Edna’s

Mobbed at lunch with locals and visitors to Georgia’s northern mountains, a little less crowded at suppertime, Edna’s is a meat-and-three feast. That means that every day there is a short list of entrees and a long list of vegetables, from which you choose one main course and three side dishes. In many meat-and-three restaurants, it is the vegetables that matter, and some customers forget the meat altogether, getting a four-vegetable plate for lunch.

At Edna’s the all-vegetable strategy would be a big mistake. We don’t know about the meat loaf or the country fried steak, but we can tell you that the fried chicken is delicious, a fact that becomes apparent if you look around the restaurant and note that probably half the clientele choose it. Edna’s logo is a chicken wearing a chef’s toque with the proclamation, Our chicken dinners are worth crowing about.

The side-dish list includes not only vegetables such as mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, green beans, pole beans, etc., but also mac & cheese and Jell-O salads. And whatever you get, it comes with a corn bread muffin that crumbles very nicely over a heap of cooked greens. For dessert, the star of the show is Edna’s peanut butter pie – a grand ode to the Georgia goober.