Savannah Georgia

Justin and I left early in the morning to catch a flight from New Orleans to Savannah, with a layover in Charlotte, South Carolina.  We landed in Savannah and Justin’s friend Moti (not like the African medicine moo-tee but  Mow-Tee), and his wife Debbie picked us up from the airport, with their dog Herman.  Moti is one of Justin’s high school friends an officer in the army and he recently came back from deployment in Afghanistan.

Debbie would become our good food guide, taking us to the hot eating spots in Savannah – she did a GREAT job, at making sure we ate well.

We went to a restaurant on the Bayou (thats a fun word – and a wish fulfilled, having told Justin repeatedly with a very bad Southern Accent, that “We should go to the bayou.”) for sundowners (drinks at sunset) on a deck over the water, we ate steamed oysters (which we needed to break out of their shells) and got to throw the shells into the water – which I probably enjoyed more than eating them.

How beautiful, right on the water, with long grass marshy reeds, marking the channels.

After this we went to another restaurant for desert – you have to love the Halloween scare on the cakes.  (I figure Halloween scare because you have Christmas cheer).

Paired with cocktails – my choice pumpkin pie, turns out it was a good call.

 This was the beginning of our good Savannah eating.

The next day would see us taking a beautiful scenic walk through Savannah, the trees with Spanish Moss hanging off them.

To MRS WILKES a historic boarding house.  Its open from 11 am until 2pm, they don't take reservations, so you queue for your meal, Debbie graciously stood in the queue for an hour, so Justin and I could walk around.  We then came back and queued for another hour - needless to say we were RAVENOUS by the time we got in, which was good because we got fed A LOT of good Souther food.

You file in and sit at a table that seats about 10 people, and the food is brought out and laid on the table and you eat, and eat and eat.  For the life of me I will never be able to name all the foods we ate, but I can tell you there was AMAZING macaroni cheese, OUT OF THIS WORLD fried chicken - the best I've ever eaten, biscuits (like scones but buttery), corn bread, baked beans, sweet corn and of course sweet tea, because you cant be in the South and not drink sweet tea.  I bought the cook book, so you'll have to borrow a recipe to find out how good it could be.

 The old man next to Debbie is a local Cleave, he's been "eating here for 40 years."  He was a source of entertainment for us all, ear bashing Debbie, he gave her his life story we learnt...

1) alimony is tax deductible

2) his ex wife called him to apologise and he said "You cost me a lot of money, you can go to hell"

3) he has been to every state and not just touching down and flying but he has "rolled through" one state his wife swears they never went to he said "she was sleeping and we just rolled through while she was sleeping"

4) Cleave doesn't need to queue to get into Mrs Wilkes, he just comes on in through the back door.

There were many life lessons learnt from Cleave that day, I'll have to consult with Debbie and Justin to re-iterate them all but he was the life of this party!