Dine Here: 4 Historic Gems in the Southeast

Enter the Smith House Restaurant through a gold mine shaft, a clue to Dahlonega, Georgia’s heyday. What you’ll find is that there are no reservations or even menus here. Instead, guests share tables and pass heaping plates of buttermilk fried chicken and creamy mashed potatoes, a staple here since 1922, when a room and a meal cost just $1.50 a day. It’s all part of The Smith House, a gracious inn that’s an easy drive from the mystic Appalachian Mountains or the cosmopolitan city of Atlanta.

While exploring the culinary wonders of New Orleans, Louisiana, take the historic St. Charles Avenue streetcar to the circa-1927 Hilton New Orleans/St. Charles Avenue, just steps away from the city’s charming French Quarter. Admire the hotel’s elaborate façade and ornate grand foyer — and then dine at Lüke, reminiscent of the European brasseries that once dotted the city. You’ll enjoy passionately prepared Louisiana cuisine with farm-fresh ingredients, as well as briny Gulf oysters and plump shrimp.

In Charleston, South Carolina, a city that defines Southern hospitality and good food, the Wentworth Mansion (a former private residence, now an inn) offers a 21-room tribute to the city’s grand past — along with Circa 1886, where chef Marc Collins puts a fresh, healthy spin on classic South Carolina dishes (try the Carolina gold rice and popcorn cake, with succulent blue crab and rock shrimp). Find the restaurant in the mansion’s original carriage house, complete with the old stable doors and beautiful heart-of-pine floors.

This Mobile, Alabama, accommodation was built in 1852. Inside its Trellis Room restaurant, a show kitchen and cathedral Tiffany glass ceiling will have your attention — at least until the food arrives (try savory Gulf shrimp scampi or the Alabama lump crab cake served with garlic aoli). After your meal, walk along sparkling Mobile Bay beneath swaying palms.