Garlic-buttered breadsticks are epic at this Macon pizzeria. And, no, they’re not ‘knots’
Editor’s note: This article is part of an occasional series — “Middle Georgia Delicacies” — bite-size homages to fine food offerings, from the unsung to the iconic, at eateries across our region.
When you order, call them what you will — garlic knots, dough knots, garlic twists, bread bites. The folks at Ingleside Village Pizza will know what you mean.
Just do not insist that they are called garlic knots. Because they are not. The menu says so: “Bread Sticks.”
For $4.95 you get a serving coated in Italian Rose garlic spread, sprinkled with shredded Parmesan cheese and accompanied by a plastic cup of pizza sauce. For $2 more you get the sticks unceremoniously slathered in extra garlic goo, which in the establishment’s lingo makes them “Sloppy,” or supremely drenched in said goo.
Whatever their name, these fresh-baked wonders are anything but boring-sounding breadsticks, the likes of which appear to have first emerged locally in the 1980s, marketed by national pizza chains, often in the form of such as goofily dubbed creations as “Crazy Bread.” They had, in various forms, previously been served at fine Italian restaurants.
At Ingleside Village Pizza, the breadsticks begin as strips of dough that are later parbaked. Cooks fashion them by hand, picking up two corners of the strips and twirling them into tightly spun sticks a few inches long. You could call them dough logs or mini buns or bread swirls.
Their origin was by happenstance around the time the restaurant opened in 1992.
“They totally came as a fluke,” the eatery’s owner, Tina Dickson, says. “They were not intentionally gonna be on the original menu. But the small little crew that we hired, two of the guys were just kind of playing around when they noticed that we didn’t have any kind of appetizers. These two cooks came up with it.”
Three decades later, Dickson can’t believe how many orders she has sold.
“Literally,” she says, “they are my bread and butter.”
She also confirms that the restaurant’s doughy delights are, in fact, called breadsticks.
“I had a woman one time, she got really mad at me,” Dickson recalls. “She said, ‘Y’all used to call them ‘dough knots.’ And I’m like, ‘No. No, ma’am, we didn’t. But if you did, we knew what you were talking about.’”
And so it goes, Dickson says, call them whatever you like.
“We’re not gonna give you a hard time. I’m not gonna correct you,” she says. “I will take your money and sell you those things.”
