New eatery opening soon on East Avenue
If brothers Louis Brown and Billie Reeves can pull off their vision for Gran-Gran, their new country cooking diner opening soon on the Rockmart Highway, they are likely to have a huge success on their hands.
After all, what could be better than planning your calendar around the daily specials at a restaurant where the chefs are cooking with recipes passed down by their grandmother?
Where, depending on the day of the week, you can fill up on meatloaf, beef tips and rice, salmon patties, an 8-ounce Angus beef hamburger steak, or catfish.
For after church on Sunday, there will be chicken and dressing, or as the brothers say, “the best chicken and dressing you’ve ever tasted.”
Day of the week vegetable specials, along with the regular daily choices, will lean toward casseroles (squash and green bean) or peas ( maybe Crowder) or beans (maybe Limas).
While the former owners of Daddy’s Place in Villa Rica are willing to bet the house on the food alone, they’ve got one more chicken wing up their sleeves.
When you’ve finished your banana cream pudding -- a Gran-Gran recipe made daily -- get a refill on your coffee or ice tea and take a stroll around the place. It’s time to do a little shopping.
When the Gran-Gran brothers got hold of the building that was last occupied by the Bar-L-Barbecue place, it was a brown box on the outside with two beige dining rooms on the inside.
The brothers couldn’t do anything about the exterior, but they’ve brought their own flair to the interior. The walls, now a pale yellow, are hung from top to bottom with collectibles including antique quilts, old farm tools, metal signs, and needlepoint samplers.
In the entryway, an old pie safe holds jugs, collectible china, oil cans and cookie jars. And it’s all for sale. Louis and Billie are obviously proud of the deal they worked out with Remember When, a vintage and collect- ibles shop that recently opened on the other side of Cedartown on U.S. 27 north.
“They did our decorating, and we’re giving them a place to sell their stuff,” Billie said. “It worked out great.”
The items are authentic, not your typical Cracker Barrel reproductions. The copy of the National Enquirer hanging on the old magazine rack by the hostess stand really is from 1978, and handsaws and weathered windows arranged on the walls are recycled not remade.
The vintage items are reasonably priced, as are the menu choices.
A meat and two, with cornbread or biscuit, dessert, and beverage is $7.25 at lunch, a meat and three is $8 and the vegetable plate with three sides is $6.25.
Available every day are fried chicken livers, country fried steak, fresh breaded chicken tenders, and chicken breast.
Daily vegetable choices include fresh cut French fries, mashed potatoes, fried okra, fried cream corn, and that all but forgotten “dieter’s special” - peaches and cottage cheese.
All lunch items, including the $5 “young’uns” plate, will served at dinner seven nights a week for an extra 75 cents.
On weekends, there will be steaks, including the 24ounce “Billie’s Big T-bone” ($24); seafood, including grouper, fried shrimp or scallops; plus wings, salads, and appetizers, including fresh cut onion rings, ($5).
Friday and Saturday nights also offer all- you- caneat catfish ($16) or chicken livers ($11), served with garlic cheese biscuits and a choice of baked potato, sweet potato or French fries and hush puppies.
Louis said they are waiting on a few things to be delivered and haven’t set a firm opening day yet, but he said they are aiming for sometime between the end of September and the second week of October.
Take out and delivery orders (10 plates or more for delivery) will also available.
Call 770-748-4726 (GRAN) for more information.