By Sandy Sanders
“If you are not completely satisfied, welcome to the real world.”
“The waitresses might not be Hot but the food is.”
“There are only two places in the world you can eat meat loaf, here and your mother’s.”
Signs like this and photos of Elvis welcome you to one of Valdosta’s oldest eateries — The King’s Grill.
Lately I have reestablished a routine of eating “real” food, instead of packaged and fast. Like the sign says you can have meat loaf (with peppers) there.
Since my mother died in the late ’80s, the happy times when meat loaf is on my plate has steadily decreased. One day recently stuffed bell pepper was on the one-meat, three-vegetable menus, another of my favorites. Growing up, I had a friend whose mother would cook stuffed bell pepper two or three times a month. Because his mother knew how much I enjoyed it, I often got an invitation for supper.
Another delicacy you probably won’t find at other restaurants is fried okra but without the batter. I first ate this when I got married. My mother-in-law cooked okra straight out of the garden during the summer vegetable season. She used an iron frying pan in the oven to “wilt” the okra. The cooks at the King’s Grill get it just right.
Enough about the food that is good for you, allow me to share thoughts of the desserts. While there are many desserts the regulars like, I have only one that will have me in lock-step to the KG. On Thursdays (it can change), when you push open the front door, you will see half-way down the counter, warm and fresh, a perfectly cooked banana pudding. A golden brown meringue with vanilla wafers popping through the top awaits all the dessert connoisseurs who enter. I remind you, it is “cooked” to separate the KG version from the premixed bright yellow variety. To a banana pudding purist it can only be cooked — no skimping allowed.
One regular to the KG eats a pudding before his one-meat, three-vegetable meal and one afterwards. He ranks high on the purist list and an example for us all.
As a newspaperman and particularly one who works for the VDT, I am drawn there by the ones who came before. On the shelf behind the cash register is a photo of Edith Smith, an employee of this paper for nearly 50 years. Standing there in her red dress, she looks right at you with her “I am glad to see you” look. We all know it and we all miss it.
Edith’s son-in-law and former city editor, Wink DeVane, was the nephew of the restaurant’s founder. Edith often told us that when The Times was an afternoon paper, the publisher and many of the staff would end up there for lunch. Everyone of that group is now deceased. When eating at King’s Grill, you can almost feel their presence. I suspect they all talked loudly and laughed the same way. I don’t know which day was puddin’ day then but I can close my eyes and see their smiles as they dipped into the bowl of bananas, meringue, vanilla pudding and vanilla wafers. AAAAAHHHH.
