So Many Dishes

We’re having a wonderfully relaxing trip. And although I’m cooking dinner in the cabin each evening, we’ve enjoyed a couple of terrific lunches out.

Where we’re staying is close to Helen, Georgia, which is an interesting town. It was a dying logging town until, in the 1960s, it reinvented itself as a Bavarian style alpine village. Now it’s quite a tourist destination. It’s definitely kitschy, but fun.

One thing we always do is enjoy a lunch of German food. Traditionally, we’ve eaten at a restaurant right on the Chatahootchee River, which runs through the downtown. It’s fun to sit outdoors and watch people tubing down the river. (We used to “shoot the Hootch” too, with our kids, but my tubing days are behind me.) However, we discovered that the restaurant had changed ownership and had a radical menu change. Clearly, German food there is now an afterthought.

Instead, we walked to the north end of Main Street to the beer garden at Hofbrauhaus. Still on the river, this is a venerable local restaurant with excellent German food and, of course, beer. I rarely drink beer, but this was really good, especially on a hot day.

We both ordered bratwurst; I had mine with warm German potato salad, while Ken chose red cabbage. The sausage had the sweetness of a good bratwurst, and it was topped with sauerkraut. I added brown mustard, which had enough horseradish to clear my sinuses. The restaurant is pet friendly, and there was a sweet black labrador at the next table who visited us and would gladly have helped me eat my sandwich. I didn’t take her up on the offer 😄

We took a drive yesterday toward Dahlonega, the site of the second gold rush in the US, in 1829. We’ve visited the town before. This time our destination was Wolf Mountain Winery, which also has a cafe that serves lunch. It’s quite a popular place, as we discovered. We hadn’t realized that most people come with reservations; we were lucky to get a table. The hostess apologized for its lack of a view, but we could still see out across the mountains.

We’re glad that we were able to get a table, because both the wine and food were excellent. We each had a glass of their dry rose, and it was delicious. I’d considered a salad, but Ken and I decided to split one of the interesting-sounding pizzas. That turned out to be plenty of food. Plus, I saw a salad delivered to the table next to us. It was huge!

All of the pizza combinations sounded interesting, but we decided on the Gambino. The thin crust was lightly topped with a pomodoro sauce, with additions of Italian sausage, caramelized onions, roasted red peppers, and dollops of ricotta, then dusted with Parmesan. Yummy! The food and wine made the trek to the restaurant—it was a steep climb, both driving and walking from the parking lot—worth it.

The walk up the hill from the parking area to the building skirts the vineyard, so we got an up close look at the vines and grapes. We were intrigued by the fact that the grapes are protected behind netting. We’ve never seen that in other vineyards.

Of course, we couldn’t look at plants without Ken noticing evidence of a plant disease. He spotted classic symptoms of Pierce’s disease, a bacterial disease that affects grapevines, citrus, stone fruits, and almonds. So in addition to photographing food and nature, I took pictures of diseased leaves, too!

Today’s lunch was also at a winery, but very different. We were joined by a couple we met on the Rhine River cruise that we took two years ago, who live not too far from this area. My regret is that the only photo I took was of the vineyard while we were waiting for them to arrive. Yonah Mountain Vineyard is only three miles from our cabin, and we have visited it on prior trips. They make excellent wines but don’t serve food, so Polly and Mike brought sandwiches and chips, which we shared with a bottle of Yonah’s excellent unoaked Chardonnay. What we enjoyed most, of course, was the wonderful company and conversation.

I’d say that, this week, lunch is the most important meal of the day.