Southern restaurants in North America
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A
Catfish Corner
For traditional, inexpensive Southern-style fare, head to this no-frills corner hangout. Catfish strips are the specialty, and you can accessorize them with all the trimmings, including collard greens or red beans and rice, while meeting the neighbors and catching up on all the local gossip.
reviewed
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B
Ezell’s Fried Chicken
There’s fast food and then there’s fast food. This is the good kind. Ezell’s dishes out crispy, spicy chicken and equally scrumptious side dishes like coleslaw and sweet-potato pie. This place experienced a boom after Oprah Winfrey hyped the fried chicken here as some of the best in the country.
reviewed
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C
Phil's Original Bbq
'Real smoke. Real slow. Real good.' American barbecue-belt immigrants, these folks are passionate about 'cue. Order up a mess of heartbreakingly tender beef brisket and dry-rub smoked meats and smother the lot in homemade sauces. On the down side, service can be a little 'northern' (brrrr…).
reviewed
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Walker's Drive-In
This truly outstanding restaurant calls itself a drive-in, but it's really a gussied-up diner that serves lusciously tweaked Southern staples. And it serves things like heavenly barbecued oysters dolloped with brie, and incredible fish dishes. There's an excellent wine list and service is impeccable.
reviewed
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D
McEwen's
Don't let the drab stucco exterior fool you: join the upper-crusty professional set for excellent eats with nary a BBQ in sight. Lunch is a steal, with treats like oven-roasted vegetables on focaccia served up in the butter-yellow dining room lined with original landscape paintings; dinner brings pan-seared halibut in coconut ginger broth.
reviewed
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E
Lady & Sons
Savannah's irrepressible culinary doyenne Paula Deen has created a monster – and, some say, lost the magic in the process. Her country cookin' is indeed delicious, but showing up at 9:30am for lunch or 3:30pm for dinner to put your name on the list means the whole thing has gotten a bit out of hand. Perhaps Deen might consider putting the soul back into her South?
reviewed
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F
New Orleans Creole Restaurant
Enjoy some live Dixieland jazz with your homemade gumbo or jambalaya in one of the coolest spaces in Pioneer Square. This bourbon-heavy institution serves unpretentious food in an attractive space (warm lighting and exposed brick walls decorated with portraits of jazz greats) that’s kid-friendly until 10pm. There’s live music most nights, including blues and zydeco.
reviewed
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G
Watershed
Simply outstanding (and outstandingly simple), this is the place for traditional Southern food done up with just a touch of class. Tuesday night is fried-chicken night; get there early or the birds will be gone. Any other night, order the veggie plate - you've never had a better one. The James Beard Award-winning chef Scott Peacock is nothing less than a local hero.
reviewed
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H
Wishbone
They call it ‘Southern reconstruction cooking,’ which means such items as corn muffins, cheese grits, fried chicken, buttermilk rolls and crawfish patties top the tables. Wishbone sits a block from Oprah’s studio, and indeed it’s her kind of folksy, down-home, gravy-laden place. Wacky chicken and egg artwork splashes across the wall in the cavernous room, which was once a Goodyear Tire garage.
reviewed
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I
King Street Blues
King Street Blues is a crazy Southern ‘roadhouse’ diner that serves really good baked meatloaf, country-fried steak, Southern fried catfish and other diner favorites. The interior is strewn with colorful papier-mâché figures floating across its three levels, while shiny chrome furniture and multicolored tablecloths lend an attractive retro air. Live blues is played on Thursday nights.
reviewed
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J
Kingfish Café
The Coaston sisters’ cafe, opened in 1997, turns out fried chicken that has locals lined up for miles – not to mention a catfish po’boy, succotash and other soul food standbys. The space is cool, too – high ceilings and big windows in a brick building, with wrought-iron flourishes, wooden tables and an open kitchen. Don’t forget to save room for dessert: the sweet-potato pie and Red Velvet Cake are the stuff of legend.
reviewed
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K
M&M Soul Food
An unlikely find in a strip mall far from the Strip (look for the landmark 1960s lettering on the sign), this southern-style soul food café is a magnet for those craving fried chicken smothered in gravy, barbecue short ribs, spicy catfish and chitterlings with savory sides like yams, black-eyed peas, collard greens, mac-and-cheese, cornbread and red beans and rice. It’s the real deal, straight from south LA.
reviewed
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L
Dee’s Place
Not many places waft an ambience of 1950s Harlem jazz house meets Soul Train. Photos of musical greats hang on the walls, and a stage hosting live jazz, blues and poetry readings takes up half the small room. Oh, the food? It has soul too, as in fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, fried okra and jerk chicken, along with seafood gumbo on weekends. In summer there’s seating by the barbecue pit in the back garden. Dee’s is BYOB.
reviewed
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M
Feed
With red-checked tablecloths, a free-play jukebox piled with classic rock and country, and a menu of southern home cookin’, Feed has the chipper feel of a lost Hee Haw set. All the framed portraits of poultry allude to the house specialty – juicy, tender rotisserie chicken – but the sides, including hand-cut fries, corn pudding and mac ‘n’ cheese, are equally stellar. Bulging fruit pie and vanilla-wafer banana pudding follow for dessert. Cash only; BYOB.
