Georgia Brown's, McPherson Square

Monkey and I are big fans of restaurant week, so we were saddened during the past Winter and Summer weeks that we were unable to get a table at Georgia Brown’s. I should preface by saying that Monkey’s mom makes a mean collard green, I was raised on Kentucky fare, and both of us went to a school in the “South.” (UF is not really in the South, as Florida is not really the South, but when you can get honey biscuits at no less than three restaurants and anti-semitism in your local Wal-mart, it passes as South.)

So, one year into our DC adventure and surely beginning to miss comfort food, we’ve been edging for a fix for a while now.

Last night I came home to a sour Monkey. We should have eaten in, but he needed to get out and get some drinking done and some forgetting about law school definitely needed to be accomplished. I flat-out vetoed Adams Morgan, as I was tired, but I countered by beginning to list places I *was* willing to go. He sighs and mentions something about comfort food, and I, being the gracious sugar-mama that I am, immediately suggest Georgia Brown’s. *Eyes light up* “Really?” “Sure,” I say, and head off to el intarweb to secure us a reservation on OpenTable.

We’ve attempted to secure reservations for brunch in the past, but have never been successful, so I was surprised and pleased to get an almost immediate reservation – probably because it was a Monday night. As I noted to Monkey on the way there, it is something wonderful to live in the heart of DC and be able to make a reservation for 30 minutes later on the way out the door, take your time sauntering over and still have a good 10 minutes to get in and claim your reservation. It means that if you wanted, you could visit downtown restaurants all the time, *if you wanted*, and not have to worry about suburb stuff like sitters and parking and valets and traffic and driving home drunk.

Sitting down, we immediately agree to get fried green tomatoes. [Now, I have in the past dated an Alabama boy who has never not-worn crimson. At his house, momma didn’t allow snacking on potato chips; we snacked on fried green tomatoes, so I’d like to think I know how they should taste, and for that, I am forever grateful to Diane P. As well, my mother has taken me once or twice to visit Miss Minnie, her most regally-aged neighbor-cum-grandmother from childhood. I do not like things pickled and I do not like relish, but you could feed me on Miss Minnie’s green tomato relish to the day I died and I’d die a happy panda. So, with these things in consideration, I was eager and salivating.]

The most disappointing thing about new restaurants is when every item looks delicious until you read the description and find that nearly every item has something about it that you do not like, cannot eat, or for which you are simply not in the mood. It felt like that looking at GB’s menu… I was tempted by the crabcake, but crabcake is not definitively or wholly southern, and was similarly tempted by the horseradish filet, but it didn’t seem so southern and I wasn’t particularly feeling beef. I settled on the Frogmore stew, and Monkey chose the fried chicken, as it is the one true vaccination against melancholies and the Atlas of all comfort foods.

We began perusing the cocktails, and I have to say I was severely disappointed at the northerner notions of cocktails. Where were the Planters Punches? The Mint Juleps? These drinks know no season – the south has no season but “hot” or “wet.” There were a variety of drinks listed on the “Fall” cocktail menu, but they were all slight variations of standard fare. There was the Collins, but not a mention of Southern Comfort in sight. (Admittedly, Southern Comfort is despicable, but shouldn’t it at least get a nod?)

I cannot say enough about the table bread. The one thing I truly miss about FL, and Gville in particular, was the ability to get a seriously good non-pillsbury buttermilk biscuit with a dollop of butter and a good smothering in clover honey. The server brings us buttermilk biscuits and some corn pones made in the little cast-iron corn pone pans (!) Monkey bets me that the butter will be sweet. I doubt him, but secretly I hope it will be, because if they don’t bring butter and honey to the table, the butter might as well be sweet.

It is.

At this time, I am struck with a stupendous idea. You know how movies always montage the fireworks and streamers when the Protagonist gets his first kiss? That’s what actually happens when you think to ask for Southern style sweet tea. (Honey and butter biscuits and sweet tea is one of my favorite never-get-to-eat desserts and snacks.)

