Paula Deen’s Kitchen

I was really looking forward to eating at Paula Deen’s restaurant. She is by far one of my favorite personalities on the food channel. I ordered the crap leg and shrimp buffet. The crab and shrimp were both overcooked. The rest of the food on the buffet wasn’t edible. The server gave me half off my bill because I Hardly ate anything. When I went to the front to pay the cashier for my bill she charged me twice as much. I still love Paula Deen as a food channel personality but was very disappointed in her restaurant.

I haven’t been here before, but I just thought I would let everyone know that this business has closed down.

I had a pleasant experience at Paula Deen’s. I had the breakfast buffet. All items were hot and yummy. The French toast sticks were my favorite. They also had a French Toast Bread Pudding that was nice. The service was excellent.

Paula … what are you doing? When was the last time you ate here? I would not keep going but… I am working… follow the steps. Top five reasons not to go here
5) Try not to fry the chicken till it clucks
4) Why does the shrimp smell like amonia?
3) Who hired the servers Uncle Bubba?
2) Stop selling cheap frying pans for $ 100.00 and get back in the kitchen
1) Paula when was the last time you ate here? If YOU would not eat it then why serve it?
Go figure No one here more people at Uno Pizza
Its closed thank God

Waited 40min before we got our appetizers. Food came out literally 2 min later and it was cold. The waitress said that she would get some mac & cheese from the buffet for our kids since it wasn’t available on our menu selection, the kids were very excited and were later disappointed. The chicken tenders that we ordered for our son came w 2 tenders and an ungodly amount of fries, they should have called it the Fries Plate w a side of tenders. My daughter’s pasta came drenched in butter (see pics in gallery). The only reason im giving 3 stars is bc the manager took 50% off the bill

This place wasn’t too bad. Clean, well kept, friendly service. We went for lunch and all got the buffet. $ 13.00 for all you can eat isn’t bad. Free for under 5 and ½ price for under 12. Not a huge selection of food, but the pasta bar was really good. Fresh ingredients to put in. Fresh salad as well. All in all it was good, especially since there isn’t much of a selection of sit down restaurants in Cherokee.

Did the buffet here today and it was quite good!
The shrimp & grits were delicious! Other items were fair to good. The fried chicken was great! The man cooking the fresh pasta dishes was named Sean and he was funny and so kind. My little cousin was joking with him and asked about dessert, which they didn’t have on the buffet. He was kidding around with her about other foods and then showed up with strawberries and chocolates for her for a light dessert. Nice guy!
Prices were decent for a casino buffet. Food could have been fresher/​hotter, but couldn’t complain too much at all.

We went to Paula Deen’s for breakfast. The restaurant was very clean and well organized. I guess they have fixed many of the problems that have been mentioned in the past. Our waiter Eric was very friendly and took good care of us. We got the breakfast buffet which was pretty good. They have a chef on duty to cook eggs to order any way you want them. There is a good selection of fruit, danish, muffins, and other buffet usuals. So as far as breakfast is concerned i give it a thumbs up. Will do a follow-​up review if we try dinner.

