Like a lot of folks on the south side of the Atlanta metro area, my family and I were delighted to see that The Country Kitchen restaurant near Barnesville has gotten a new lease on life.
For years, we spent many a Saturday night in the winter eating catfish and other specialties at the out-of-the-way restaurant on – what else- Country Kitchen Road. (We rarely got to go in the summertime because we were occupied selling produce on the weekends.)
The first time I took Joanne to the Country Kitchen was quite an experience.
She, my grandmother Sarah Harp Minter and I piled into our 1969 Ford pickup and headed south. Somewhere between Griffin and Barnesville on Highway 19-41, we blew a radiator hose.
I pulled onto the shoulder and got out to investigate. The top radiator hose had split right where it connected to the radiator. I took my pocket knife and cut the hose off at the split. Then I loosened the hose on the water neck on the engine and the remaining piece of hose was just barely long enough to reach the radiator and the water neck.
Thanks to a recent rain, the ditch at the place we had stopped had water standing in it. I found a plastic drink bottle and made numerous trips up and down the embankment before I had the radiator refilled.
I left the radiator cap loose, and off we went. Joanne wanted to go back home. I think she was scared of the dark and felt like she was out in the middle of nowhere, but we kept going and arrived at The Country Kitchen without further incident.
When it came time to order our food, Joanne said she wanted a hamburger. I told the waitress to make it a catfish platter instead. You just don’t order hamburgers at a catfish place, but Joanne wasn’t familiar with catfish and thought the fish’s head would look like a cat.
Joanne’s idea of what a catfish really looked like (photo from Google)
Still, she was a trooper, and when the food came she loved it. That was the start of a years-long love affair with that restaurant. Often we’d take my brother along. Sometimes other friends like Kim Drennan went with us. It was always fun.
A few years ago, when it looked like The Country Kitchen was on its last legs, we drove one of our oldest trucks down there one Saturday night to eat what we thought was our last meal there. The idea was to recreate our first trip.
Joanne & Rick on their date night at The Country Kitchen (February 2026)
We drove down this past Saturday – without any mechanical issues – and had some delicious fried catfish.
I ate five, and Joanne was right there with me. We have a couple of big weeks coming up with the Inman Antique Expo on March 6-8 and the Peaches to Beaches Yard Sale the following weekend, but there’s also more catfish in our future.