Travel Blog

When I lived in Philadelphia I had a friend from South Carolina who claimed that, as good as southern food was, it always tasted best at funerals. Having just come back from Georgia, I can tell you it's pretty good at weddings too.

But then, this was the wedding of a food writer. The evening before the big day a group of us went, on Susan's suggestion, to Watershed in Decatur. The locals in our party ordered pimento cheese and celery and creamy stone ground shrimp grits with pullman plank, which looked like buttered toast in the shape of a small cutting board, but it was to buttered toast what creme brulee is to custard. (Two days later, at the restaurant's Sunday brunch, I would be told - after swooning over the biscuits - that chef Scott Peacock made them on The Martha Stewart Show.)

For the main course a few people ordered the vegetable medley, which included fried cauliflower. I like that even serious restaurants in the south honor the region's affection for frying, though I ordered the shrimp, sausage and oyster gumbo.

The daughter of the man seated to my right arrived and ordered a plate of french fries. This started a conversation on ketchup, and hamburgers; the father told of a place in Atlanta that makes the absolute best hamburgers but only about 24 of them a night. The woman to my left said that she knew a place that served ice cream atop of hamburgers.

The french fries were so good the father ordered a plate of onion rings for the table. "As a palate cleanser," someone said. The rings were thin, and the breading delicate and salty. "What's the opposite of amuser?" the father asked, then explained to his daughter the term "amuse-bouche."

A number of desserts were ordered: my favorite was the Georgia pecan tart with shortbread crust.

At the wedding reception on Saturday I ate my first fried pickle and declared it better in batter, more instinctively at home, than calamari. The buffet included pulled pork and salmon croquettes (Ralph, the groom, grew up in North Carolina) and numerous cakes, as well as pralines and butter mints.

Any life together that begins with fried pickles and moves on to butter mints has got to be good.