Restaurant Guide 2008

The dining room is concrete-floor/open-kitchen/cinderblock-walls loud and often brimming with families filling up on immense portions of Southern food while zigzagging servers do their best to keep up. In other words, Screen Door isn't exactly a romantic spot—unless your heart goes pitter-patter for buttermilk-battered fried chicken or fried green tomatoes. Screen Door is all about fresh, local sides and salads and fried, often smoky and salty entrees. The local/organic menu might include a sweet corn pudding or peach fennel salad in late summer, while the main menu starts with pimiento cheese and housemade benne seed crackers, hush puppies with Creole honey-mustard sauce, and fried oysters. Entrees that'll knock your boots off: the cornmeal-dusted trout, beef brisket and Creole jambalaya. House-specialty cocktails are stiff and well priced. The Scarlett O'Hara mixes Southern Comfort, lime and cranberry juice served up.

IDEAL MEAL: Mint julep, crawfish cakes, shrimp and grits, banana caramel pie with pecan shortbread crust.

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