I am on the road this week with my wife but without my golf clubs, traveling to New Orleans from Pawleys Island, SC, for a week of good eating and music. I may stumble upon a golf community or two, but so as not to go completely dark here at Golf Community Reviews in the coming days, I will post some short restaurant reviews from our trip.
Antonio's, Andrews, SC
Our first stop today was in Andrews, SC, a town that has seen better days (given the empty storefronts downtown). But Antonio's restaurant, which extols subs, pizza and "menu items" on its Main Street facing window, was anything but quiet at lunchtime. All tables were filled, almost all of them by healthy looking men in their 30s, some bearing the uniforms of construction workers. They were eagerly digging into fried popcorn shrimp, sandwiches (including the popcorn shrimp po'boy) and burgers and fries. Although the menu indicated the restaurant served a half dozen salad combinations, lettuce was in short supply on the dining room tables. My wife ordered a chicken Parmesan sub and I ordered one of the day's blackboard specials, a quarter pound cheeseburger. Although the tomato sauce on her sandwich was a bit commercial -- I know that taste from a can of my youth -- the sandwich was crispy, the chicken just on the moist side of dry and the melted provolone bland but perfect for the combination. Nice sandwich.
My hamburger was about as good as it gets for a simple burger buttressed with a perfect medley of lettuce, tomato, pickles and secret sauce, which in this case was mayonnaise on the bottom half of the standard hamburger bun and ketchup on the top half. The meat was crispy on the outside, and that crunch against the mushier additives was a perfect contrast. I added French fries, well cooked if previously frozen, for just a dollar, making the cost/value equation as good as it gets...$4.25 for the entire plate. Take that, Wendy!
Aubri Lane's, Milledgeville, GA
After a seven-hour drive, we arrived in Milledgeville, GA, a bit out of our way on the New Orleans route. But encouraged by our former English Major son to visit the home of author Flannery O'Connor, which we will do in the morning, and having heard that Milledgeville was an interesting college town, and having never failed to find a good restaurant in a college town, we decided to give it a try. Trip Advisor's top-rated restaurant in town is Aubri Lane's whose name apparently conflates the two first names of the owners' children.
Located in the downtown area, three blocks from the campus of Georgia College, Aubri Lane's is a sleek two-level restaurant at the high end of eateries in the neighborhood, which is to say entrees in the $18 to $32 range (steaks). Service was a bit choppy as it took my beer 10 minutes longer to be poured out of a bottle than it did for my wife's iced tea to be delivered; and the bread basket arrived just as we finished our salads (although no faulting the rolls which were warm and pleasantly doughy).
My house salad was excellent; I ordered blue cheese dressing but had to look closely to see if the salad was dressed. It was...exquisitely, with an intensity that was unexpected, given that there was no evidence of blue cheese or, for that matter, anything white. My wife's caprese salad, on the other hand, was a huge disappointment, though attractively layered with alternating tomato and mozzarella slices. When ingredients are not cooked or otherwise fussed with by a chef, they had better be fresh and able to stand out on their own. Neither the mushy tasteless tomato nor the equally bland mozzarella stood out as anything but over-refrigerated and poorly chosen in the first place.
Dinner entrees were much better, my wife's rack of lamb perfectly cooked at medium rare and my short rib atop a bed of cheesey grits intensely flavored from a long braise in a dark wine sauce. I'm not a carrot fan but the thin slices had soaked up all the sauce and didn't taste like carrots, a good thing for this diner. The meat was fork tender yet had that slightly stringy short rib consistency.
All in all, I give Aubri Lane's a rating of "Good." The entrees turned out to be fine choices, but the appetizer list, especially the salads, should be approached with a bit more caution. If I am ever in Milledgeville again, and I eat at Aubri Lane's, I will certainly order the crispy pork belly to go with my salad and make a meal of it.