Savannah II: Miller time

Not surprisingly, some of the places we seem to enjoy the most while traveling are pubs. We can be fairly social people when we want and a great way to be casually social is to park yourself at the bar in a pub; we are also very into going local when we travel and not being the typical tourist. We are more likely to be seated at the bar having a conversation with that drunk guy than out taking the "Midnight in the Garden of Good and evil" tour. Neither one of us was raised in or around pubs, like most Americans I was raised that alcohol was very very bad until you were 21 for some reason and that bars were for loser drunks. So of course I stole booze as a teen. Living briefly in a country where pubs were the social focal point of the community gave me a glimpse into a mode of living that was very cool to me. Its not about the alcohol, its really the sense of the community that most people my age never had as we were all raised in generic suburbia, never knew our neighbors, and only had TV and malls as our social outlets. And I like beer.

In Savannah, famous for its pubs and even more famous for its St. Patrick's Day binge, we felt more at home in the pubs than the restaurants. The tasty wild Georgia shrimp were not limited to the high end restaurants, in fact the tasty shrimp were pretty much everywhere food was served. At Churchill's Pub my husband had a shrimp pasta dish that actually tasted better than the shrimp at the recommended River St. place. I fed my inner Brit with a small but filling chicken-stilton pie, tasting pretty average for pub food. Churchill's had a great selection of draft and bottled British beers, and even offered half-pints which I know are for girls but I am a girl! I miss being able to get half-pints mainly because I like to taste as many different flavors as possible, I'd pick off other peoples' plates if they let me. The pub was huge, with a basement and seating on the roof; overall the atmosphere was lovely and pub-like but not really small enough for our tastes being so near the touristy stuff, and the food was decent but not a Savannah memory to savor.

Next door to the Churchill's was the local brew pub the Moon River Brewery. The in-house brewery served up some nice beers with the porter and wit beer being real stand outs. While we weren't terribly hungry when we visited, we did want to try the Bombay Turkey Minis. Three cute little turkey-curry-ginger burgers served up with some tasty curry 'aioli' were just the kind of interesting pub munchies we are always on the lookout for. Not only did they sound great, they were the perfect yummy little pub snack for people who are sick of chips and don't want to drop $20 on some fussy gastro-pub truffle-wasabi nachos. The atmosphere could have been cozier, but with the brewery's proximity to the touristy areas we assumed that the place could get pretty slammed so they needed the space and the slightly aloof young waitstaff.

It was in the little Scottish pub
Mollie MacPherson's that we found our Savannah pub home. Originally we were planning a ghost pub crawl as the concession to tourism, but upon seeing the our fellow crawlers our scorn overrode our desire for tourism. By the time the frat kids or middle-aged non-drinking ladies all arrived, we had already settled into our seats with some lovely beer and a lovely sarcastic publican to chat with. Plus we calculated the tour cost with how much more we could drink, the drink won. Mollie's has a nice selection of Scottish beers, and of course lots of scotch availible by the glass or in small groups as a flight. Either way, the scotch seemed to dear to me so I chose beer to blow my money on. We came and went for two nights, we were nodded to by not only barstaff but also by the obvious regular in the corner working on the great American novel. This small pub off the well-trod path felt like a real community center with its large central fireplace. The menu was standard with a few Scottish dishes. The smoked salmon rolls were cool and refreshingly full of fat but the lightly greased and fried potato scones were perfect with the sweet rasberry jam. The scones were just filling enough to help us sober up but did not make us feel full or artery-clogged. The dessert was not so much, but being able to drink Innis and Gunn and Fraoch (for cheaper than ATL) was a small price to pay. Mollie MacPherson's: if we lived in Savannah, that would OUR pub.

Sarcasm on the road: Savannah

Since our planned vacation of an Alaskan cruise complete with all-you-eat food fell through, we recently went to Plan B and decided to visit some nearby towns to cross them off our list. First stop: Savannah.

Friends have often told us we'd like the town's style, not to mention food. We imagined a smaller New Orleans; complete with old buildings, walkable neighborhoods, scary tourists, and good food. Three out of four is not bad. Savannah is very walkable, even in July it is much cooler than the hell we are used to from Florida, and we wanted to be able to easily walk off the food. Getting a good mid-week summer rate from the Savannah Bed and Breakfast overlooking Chatham Square downtown, we were ready to explore.


Not being terribly prepared since this was a last minute trip, we went ahead and asked a local for a cheapish fish house recommendation. Twenty minutes later we found ourselves wandering in tourism purgatory (River St) and ate at Tubby's on River Street.
Yes, it has a nice patio overlooking the river and the throngs. Yes, it has fish. But we were very disappointed in the bad service, the worse salad, and the overpriced average fish. I'm not sure what our appetizer would have tasted like as we never got it, my broiled shrimp platter was tolerable but not a good value, my husband had overbreaded grouper fingers, and both of us found the frozen centers of our corn on the cob. Given how long it took us to get the food, at least it could have been uniformly warm. Perhaps if we didn't grow up near the ocean and thus know the value and taste of fresh seafood, we would have been happy chugging some beer and munching on fried shrimp with microwaved corn.

