Southern Comfort

A couple of years ago, I found an old postcard from the late 1930s, I believe, of a snazzy-looking dining room in a restaurant that once stood at 14th Street and Baltimore. The place was called Southern Mansion, and if the postcard is an accurate depiction of the actual place, it must have been a happening spot. It was a white-tablecloth dining room with mirrored columns, a spacious dance floor and a bandstand big enough for a small orchestra. The restaurant's motto (on the card, anyway) was "Famous for food."

"It was probably more famous for gambling," says veteran talk-show host Walt Bodine, who remembers hearing about police raids on the place back in the 1940s. "I heard stories about cards and dice being frantically flushed down toilets. But I never ate there."

Restaurateur Jim Eddy, who did eat there, laughs when I ask if the place served real Southern food — you know, soul food. "It was more like fried chicken, steaks and prime rib," he said. "If you wanted the food we now call soul food, you had to go east of the Paseo, over near the 18th and Vine neighborhood. That's where the jazz clubs were and little restaurants that served real Southern cooking."

It's not always a good thing when history repeats itself, but in the case of the three-year-old Peach Tree Restaurant, it's a very good thing. Back when I first reviewed the Peach Tree ("Soul Survivor, March 20, 2003), its owners, James and Vera Willis, had defied the naysayers and opened the first new restaurant on the east side of 18th Street in many decades. And not just any restaurant but a beautiful one.

There are similarities between the main dining room at the Peach Tree and the postcard of the long-forgotten Southern Mansion. Both boast tables draped in white linen, a shiny grand piano, rust-colored carpet and an air of old-fashioned graciousness. A big part of the Peach Tree's charm is that it has more in common with family-owned restaurants from an earlier generation than with the soulless corporate chain operations that dominate today.

"It has elegance and dignity," said my usually acerbic friend Ned, who had never eaten at the Peach Tree until I brought him with me a few weeks ago. Southern-born Ned had heard that there was a restaurant at the corner of 18th Street and the Paseo but was confused about its connection with the Peach Tree Buffet over on Eastwood Trafficway. Was the newer venue a buffet? Had the old Peach Tree moved?

No on both counts. Both restaurant operations are owned by James and Vera Willis, but the place on Eastwood Trafficway is still an all-you-can-eat buffet (one in which I've stuffed myself silly way too many times), and the Peach Tree Restaurant is more formal, with attentive servers and live entertainment three nights a week.

When the Peach Tree Restaurant first opened, the Willises didn't serve alcohol and didn't plan to do so. If you wanted a mimosa cocktail, for example, it would be made with nonalcoholic sparkling wine instead of champagne. Realizing that a good percentage of their downtown clientele preferred Kendall Jackson to Sierra Mist, the Willises finally repealed their prohibition. There's still no smoking allowed, but there's now a small but tasteful wine list.

Ned didn't order a glass of wine with his pork chops, which may have been a blessing, because Ned gets more animated, vocal and flamboyantly Southern after a swig or two. But even stone-cold sober, he embarked on a long-winded soliloquy about his meal. He loved every morsel.

At the Peach Tree, pork chops can be prepared four ways: grilled, deep-fried, barbecued, or smothered in thick brown gravy. Ned couldn't decide which sounded best and was thrilled when our server offered him the option of getting two different chops, one grilled, the other blanketed in gravy. "They're fabulous," Ned said, relishing each bite. "Better than Mama used to make."

I can only vaguely recall my own mother's ill-fated attempt to make salmon croquettes, but I do remember that she once tried a magazine recipe and came up with something that could be identified as neither salmon nor croquette. The jazz singer Queen Bey has long insisted that the Peach Tree's crispy, cornmeal-breaded patties are the best in town. I think they could be the only croquettes in the city; I can't remember the last time I saw the dish on another local menu.

I was game to play croquette, and I also ordered the fish cakes, which were served, like all entrées at the Peach Tree, with a choice of two side dishes. The cornbread dressing and simmered collard greens were calling me, and the combination was terrific. The croquettes' paper-thin crispy crust encased a light, fluffy filling of pink salmon, eggs and onion. It was tasty enough not to require tartar sauce, but what the hell, I added it anyway. The fluffy ball of cornbread dressing was seasoned with green peppers, and the collard greens, just slightly bitter, were delicious.

When I returned for dinner with Marilyn and Lou Jane, we got right down to business with the hefty appetizer platter called the Down-Home Sampler. A couple could easily make a full dinner out of this array of "jazzy" chicken wings (more sweet than spicy); fried shrimp and catfish fingers; and lots of surprisingly ungreasy deep-fried mushrooms, okra and thin-sliced green tomatoes.