Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room has been serving lunch from a townhouse on Jones Street since 1943. The format has not changed: you sit at communal tables with strangers, and the food comes out in bowls — fried chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas, cornbread, mashed potatoes, and whatever else is on that day. You pass the bowls around and eat as much as you want.
It is the closest thing Savannah has to an institution everyone agrees on. The line forms well before the 11am opening and can stretch down the block on weekends, but it moves steadily. Lunch only, Monday through Friday. No reservations, no credit cards for much of its history (check current policy). The experience of sitting with strangers and passing food across a table is, somewhat unexpectedly, the whole point.