Talk about a blast from the past!…read more
No menus needed buffet style!
We were in Sumter for my daughter's swim meet and drove past Shoney's. Where we're from, every Shoney's closed down years ago, so I probably hadn't eaten at one in close to 30 years. I grew up eating that breakfast buffet, so when I saw that sign, there was really only one option:
MAKE THE U-TURN.
We had driven about three hours, hadn't eaten breakfast yet, and rolled into Sumter around 11:30 a.m. Thankfully, they serve breakfast until 2 p.m. on Saturdays, which immediately made this place a winner in my book.
The buffet itself isn't huge, but it had the classics: scrambled eggs, sausage links, pancakes, French toast, biscuits and sausage gravy, home fries, grits, fatback, little chicken bites, strawberry topping, syrup, plus a salad bar.
And then there was the bacon...
Apparently everybody in Sumter had the same idea we did because the bacon was GONE when we got there. We stayed about 40 minutes and never saw another batch come out. Bacon was clearly the celebrity of the buffet that morning.
Thankfully, the sausage links came through! They had a slightly sweet, almost maple-sausage flavor and were really good.
My wife enjoyed the salad bar too. She wasn't a fan of the beets and said they tasted a little strange, but everything else she had was good.
One thing newcomers should know: the buffet line is less of a "line" and more of a choose-your-own-adventure. There didn't seem to be a clear starting point or direction, so people would jump in wherever the food they wanted happened to be. Nobody was rude about it, but if you're expecting everybody to start at one end and work their way down... abandon that dream immediately.
The only real downside for us was the temperature inside. It was pushing almost 100 degrees outside, and inside felt somewhere around 78-79 degrees. It wasn't unbearable, but after coming in from that kind of heat, I was definitely hoping for that glorious restaurant AC where you need a jacket after 10 minutes. We did not get that.
Service, however, was excellent. Everyone we interacted with was friendly, helpful, and welcoming even though the restaurant was pretty busy. They also appeared to allow buffet to-go orders, which I thought was pretty convenient.
For two adults and one child, we were right around $55. A little higher than I remembered Shoney's being--but then again, the last time I was regularly eating here I probably wasn't the one paying the bill.
Most importantly, the food tasted like I remembered it.
And that was worth the stop.
There are certain restaurants that instantly take you back to being a kid, and Shoney's did that for me. If you remember places like Quincy's and Ryan's, then you already know exactly the kind of nostalgia I'm talking about.
Was it perfect? No.
Was I hot? Yes.
Did I eat entirely too much? Absolutely.
Would I make that U-turn again?
Without hesitation.