[I should digress a moment to explain the difference between tea, sweetened/”sweet” tea and southern sweet tea. In the south, if you ask for iced tea, you will receive Sweet Tea; you have to ask specifically and get a roll of the eyes to get “plain” tea. Sweet Tea is a specific term connoting the manner in which the tea is made and resulting in a particular taste that is available in no other way. Sweet Tea is not sun tea, and it is not cold-brewed. It is made hot in copious amounts; normally, people make superstrength tea and then dilute it for serving. First of all, Sweet Tea is not and never should be diluted. In its magma state, it can be super-saturated with sugar (actual chemistry terms here, folks) and then is allowed to cool to a drinkable level, then served over ice. It has a rich flavor and the sweetness is unlike regular “sweetened tea.” Keeping this in mind, when you are not in an area heavily entrenched in Southern culture, you need to listen carefully to your options. “Sweetened” tea is a wholly detestable northerner concoction. It’s plain tea that has become diluted and cool, to which sugar is added. IT. TASTES. NASTY. Plain tea is bearable, but it’s not Sweet Tea. In fact, I’ve asked before if there was Sweet Tea available, and was told, “we have plain tea, and there’s sugar on the table.” Bleh. Glurg. Feh. Furthermore, when you enter the northern areas, you have to further specify: Southern-style tea or Southern-style sweet tea.]

At Georgia Brown’s I asked if there was Southern-style tea available. The waitress asks: “You mean sweetened?” “Er….” Sweetened is not the same as sweet, as we have just learned, but I do not know what to answer to this server in a Southern restaurant in a northern area. Instead she saves me with “the tea is unsweet, but the peach tea is sweetened.” Peach Tea? Peach? This is not at all apropos. “No thanks, I’ll just take a cocktail.” In her mind, I’m sure this was fine and good because I am opting for the more-expensive alcohol, but in my mind it was a little death.

On to eating.

Back to the fried green tomatoes... Because I assumed that everyone would make fried green tomatoes well and as they should be, unadulterated and pure before God (God likes comfort food, especially BBQ – that’s why he demands burnt offerings), I didn’t look at the appetizer description. Fried green tomatoes are as follows: a cream cheese sandwich of yellow tomatoes, battered and fried, served with a flavored mayo on a bed of watercress and tomato relish.

Miss Minnie is turning in her grave, and somewhere, Diane is weeping into her frying pan.

Why is there all this schmutz to assault my fried green tomato? First of all, yellow tomatoes are far too firm. You need a nice slobbery green tomato. As well, when you sandwich TWO thick slices of yellow tomato, they don’t really cook through anyway. Second, a fried green tomato needs no accompaniment. Relish was good though.

On to entrees.

Monkey was so-so on his fried chicken. The buttermilk batter was nonpareil, but as Monkey astutely pointed out, “it’s all breast meat – no fat, and it’s the fat that makes fried chicken good.” Now I see why heart disease is such an issue in the South, but I had to agree with him. The mashed potatoes were okayish, but I really felt like they needed tons more butter and a large amount of garlic and a beaten egg whipped in. But then, I’ve never met anyone who makes mashed potatoes like my mother, and I have to say that among the things she cooks, mashed potatoes are pretty darn good.

Frogmore Stew is a boil. Which means it’s not really a stew...which means that you either bring me all my boiled goodies on a plate with no sauce, or you bring me the bowl of sauce with a plate to deposit my shrimp skins and clamshells. I got a bowl of sauce. Sadly, the sauce wasn’t so flavorful, the corn was just shy of hominy, and there wasn’t a lot of seafruit. My one scallop was delicious though. It was rather disappointing, as a whole, and I wish I’d gone for maybe the horseradish filet.

Cost at GB’s is pretty high. Plates are 16+, apps are 6+, cocktails are about 10. We foreswore dessert only because I hadn’t really wanted to spend that much this evening, and because there was a bowl of Halloween candy waiting for us at home. We left with a 99$ bill – not going up to a hundred sort of mitigated the expenditure mentally.

Perhaps we had been expecting too much, or rather, we had expected that southern cooking would keep its integrity in a fine-dining setting.

Final decision on Georgia Brown’s: we’ll go back, but we’re not rushing to… maybe for brunch instead next time.