Generally, we are not the kind of people who get attitude at a coffeehouse, we exude aloof hipness at all times so we were a little surprised at getting treated like loud fat Americans at a Parisian cafe. Perhaps we were not wearing enough black or took too long looking at the menu (horrors!) for the surly girl at the Sentient Bean. The weary sighs and rolled-eyes "You haven't been here before have you?" could have been negated by good food. But no, and we were 0-2. The ciabetta sandwiches were pretty crappy. The bread was thick and gummy. The substance that was supposed to be pesto pretty much tasted only of the canned garlic used in its creation. The eggplant was leathery, the olives were so sparingly doled out you'd think we were on rations, and the salad dressing was very tart and there was way too much of it. Even sharing 2 different sandwiches between us we could not feel good about our choice. The house coffee and limeade were good at least, but that wasn't helping my garlicky burps later on. Maybe we caught them on a bad day, certainly the other staff we watched were not as surly as ours, or maybe this a place for coffee and hanging out. Not for food.

All is not lost. A spot of hope appears in the unlikliest of places. We drove out a little ways to get some saltwater action and ended up on Tybee Island which really isn't an island. It was low tide so in order to get our feet wet and out of the burning sand, we had to cross the very full midweek beach. Sick of being thwarted for seafood, we hoped that Fannie's on the Beach would offer some tasty food. Honestly, I think I picked the place because it had the least hideous website of many Tybee places I'd seen.

What visit to Savannah would be complete without a mention of Paula Deen's Lady and Sons restaurant? The website even tells you to start standing in line at 9:30 for lunch at 11, and 3:30 for dinner at 5, but I didn't believe it until I saw it.

10AM on a Wednesday morning. Screw that. No place can have consistently good food and have that high of a turnover. I realize its mostly a buffet, but for $diety's sake, its still just a meat + 3. Its not like Paula Deen is there in the kitchen, and its not like I can't get great meat +3s here in Atlanta or pretty much any town in the freaking South.

*Its not all bad news, Savannah's good pubs are reviewed next!

Mediterranean Grill

Sometimes, especially in the summer, I get an overwhelming craving for Hummus and/or Falafels. These gastronomical delights fuel my fantasies of desert adventures, a la T.E. Lawrence, as well as just being great summer food. Unfortunately, the relative low cost and mistaken ease of making both items has led more than a few restaurants to add them to their menu; the result being a general lowering of our expectations of these simple delights. Good hummus should be creamy but firm, with just a hint of lemon and garlic. “Hummus expansion packs” like black bean, sun dried tomato, etc. can be good but should be approached with trepidation, as often these are made to cover up a fundamental weakness in the starting product. A good falafel has a crispy outer coating with a soft interior, not unlike a properly made hushpuppy, and should leave a thin layer of oil on the lips, a reminder of its fried origins. Bad falafels run the gamut from rock hard greasy heavy balls to undercooked runny interiors. Unlike hummus in which additions can produce interesting, sometimes even good results, falafel “variants” such as the addition of corn or soybeans (I do not kid) just do not work. Somehow these great tastes have gone the way of the quiche: kitchen sink foods for the disposal of yesterday’s leftovers.

For roughly a decade Mediterranean Grill, on the corner of N. Decatur and Clairmont, has been teaching by example providing some of the best hummus and falafels to be found in the area. Falafels, in sandwiches or on a platter are made to order and are always warm and crispy. The hummus is platonic: slightly tangy, creamy, and cool. These guys also make a mean baba ghanoush (creamy eggplant salad) and a fantastic tabbouleh, a fantastic salad of bulgur wheat, mint, parsely, scallions, and tomato. For non vegetarians, the gyros are some of the best I’ve ever had, the chicken has a nice smoky flavor, and the kufta kabobs (spiced ground beef sausages) are fantastic. Turkish coffee is made to order and richly spiced with cardamom.

While the good far outweighs the bad at this restaurant it would be wrong of me to ignore those points where Mediterranean Grill falls short. The salads are made from iceberg lettuce, a bed of spicy field greens or an arugula salad would be a far better pairing. The fried calamari is overly chewy, and tastes like it is the frozen and pre-breaded variety. The stuffed grape leaves are dripping with oil and share the same “pre-made” feel as the calamari. Finally, the “Greek potatoes” feel like a feeble attempt to satisfy people’s need for fries and the staff would do well to tell those people to piss off and eat some tabbouleh instead.

Prices are good with most of the platters running around $8 and sandwiches around $4-6. Large servings of hummus are a meal in their own right, and come in around $4. Order at the counter, take a number, and bus you own table, there are no servers here, only an opportunity to support a local restaurant trying to educate the masses about some grossly misunderstood food.