Today’s adventure takes us to the Chat and Choo (See what they did there? Choo versus Chew? It’s across the street from the railroad tracks), downtown in the City of Riches. In case you didn’t know, Villa Rica was the home of Georgia’s first gold rush, in 1826. As we parked and were crossing US 78, we saw a family of three we knew walking in the crosswalk down the street and took the opportunity to jaywalk straight across the street and beat them to the door. Then we invited ourselves to dine with them.

Housed in a building that was originally a drug store, Chat and Choo had come up in conversation with two other couples over the last five weeks, each asking us if we’d been there. We arrived just at the end of breakfast, start of lunch, and, not knowing when we might return, I decided to have both. Jo, eating much healthier than I, ordered an egg beaters omelette,

with spinach, peppers and onions. It was an egg beaters omelette, nowhere near as fluffy as a real egg omelette (which is also full of butter) at Waffle House, but perfectly acceptable.

I ordered one of the daily specials – country fried steak over biscuits with gravy and a side of eggs

and a pimento cheeseburger.

The country fried steak was fine, albeit somewhat small for a breakfast serving. It appeared to be a food service steak, as did the patty for the burger, as opposed to either being fresh. Nowhere did they advertise that everything was “fresh”, but a boy can dream, can’t he? The biscuits were fairly good, as was the bacon. The pimento cheese, eggs and gravy were all okay. But the burger, because of the preformed and well-done patty was sub- par. Granted, one set of couple friends goes most often for lunch as opposed to breakfast, so maybe we ought to try that? And the cakes on display did look good.