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Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room is a restaurant offering Southern home cooking in Savannah, Georgia, United States. Situated in a historic house dated to 1870, it is one of the most popular dining venues in the city, and was run for several decades by Sema Wilkes until her death in 2002. It serves traditional Southern cuisine.
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History
Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room is housed on the ground floor of a historic house, built in 1870, on West Jones Street. The restaurant, described by author William Schemmel as "a treasure hidden away in a historic district town-house", was run for several decades by Sema Wilkes, from 1943 until her death in 2002 at age 95. During her life she also published several cookbooks. Her family continues to run the restaurant today, but it is now only open for lunch on weekdays.
Mrs. Wilkes and her restaurant have frequently been profiled in newspaper and magazine stories. Japanese chef Hoshinao Naguma was once apprenticed to the restaurant.
Customs
Mrs. Wilkes' is noted for its homestyle traditions, in which guests are escorted in shifts of 10 into the dining room, where a variety of dishes are freshly laid on one of several long tables. There is no menu; dishes are selected by the restaurant and change daily. Travel Holiday in 1993 recalled that the "tables were set with steaming bowls and platters of tasty Southern food". Jeff Gordinier of The New York Times noted in a 2015 article: "it’s no secret that visitors mad for 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' make a beeline for Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room for fried chicken, candied yams and macaroni and cheese".
The guests sit at the table and pass the dishes around to one another in the style of a family. There are usually long queues waiting to get in.