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Where frog legs, grits share a plateFrench chef back in kitchen, this time in small-town Georgia
From Bruce Burkhardt
NEWNAN, Georgia (CNN) -- Like many small towns across the South, snuggled around the courthouse and the Confederate memorial in Newnan are a seed store, a gun shop, and a lawyers office -- and then a surprise: a French bistro. "When we started selling duck here, everybody thought we were going out in the backwoods here, shooting it and bringing it back in," bistro chef Patrick Terrail says. It's been something of an adjustment for Terrail. Most of his customers might be more comfortable with grits than with frog legs. Newnan is a nice town, but it's not Hollywood, where Sylvester Stallone, Jack Lemmon, Dinah Shore, Orson Welles and many other celebrities hung out in Terrail's previous restaurant, Ma Maison. "Of course, everyone knows that Mr. Welles was a staple in our restaurant until he died," the chef says while showing photographs of himself and the actor. "He had his last meal there." During the 1970s and 1980s, Ma Maison was the place to be and be seen in Hollywood, and Terrail was among the first of the so-called celebrity chefs. The restaurant was also where Wolfgang Puck got his start. Terrail describes those times as magical. But the magic ended when Terrail learned he had cancer, and he closed Ma Maison to focus on getting better. Terrail got his health back, and he also married a woman from Georgia. The couple settled in Newnan, and a few years ago, Terrail got back in the restaurant business. There are no celebrities giving the his new place of business a boost. But there is Nell Jackson, who runs the feed store across the street from the restaurant. "We've had reports," she says. "Customers that have eaten there that say its good." But just to keep the record straight, Nell has not eaten at the restaurant -- yet. Meanwhile, that little spat the United States had with the French a while back over the war in Iraq didn't help things much for Terrail's French bistro. If "Liberty Fries" are on most menus around Newnan, then the French-flavored escargots and the quiche aren't exactly going to move like hotcakes in the small town. "The first time I put quiche on the menu – I didn't sell it," Terrail says. "Then one day, I said, 'Maybe I'm not marketing it right,' and I changed it to cheese pie. Now it's our number-one seller." So it turns out frog legs and grits can share the same plate.
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