MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — A new restaurant with an Australian theme is now open in downtown Milledgeville.
Ned Kelly’s Down Under is located at 119 S. Wayne St. and it opened on Jan. 12.
Michael Taylor is one of the managing partners of the group BM&B Investments, which owns the restaurant.
He says the group looked at 13 different locations before they settled on the one on Wayne Street.
“It was just a perfect fit for us,” Taylor said.
The restaurant is named after Ned Kelly, a Australian outlaw born in the 1800s who had a scandalous and complicated life.
Ned Kelly’s Down Under is located right across the street from another one of the group’s restaurants, The Reel Grill – an upscale steak and seafood spot that opened about 10 months ago.
“It’s a little more upscale [referring to The Reel Grill]. We’re not really attracting any of the college students at GMC or Georgia College,” Taylor said. “We wanted to have a place that we could take advantage of them being here.”
Each item on the menu at Ned Kelly’s Down Under has a twist on classic bar food.
The restaurant’s specialty burgers are all named after famous Australians like Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, and Health Ledger.
“Just to give us a little niche,” Taylor said.
He says some of the restaurant's must-try items are the Brisket Nachos and the Olivia Newton-John Burger.
The nachos include tri-color tortilla chips topped with pepper jack and cheddar cheese, smoked brisket, jalapeno pickles, and it’s all drizzled with Korean barbecue sauce and ranch dressing.
The burger named after the ‘Grease’ star has an eight-ounce black Angus beef patty topped with creamy sweet chili dynamite sauce, fried onion straws, lettuce, and tomato.
Taylor says the chicken strips are his favorite, even though he’s not a big chicken strip fan.
“Our chicken strips are probably the best I’ve ever had,” he said.
Taylor says he previously had two restaurants in Macon, Michael’s on Mulberry and Between the Bread Café. He sold them after 27 years.
“I thought I was out of the restaurant business forever,” he said. “Of course, the bug came back and I was ready to jump back in and came to Milledgeville.”
He says he hopes to keep Ned Kelly’s around for a long time.
“We’ve had great response from the people of Milledgeville and surrounding counties, and looking forward to a long tenure here,” Taylor said.
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