Famous H&H Restaurant serves stellar Southern breakfast

For the same price as a corporate boring breakfast at a huge national chain, you can support a local diner steeped in Macon’s musical history at the H&H Restaurant in downtown Macon.

If you’ve never been to or heard of H&H, it’s where the Allman Brothers Band used to hang out before they were famous, and then after that, too. Their pal Mama Louise was recently on the cover of Georgia Magazine with famous chef Hugh Acheson.

The place isn’t much to look at, but everyone seems happy to be there -- especially on a Saturday morning. It’s kind of a dive, with concrete floors, album covers on the walls, and plain old tables and chairs, but you don’t come to the H&H for the decor. Also, there’s a guy nearby that will wash your car for $10, inside and out -- can’t beat that.

We focused on breakfast for this review and we got way more than our money’s worth. We started with the H&H Standard for $5.99, with two eggs, a gorgeous thick slab of seasoned sausage, and stone ground cheese grits. They were out of biscuits for the day -- a huge disappointment, so get here before 10:30 a.m. We added a short stack of golden pancakes for $1.99 (a tall stack addition is just $2.99 extra) and got blackberry jam served on the side.

Next, we had the country ham breakfast for $8.99. It comes with a huge slice of country sugar-cured, smoked ham with red eye gravy, cane or maple syrup, two eggs your way, cheese grits and toast. One of our younger tasters had never had a fried egg and found it to be delicious. There were plenty of leftovers on this one, but not for lack of trying.

I had the corned beef hash breakfast, with grits, hash and my choice of eggs, for $6.99. This would not be for someone with OCD, as everything is swirled together ready to be consumed all at once. The hash wasn’t anything special, but reminded me of my childhood, which made it enjoyable.

We also got a couple of breakfast sandwiches, but without the biscuit I doubt if we got a real idea of how good these could be. For $3.99 we got the Fried Chicken Biscuit Deluxe, with pimento cheese and bacon jam. The boneless chicken was a little overdone, but I think we may have gotten the very last piece; the bacon jam makes this one though. The bacon, egg and cheese sandwich was pretty good on the toast for $3.50, but I bet it’s amazing on a homemade biscuit. The deluxe also comes in a Supreme version, with a fried egg for 70 cents more.

I give top marks to the sausage (both patty and link), the fire-roasted apples (like apple pie filling) and the blackberry jam. The prices are right on the mark, and the ambience is priceless.

H&H Restaurant

Address: 807 Forsyth St., Macon

Phone: 478-621-7044

Website: www.facebook.com/handhsoulfood

Hours: 7 a.m.-3 p.m. daily

Payment: Cash, credit

Smoking: No

Alcohol: No

Kids Menu: No

Noise Level: Medium

Health Rating: 94

Price range: $3.29-$8.99 for breakfast

Rating: 3 stars

This story was originally published July 3, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Famous H&H Restaurant serves stellar Southern breakfast."