Low-Country cooking is naturally featured in Savannah
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By: Carolyn Foote Edelmann
What more memorable gifts emanate from a Southern city than its regional foods? Low-Country cooking is naturally featured in Savannah: crab, okra, unique spices, sausage. Oysters grow on every piling, oyster roasts prime events. Engraved invitations lure guests to "Pig Pickins" think Southern luau. Savannah Red Rice involves tomato and spices, sometimes sausage, and remains impossible to replicate effectively up north. Dirty Rice involves sautéed giblets, and tastes a whole lot better than it sounds. Real Brunswick stew is recreated for historical festivals, not lacking the original squirrel. Shrimp boats still set out daily from nearby Thunderbolt, so expect spectacular shrimp. The town’s plain family restaurants serve my life’s snowiest, savoriest crab. I normally flee cafeterias, but Savannah’s showcase classic Southern foods unadorned, authentic and memorable. Barbecue is sensational, usually in funkiest settings. Pecans are so ubiquitous that I drove over them every time I came home.
Standing in lines is a proud Savannah pastime. People boast of how long they’ve waited for traditional fare at Lady & Sons and at the legendary Mrs. (pronounced ‘Miz’) Wilkes’ Boarding House on Jones Street. It was opened decades ago to feed her railroad husband and friends. People now brave searing heat to enter and bow heads in prayer before sitting at communal tables for bountiful breakfasts and lunches. Although the long-lived founder is no longer with us, well-trained successors turn out the best local food in the best local ways. There is no better fried chicken and grits. Both places are miraculously reasonable.
For a hefty dose of history with food, The Olde Pink House is reputed to have served not only Gen. Sherman’s staff but even Revolutionary patriots. Fish and shellfish are its 21st-century stars. Pirates’ House, on East Broad, has welcomed the hungry and very thirsty since the mid-1700s. It opened its doors to seafarers, soon "becoming a rendezvous for blood-thirsty pirates and sailors from the Seven Seas." Some patrons, having overindulged, were abruptly pressed into the sailor’s life, like it or not. Word has it that special tunnels led from pub to ship. Here’s another site where ghosts can riffle hairs on the back of your neck, even at the legendary 21st-century brunch.
One star in the local firmament is Elizabeth’s on 37th, in a turn-of-the-last-century house, appearing regularly at or near the top of restaurant lists. Elizabeth was radical, in my day, stepping beyond tradition. Now she blends the Wilkes’ philosophy of local produce with the best ways of the Old South, deft dashes of fusion technique. Try to be there on a day when she’s serving Savannah Caviar. Elizabeth’s is an elegant mansion appointed with tasteful antiques, a place to see and be seen, if that matters. Whatever you do, give yourself real Southern food, at least once a day, in Savannah. How many chances in your life will you have for this indulgence?

