The Pirate's House

The house

The Pirate’s House began as a seamen’s inn in 1753, among the oldest surviving buildings in Georgia. Lore says a tunnel once ran from the rum cellar toward the river, and that sailors who drank too well woke up already hired for a voyage they had not chosen. Robert Louis Stevenson set a scene of Treasure Island here; whether Captain Flint ever bled on these boards is literature, not ledger. What staff still report is plainer: shadows in the rum room, footsteps in closed halls, a man in seaman’s clothes who is gone when the kitchen door swings. It is a tourist restaurant that happens to be older than the country, and the house has not been emptied of its first trade.

Honey pecan fried chicken and a rum drink you finish yourself. Sit near the older rooms, not the gift-shop edge. This is a sailor’s house that learned to plate Southern food.

The Ghostly Gourmet