitress brings a cheese biscuit and a hoecake. Now there are plenty of cheese biscuits and hoecakes in the Deep South, but I don’t think there could be any close to rivaling these. They are so good that even an inveterate “butter on everything” being like me considers it sacrilege to besmirch these luscious offerings with anything at all. The buffet is as bountiful as any medieval feast. Deen’s famous fried chicken is always included, and pot roast, pork ribs, meat loaf, varying kinds of barbeque, a sampling of fish are served on different days. There is always a magnificent array of vegetables, sautéed, steamed, roasted, fried, including the ubiquitous Southern “greens”, here as I’ve never tasted them before: crisp-tender. The macaroni and cheese is heroically creamy and rich, potatoes are fried and mashed or roasted. An abundance of salads is accompanied by an equally lavish array of house-made dressings. A dessert tray is brought to the table. I succumb to temptation sample the pecan pie and the peach cobbler. Sinfully sublime. I stagger out, vowing not to eat another morsel for 24 hours. And I don’t.
Questions?Comments? Email Cima.
The Lady and Sons |
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