In the midst of a South Georgia swing on business, we were heading from Jacksonville to Jesup and lunch-time was right around the corner.  We missed our first chance for food in Folkston (it was only 11:00) and as we rolled into Nahunta, GA (population slightly less than 1,000), we knew we needed to find something.   We narrowed it down to two choices: the Gold House Restaurant and Jeri-J’s. 

We circled both – traversing the town took less than 5 minutes – and made our determination based on the scientific method.  We counted the vehicles in each parking lot.  Gold House had more pickups AND a police car, so it won. 

When we went in, the other two headed to the table and I stopped by the men’s room.   As I came back to the table, I was being directed to check out the buffet on the way back to the table.

There was a small salad bar (replete with giant squeeze bottles of dressing), followed by fried chicken, baked pork chops, fried pork chops, peas, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and a couple of other things.   I prepared my starter plate. The tomatoes were from the salad bar and appear much fresher in the photo than they tasted.  The English peas tasted like Green Giant and the mashed potatoes appeared to be from a mix, under a bunch of bottled gravy.  

The fried chicken had a great crust, but the breast meat was kind of dry.  One of the folks I was with had a leg, followed by a wing, and said that the dark meat was juicy.  Cooking both white and dark meat to tastiness is an art which many folks can’t master.  The roll was good.  That just leaves the pork chop.

This pork chop was a thing of glory – a thin layer of batter, fried to a crispy tan with the chop cooked to that point where it isn’t tough, but you have to tear it a bit with your teeth.  Really nice.   It reminded me a lot of my mom’s fried pork chops.  I went back to the buffet for round two and brought back only a pork chop.  This pork chop, to be exact: 

And then, while we were discussing how good the pork chop actually was, we decided to split this third chop.  Lord knows that I wouldn’t suggest anyone drive to Nahunta for food, but if you’re in the area, they do make a mighty fine pork chop.

As a side note, we did get a bit of a floor show from one of the deputies.  Granted, we could only hear his side of the conversation, but that went like this:

“Ma’am?  Why are you calling me?”

“Ma’am?  What exactly is it that you want me to do?”

“Uh-huh.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“Ma’am, I can’t help you.  Why don’t you have your twenty-one year-old daughter act like an adult and call me herself about what she needs.” 

Click.  

Nice – you have to love a small town.