As I was walking through the hotel and head toward the restaurant I am overwhelmed by the welcoming scent of capitalism. Before you can find a hostess you are diverted by the face of Paula Deen splashed over every item in the store that acts as the entrance to the restaurant. Saying’s appear on many items that read «Y’all» and «Butter.» There is even Paula Deen’s butter flavored lip balm with her big head on a small tube of chapstick.
Somewhere in the madness there is a hostess. A very young (teen) girl who is in about her 7^th month of pregnancy. The restaurant is big and pretty empty. There is a beautiful view of the creek that runs through the middle of the casino and hotel. We are ushered to a table by the buffet. I ask to move to a window seat (there are about 15 available) but I am told they are all reserved. I inquire about the two dirty ones being cleaned at the time. She stated that the moment they are cleaned they will be marked reserved. So I ask how to get on the wait list for a window table. I am then promptly taken to a window table. However, it’s the one at the end where construction is going on and one of the panels is blacked out by trash bags. She then explains how service will now take awhile since this waitress was double sat. So I guess she showed me. She then went to the waitress and pointed at us and rolled her eyes. I feel at home.
The waitress Kelly was the sweetest thing ever. She was super friendly and got a drink order right away. I guess the hostess didn’t give her enough credit to handle two table at one time. Kelly did a great job. It’s the only reason I am giving this two stars.
The food. I just don’t get it. And being from Savannah I expected more. Bob got the Bag Lady Lunch with the crab stew. The stew (if you can call it that) was a bland disappointment that was more flour and cream than crab. I got the chicken pot pie that was delivered with the promise of being a super hot plate «Be Careful» was the quote. Whenever I am told this I immediately touch the bowl and the shit was cold. The top was covered by lattice work of pastry that I could imagine was made days prior and kept in a tub until needed. The pie itself was cold and bland. No steam rising from the dish and not anything to be proud of.
As I make my way out the hostess wanted to take one more jab at me. So in the most syrupy and sarcastic way she said «Y’all have a great day.» Can you say bitter party of one???“
Walking back through the store there is a box set of 5 pots ‘n pans for sale if you want to go home a recreate the crap you just ate. But I think you would be better off just using your microwave so your at home pot pie will be hotter. Later that night we had dinner at Brio. The bartender there told us that next year when Paula’s contract runs out she would no longer have her name on the restaurant. If I was her I’d haul my ass up there as fast as I could before they ruin her southern charm reputation.

I always wanted to try Paula Deen’s cooking in Savannah and jumped at the opp to do so while on a cabin trip. As soon as we walked in we were greeted with a warm, fake smile lol thats southerners for ya! Anyway, we sat down and decided to go buffet style.
I hate catfish and that was the only fish that was on the line so I decided to try it. GLAD I did. That fish tasted like chicken! LOL Seriously, it was battered and fried in cornmeal perfection. The mac n cheese was disappointing and so was the waitress who gave my beau a refill on the sweet tea [amazing tea might I add] anyway, she tried to pore the tea from the side of the pitcher [like she’s seen someone do it before and wanted to to try it out on US] and tea spilled on the table. SHE KEPT LOOKING AT IT. I wanted to see how long it would take for her to wipe it up. SHE DIDNT but she KEPT looking at it. Idk if it was a passive-​aggressive move or not but it was funny at the time. Either way, she knew SHE did it.
Back to the food. The Catfish was amazing. Those Hoe Cakes were greasy — those greasy hoes! They were pretty good tho. The Mac, eh. The Cajun Shrimp & Grits were… different. The sweet tea was SWEET!
Overall, Im glad that I had the opportunity to check it out.

Paula Deen? Why would you put your name on this catastrophe of a sh*t restaurant?
The food looks like I took a popsicle stick and scraped the walls of my a** crack after a took a fat a** sh*t and put it under a heat lamp for 5 days.
The only bright spot was the rib eye I ordered. It wasn’t the greatest tasting steak I’ve ever tasted, but it was grilled to perfection. I asked one of the employees coming out from the back to give props to the cook who cooked my steak and he told me that the Filipino guy cooking it always gets compliments on it. I never knew there were Filipinos living in NC. Wtf…
1 star for the nasty looking buffet food. An extra star for the Filipino guy grilling steaks in the back. Give that guy a promotion or a raise.
Other than that do not come here to eat.

I was here the weekend after opening weekend. Then, I was so excited and thrilled with the Paula Deen restaraunt. Now… a completely different story.
It’s gone from a made to order restaraunt with buffet options — all of high quality food, to a completely mass produced operation. I’ve done both the buffet and made to order several times since then and they are exactly the same, so don’t expect your made to order to taste better than the buffet. The Breakfast Buffet — meh. some of the options are tasty but they don’t flip the food often enough for it to be hot and fresh. Also, they keep retracting more and more off the buffet including the fresh pastries are all store bought garbage now, and the end of the buffet doesn’t even have offerings anymore, just empty spaces. If you want a made to order omette, it’s not even a good reason to order the buffet, because they already have omlettes on the menu at a much cheaper price.
Just recently they are now offering a all you can eat crab legs and raw bar from 1 – 7 on Sundays. Fine, sounds great… but what does this have to do with Paula Deen? As a matter of fact someone that works there made a comment that Paula will be taking her name off of it when her contract expires. I don’t blame her if it’s true. It’s a restaraunt without an identity and bland food that just happens to have Paula Deen’s name on it.

