Day 80: Forget Paula Deen, go to Mrs. Wilkes.

We got back into town today in Savannah with one mission in mind, we were going to get into Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House Dining Room for lunch. Now that we have a pretty good sense about the city, we felt more comfortable just driving to where we need to go and begin our explorations from there. As we drove by to see how the line was looking, we were surprise to find that it had not reached to the end of the street and best of all, we got to park right in front of the restaurant.

Mrs. Wilkes is a home-style restaurant that has been run by the same family since 1943. Sema Wilkes started working here at the boarding house to make meals for the residents which included her husband who was staying here at the time. The southern home-style food became a big hit with the people of Savannah and people soon began lining up at the front door to sit down at the tables for 10 with strangers to savor her amazing fried chicken, BBQ pork, collard greens and all the traditional fixings you would expect.

If you are looking to order off of a menu, you will be sorely disappointed to wait in this line to find out how the food is served here.

Even though we got here before it opened at 11AM, we had to wait nearly an hour to get inside for our lunch. Apparently there are tours that get first dibs each day and get to go in through a separate entrance just before it opens.

When we finally got to go in, we were led to a table in the back room with all of the food already served at our table along with a tall glass of sweet tea.

At $18 a person, it’s not exactly cheap but I assure you it is worth every penny. Even though Mrs. Wilkes passed away in 2002, the family still runs the restaurant. They no longer use recipes to make the delicious food since it has become second nature to them. They just now how to make to food good. I am sure it has something to do with a heavy hand with the butter.

Even though there are 10 people at each table, it is very unlikely that you will run out of food. As you sit down, you can start spooning food from whatever plate is in front of you and pass it along to your neighbor as you go. By the time all of the courses have gone around, you will barely be able to see the plate that is under that heaping pile. And believe me when I say this, it doesn’t get better than this.

Don’t take our word for it, ask your own president if Mrs. Wilkes is worth the wait. However I think he probably didn’t do much waiting in that line. One of the fringe benefits for being president of the United States.

Stuffed with fried chicken, sweet potatoes and banana pudding, we headed out for some more house tours in Savannah. The weather today took a dramatic shift as compared to yesterday. It has cooled down significantly which is much welcomed by us. In fact it started to rain quite heavily towards the end of the day and we were glad to have our umbrellas in the car.

While doing some research last night about places to see, we read about some of the more popular home tours. One of them was the Mercer house. The Mercer house was the home featured in the 1997 Clint Eastwood movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

If you have seen the movie, you know that it is based on a real account of a murder case that happened in the study of this house. I have not seen the movie so I didn’t really know what to expect. Aside from the murder depicted in the movie, there is suppose to have been another death at this house of a young child who fell off of the second floor balcony and was impaled by the street side railing.

Hopefully that is not why this post is missing the spear on the top.

The Mercer home is still privately owned by the family of Jim Williams who was the main character of the movie portrayed by actor Kevin Spacey. The upstairs is used by the family so the tour does not include that portion. The tour guide told us it was because the stairs are too steep and it was for our safety that we don’t go up there. I guess when you charge $18 per person on a tour, you gotta make up some excuse for only showing people 4 rooms and a garden.

In the carriage house is a nice little gift shop you can browse around in before the start of the tour. I think maybe they had been expecting our visit.

Because otherwise why would they have this book on display?

And this one!?!? That can’t be a coincidence. They must be loyal readers of Mali Mish 🙂

After walking around in the rain seeing a few more squares, we decided that it was time to get dry and get back to Mali Mish.

When we got back, we started to notice that Skidaway Island State Park was starting to be home to an increasing number of Prevost buses. If you are not familiar with Prevosts, they are highend buses that are used for many luxury class A RVs that cost well over $1 million a pop. It is rare to see just one of them at a campground let alone a whole fleet of them. Turns out that these millionaire travelers had planned a rally here starting this Wednesday which is probably the reason why we were only able to get 3 nights when we got here yesterday.

OK, time for Ava to get some work done on her Barbie computer to pay the bills!

over and out,
dan