reviewed
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N
Army & Lou’s
If you’ve never had soul food before, you’ve got to start at this warm and welcoming Chicago classic. It rises above the crowd of similar local establishments with its fried chicken, catfish, collard greens, sweet-potato pie and other classics at prices that are good for your soul. Don’t be surprised if you see a few famous black politicians, led by Jesse Jackson. And don’t be surprised if some white politicians show up for a photo op. You’ll need a car to get here.
reviewed
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O
Dooky Chase
Ray Charles wrote 'Early in the Morning' about Dooky's, local civil rights leaders used the spot as an informal headquarters in the 1960s and Bush and Barack have tucked into the refined soul food at this overpriced Tremé backbone.
reviewed
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P
Rocklands Barbecue
We say Southern, but really, it’s just about the barbeque here: slow smoked, red oak and hickory, no electricity, no gas, Texas-style and pretty good for the East Coast. The ribs, as you might guess, are the way to go – or if you wanna splurge, shell out $600 for a 120lb whole barbecued pig. While you wait for your order, check out the huge selection of hot sauces (‘From the Depths of Hell’). Then take a seat at the wooden counter in the window and watch the passers-by drool.
reviewed
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Q
Willie Mae's Scotch House
The fried chicken at Willie Mae's is good. Very good. But it's not the best in the world, despite being named an 'American Classic' by the James Beard foundation in 2005.
reviewed
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R
Valois Cafeteria
It’s a mixed crowd at Valois. In fact, the clientele is so socioeconomically diverse that a U of C sociology professor wrote a well-known book about it, titled Slim’s Table. It seems hot, fast, Southern-style dishes like French toast, bacon, biscuits, pot pies and patty melts attract all kinds – even Barack Obama, who used to chow here regularly (enjoying steak and eggs, according to the sign at the counter). It’s a real-deal cafeteria, so know what you want before reaching the front of the fast-moving line. Cash only.
reviewed
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S
Sweet Maple Cafe
The creaking floorboards, matronly staff and soulful home cookin’ lend the Sweet Maple Cafe the bucolic appeal of a Southern roadside diner. The signature dishes – inch-thick banana (or, seasonally, peaches and cream) pancakes, cheddar grits and fluffy, freshly baked biscuits that come smothered in spicy sausage gravy or as a part of a fried ‘Chick’n Egg and Cheeser’ – earn the superlatives of locals, but the egg dishes, sturdy muffins and lunch sandwiches are done with equal aplomb. If you only have time for one breakfast in the city, this is the place.
reviewed
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T
Georgia Brown's
Georgia Brown's elevates the humble ingredients of the South (shrimp, cornmeal, catfish, grits and sausage) to high art in dishes like fried green tomatoes stuffed with herbed goat's cheese, and fried chicken marinated in sweet tea. The jazz brunch with a jaw-dropping buffet is probably DC's best.
reviewed
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U
Acadiana
Louisiana probably has the best homegrown culinary tradition in the USA, and all over the country different chefs try to capture the richness of our greatest gift to regional cooking. Acadiana is the DC effort, and it’s a good one. This is rich, heart-attack stuff, so come prepared for duck glazed in pepper jelly, sweet watermelon salad set off by spicy pecans, and veal dunked in mushroom gravy set atop a hot bed of jalapeno grits. The interior is a bit sterile – not nearly colorful enough for a Louisiana restaurant – but the food makes up for this decor deficit.
reviewed
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V
Lawrence Fisheries
There’s not much to look at inside this 24-hour fish-and-chip joint, but the window at the end of the long dining room frames a stunning scene of the Willis Tower over the Chicago River. Not that you have much option but to stand agape once your order arrives – delicious treats like popcorn shrimp, oysters and fish and chips are stalwarts, but frog legs and scallops round out the menu of batter-crusted goodies from the sea. At night the parking lot outside of this typically family-oriented joint is a prime location for locals to sit on car hoods and shop for suspiciously current DVDs.
reviewed
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W
B Smith’s
With its spectacular vaulted ceilings, marble floors and ionic columns, you can’t beat this place’s location in the former Presidential Waiting Hall at Union Station. It is a remarkable contrast to the down-home Southern fare served here by former model Barbara Smith (whose unclouded complexion once graced Oil of Olay ads). Which is not to say the food is not delicious: it is. She upgrades Southern classics to sophisticated oeuvres in ways fun and unexpected, eg vegetarian ribs and the ‘Swamp Thang, ’ a mess of crawfish, scallops and shrimp on collard greens swimming in Dijon cream. The restaurant attracts an affluent African American crowd and is as popular for…
reviewed
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X
Vidalia
Is it fair to call Vidalia ‘Southern?’ Chef Jeff Buben, who also runs the kitchen in Bistro Bis, is a man who likes his French influences. But there’s clear Southern roots in his focus on mixing the rich with the filling – ‘Southern’ ain’t just grits, after all. Although with that said, the shrimp and grits here are something else, a sort of Platonic ideal of the shrimp and grits concept. Fare that’s a bit more unique-sounding but just as accessible to the everyman palette (and just as appreciable to a hard-core foodie) includes a cold cucumber soup of sea trout, squid ink and roe – pretty much like a spoonful of winter ocean – and rabbit loin and leg served under smoked…
reviewed