Ol’ Clyde's Table and Tavern — Restaurant in Cleveland

Family-owned restaurant and lounge in North Georgia’s wine country best known for house-smoked meats and scratch kitchen

This is a regular go-to either before or after performing at Yonah Mountain Vineyards roughly five miles away. And no matter when I drop in, the dining room is packed and folks are waiting for a table, an indication of how much a hit this spot is with locals and visitors.

Clyde’s is famous for all things meat, especially their smoked brisket sandwich and brisket entree. Since I don’t eat meat, thankfully they have a range of veggie-focused options.

My go-to is the Impossible burger with a side of house-made avocado fries—huge portions, always get a take away box!

On this most recent visit I opted for an order of jalapeño grit fritters. Since they sometimes prepare the grits with chicken stock, the bar tender asked the kitchen if the grits were vegetarian that day. They were!

These were amazing. House recipe of cheesy grits and spicy jalapeños deep fried and served with a spicy mayonnaise-type sauce. These were the clear winner.

Of course, too much to eat in one sitting, so I got a to go box and enjoyed a delicious snack after my gig at Yonah Mountain Vineyards.

There’s also a nice lounge upstairs that I’ve frequented. They don’t serve food up there, but they have a nice selection of local wines and nearly any spirit you might need. Once, while a group of friends and I waited for a table, we shared a bottle of wine in the lounge to pass the wait.

This really is one of the places I look forward to visiting when I’m in North Georgia, meat-focused yet...

We spent the day in Helen and decided to stop for lunch at Clydes Tavern. We had to wait a bit since it was a holiday weekend, which was fine. We had four adults and four teens with us so a bigger party. We completely understand that. The hostess was a sweetheart and very nice. The place is beautiful and I loved the decor. The busser and food runners appeared to work very hard. Then, we had our waitress. She was extremely rude, abrupt, and disrespectful. I’m originally from Boston so I can deal with bluntness but she was beyond rude and didn’t try to hide her displeasure at serving us. We tried to give her the benefit of the doubt since we’ve all worked in the food business before and it seemed busy. Not sure if they were understaffed. She did make sure we had refills. Our food took a long time to be brought out. We understood and didn’t say anything because we were a party of 8. We all were disappointed with our food and a lot of it was inedible. The burgers were not cooked the way we were asked when we ordered and the fries had a gross after taste like the oil they used to fry them in was old. The pulled pork sandwich my daughter got was dry and had no sauce in it as described on the menu. Another member of our party also got the pulled pork sandwich and he couldn’t eat it because it tasted like an entire salt shaker was dumped on it. We didn’t say anything to our server because we didn’t want to pi$$ her off even more. We just wanted to finish our meal, pay, and leave. It was a waste of money and time and will go elsewhere next time. We were very disappointed and hope this...

We were a party of 12 on a Monday at lunch time. Had I known that the only seating that was available was bar height, I would have chosen a different restaurant. I am handicapped, so that type of seating causes me an immense amount of pain. In fact, I ended up getting my food to go and went outside to eat at the coffee shop next door. I so badly wanted to give this place 4 stars, because of the delicious food. I had the pork grilled cheese, with the hot, vinegar based bbq sauce, on Texas toast. The sauce was so good I wanted to drink it!! Everyone in our party absolutely loved the food! The service, not so much! I can honestly say our waitress must have been having a bad day and took it out on us. She spoke over us, argued with us, and in general was plain nasty! I was standing beside my chair due to the discomfort I was experiencing, when she can over with a tray of drinks. She snapped at me in a nasty voice “excuse me”, then deliberately proceeded to push my chair into my leg. Luckily I wasn’t injured, or this would be a complexly different story, with a different outcome.There was an empty table beside us she could have used to set her tray on. Every request was met with a nasty look and some offhand, unneeded remark. Such a shame because this place has wonderful potential. I would love to make it back someday, with a different server, of course. Until then, I’ll be dreaming of that sandwich, and the...