Well, I have to say… not sure why this place got bad reviews. The day my mom and I visited we had great service and food, and the prices are great.
We both had the chicken salad sandwiches, served on a croissant. It came with homemade potato chips and homemade pickles. Everything was really good and the portions were huge… lol.
We were going to sample dessert, but were too full… maybe next time. :)

First, let me just say that Paula Deen is not my kind of chef (mostly cause she is NOT a chef)…Purring 5 gallons of butter and smothering it with 10 pounds of cheese on top of that is not what I call genius cuisine. But that was the only available sit-​down restaurant option at Harrah’s casino– other than the buffet (not a buffet-​kind of person here, unless it is the Carnival buffet at the Rio, or the Bellagio buffet).
Big mistake. BIG waste of money and time. The food was absolutely horrendous… bland, badly cooked, and uninspiring. We had the peach bbq salmon (over-​cooked and then brushed on with tons of peach preserve marmalade) and the crab stuffed flounder (which was not stuffed, just a pile of imitation crab meat sitting on top, and not seasoned whatsoever… tasted like plastic). The garlic broccoli was actually good (probably cause of the butter) and so was the bread and –guess what? yes!- butter. Other than that I wouldn’t eat there again if they paid me. The cherry on the cake? It was the wine… some kind of Spanish Chardonnay I stupidly ordered (but only defense the choices were limited and unknown) the was the most God awful drink to have ever been served (plus it was chilled to death… like, I almost got a brain freeze).
How is that woman a success? What on earth is going on here? I need her secret!

This place fits the bill.
While at the casino we were able to be filled to bursting over with great food and deserts.
Go for the buffet, it truly is the best bang for your buck, and hey, you are at a casino so you must always go with the buffet!

Paula herself is definitely not cooking here. In fact, I think she’d be embarrassed to serve the food they serve here! Nothing is fresh. Buffet has salad bar, classic comfort foods, and mini dessert bar. They also have a menu with dinners. However if you order a dinner they serve on the buffet, they take it from the buffet! So you might as well get the buffet! The fried chicken was good, but not any better than a fast food chicken place! The service is slow, even if it’s not busy. We were disappointed with food quality. Paula can’t be proud of this place!

Paula Deen… girl you know I LOVE YOU!!! We had the privilege this Spring to visit your latest version of «Butta lovin’» restaurants. I’m not sure if the buffet at this location meets the bar set by your world famous Savannah location Lady & Sons… but we enjoyed our meal. You décor is inspiring, we loved every color choice and craftsman detail your designers put into creating this location. Better yet were the really nice table views of the river. The kids got a kick out of the electronic gadgets that show your order as well as play a few games to pass the time until your food arrives. We as parents thought that was BRILLIANT!!!
I was in complete battle with myself over the Buffet or the Catfish, which I think you may have purposely done to torment me. Should I have your delicious fried chicken or go for my favorite fish??? Almost couldn’t make the call, but then I walked over to the buffet area and saw how severely limited the choices were and decided to order the catfish instead (which was excellent). I don’t know if I should say this out loud, but one of your servers understood my torment and brought me three wings from the buffet to ease my suffering (without my asking). I thought that was awesome of her and left a generous tip. That thoughtfulness to go above and beyond to make our experience great was a highlight of our visit.
What can I say Paula, I’m definitely a fan of YOURS. So, even though I wasn’t very impressed with the buffet… it doesn’t detract me from visiting again when we are in the area. My only hope would be that you offer a little more selection for the money on the buffet (like catfish) by the time we visit again. Love, your humble devoted patron.

