Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room


Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room is a casual restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, US which offers a menu of Southern US home cooking. Situated in a historic house dated to 1870, it is a popular dining spot in the city. The restaurant was owned and managed by Sema Wilkes for 59 years, from 1943 until her death in 2002 at age 95.

History

Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room was previously the dining hall of the Wilkes House, a downtown boardinghouse. Today the restaurant is housed on the ground floor of the same historic house, built in 1870, at 107 West Jones Street. The restaurant was described by author William Schemmel as "a treasure hidden away in a historic district town-house." Its longtime owner, Sema Wilkes, published several cookbooks. her family continued to run the restaurant, serving lunch on weekdays.
Mrs. Wilkes and her restaurant have been the subject of newspaper and magazine articles. 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 ten 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".
The guests sit at the table and pass the dishes around to one another like a family. There are usually long queues waiting to get in.

Notable guests