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.