The only thing I knew about Paula Deen before this was that she had pots and pans at department stores. We were staying at the hotel for 3 days and there aren’t many food options in Cherokee.
So we go for dinner at 5:45pm. We’re told the next opening isn’t until 7:15. OK, again not too many options in town. We come back and are told we can’t be seated until 7:15 and would have to come back at that time. It was 7:10.
So we’re seated. I ordered the crabcake sandwich with fries and a side of mac and cheese. My dad got the buffet. The waitress was way overworked and had too many tables, so it was hard to get her attention.
So the waitress finally brings my meal but instead of mac and cheese she brings cole slaw (which I’m not fond of). So I said that I had ordered mac and cheese. She brings back two.
As for the food, the crabcake had too much binding. The mac and cheese was ok (I can make better). I wanted desert, but the waitress brought the check without even asking if we wanted desert.
Service definitely needs improving. And if this is the type of food in all of the cookbooks in the gift shop, I’m glad I didn’t buy any.

We made a reservation that morning, but upon arrival were told we would have to wait. The hostess gave us the standard square led-​lit waiting thing-​a-​ma-​jig and told us to sit in the lobby. I suppose we could’ve wandered around the little Paula Deen themed cracker barrel-​esque store, but with the Casino already being a lengthy walk from the Hotel, we just wanted to sit down.
We were buzzed to the Hostess stand after about 5 minutes only to be escorted into a dining room that had only had 4 other tables occupied. I guess they must’ve been short staffed and didn’t want us waiting without drinks, because all the vacant tables were spotlessly clean.
When my wife ordered the Fried Chicken off of the menu for $ 14, they tried to up-​sell her to the buffet for $ 1, but she insisted on the plate. The chicken had obviously been sitting there for at least a little while from what we could tell on the way in, and the rest of it didn’t look very impressive either. After verifying that the Chicken would not come from the buffet we went ahead with the rest of our order and settled in to wait.
The view out the windows of the little creek running through the middle of the Casino property was lovely, and during the day you can assume there might be some interesting people watching to hold you still while you wait for the food. We received a complimentary bread basket about 5 minutes after placing our order, and the bread was mildly stale (or just baked improperly). We received the rest of our food about 15 minutes after that.
Of everything we tried, my Mother-​in-​law liked her Crab Soup the best after she applied liberal amounts of paprika. I thought it was too salty. The same thing for the mashed potatoes & gravy. The gravy was okay, but the potatoes were extremely salty, and there was something else that tasted ‘off’ about them. They kinda tasted like someone had mixed in some bread and tarragon, shouldn’t have, and then put some more in for good measure. The mac & cheese barely tasted of cheese, and almost entirely like pasta that had been covered in milk & then put into a colander to drain for 15 seconds. It would’ve been nicer if it had burnt, crunchy bits on top from a well baked, home-​style mac & cheese.
The chicken plate was massive, so at least that was nice. It came with a thigh, breast, drum & a wing. The fry on it was okay, but really lost a lot of flavor once it cooled down. Attempting to give the chicken a 2^nd chance in the room an hour later didn’t go over nearly as well, but at least by that point there was bourbon involved.
We had difficulty in getting the attention of the waitress after placing our initial order, and she didn’t offer to get us refills until everyone had already finished eating.
There were 2 or 3 other menu items that I’d have been willing to take a bite of, but for having Paula’s name attached to it I expected a little bit more. I love southern cooking, home-​style cooking, and the idea of just about anything else that might appear on a Paula Deen menu were you able to name it aloud, but at that place & time, our table left with the 100% consensus that we didn’t ever want to eat there again.

Overall disappointing. 45 minute wait didn’t bother me. Be prepared to wait when you come. I got the chicken pot pie, and I’ve had that in savannah at Paula’s Lady and Sons, but here it was very blah. I’ve had chicken pie at a cafeteria that was as good. The chicken is tough, odd tasting, and the creamy filling tastes as though it was cooked a couple of days ago (or they let the roux get way too brown). My server was fine. Nothing out of the ordinary. At least she wasn’t bad… The kitchen staff that cooks for their small buffet-​like live station area (do not expect the buffet you get in savannah!!!) is dopey. They dropped items during their cleanup several times. I heard a lady at a table next to mine complain her steak was tough. Sweet tea doesn’t come with a sprig of mint like savannah.
Really, I would find somewhere else to eat. The wait is definitely not worth the food or experience. I was really excited about this place but am leaving disappointed. Not even close to the usual Paula Deen experience I am used to!