Old Country Store

Took a California cousin to this restaurant several years ago (not my first visit!) and she was apprehensive based on the outside. By the time we had made a first trip to the buffet, she was in awe and made two trips back. We were very fortunate that a group from a visiting Canadian Choir were also dining and one of the gentlemen joined Mr. D in serenading us all. What a great experience. And I can’t say enough about the quality of the great home style Southern country cooking. Tastes just like my Mother’s!

This place is an eclectic hole in the wall located in a former general store on the side of US 61. Lunch is buffet style, but Mr. D. sure whips up the best fried chicken ever. It’s crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. He not only sang to us at our table, he gave us a signed chicken guarantee. This was definitely worth the stop. Yum! Oh, and the wait staff was very attentive too.

I needed a little road trip time in my old Landcruiser so I loaded up and headed south on the Natchez Trace.
This place is a great destination lunch spot to combine a great Trace drive and lunch.
The building is awesome. The service is awesome. The owner is awesome and of course, the fried chicken is awesome. The sides are OK but I’m fine with that. That just means more room for chicken.

Even at slack time, mid afternoon on a Wed, the fried chicken exceeded my expectation. Hard to do, but managed to leave room for half&half cobbler. Great all around experience !

Best Fried Chicken !! Don’t tell my momma.

Chicken was outstanding! Juicy! Biscuits were fabulous! Just like mom used to make! The owner is so personable and everyone else working there were so friendly!

Wow, mr. D. kan met kip toveren.
Stop hier en eet je lekkerste kip ooit
Aanrader
That was Dutch, it says
Wow, mr. D. can do magic with chicken.
Stop here and have your best — ever — chicken
Highly recomendable

Absolutely the best fried chicken I have ever had. My piece was piping hot, juicy and so tender you could suck the meat off the bone. My greens were seasoned just like my grandfather did them and the cornbread was perfect. This is the perfect stop with wonderful people and food.

Omg. Best. Fried. Chicken. Ever. And then, get to okra/​tomatoes side and mix it in with your Mac and cheese! And for dessert you can mix the peach AND blackberry cobbler together and get the best of both worlds! Mr. D even songs to you as you eat! We will definitely be back! When you’re done with lunch, go find the lost town of Rodney. (Ask for directions) take a drive down the Trace and visit as many sites as possible! Great day trip with the hubby!

Loved this place such a great atmosphere! Mr. D is the best and serenades you while your dining! Alton Brown voted it the «Best Fried Chicken on the Asphalt!!» And that’s no lie! Come with an appetite! As Mr. D says, «if you leave hungry it’s your fault!»

One of the best buffets I’ve ever had. The food is amazing and staff are super friendly. Mr D is the chef and also entertains by singing to his guests. I loved the place so much I bought a t shirt for memories. If your in the area come in at lunch it has great pricing.

What a great place! Fried chicken IS the best. We enjoyed the sides, some more than others, but all good quality. Mr D serenaded us and the staff very friendly and efficient. My husband ordered the berry cobbler with ice cream which was delicious too! We left there stuffed and glad we stopped.

What a great authenic southern meal house. Excellent fried chicken, potato salad, dressing, cooked greens and more. If you are driving the Natchez Trace you have to make the short trip off to this place in Lorman. Lil D was our our host and he sang us a song about his cornbread cookin granny. This fried chicken has to be one of the best in the country!

Should be more dollar signs! Pricy ! Fried chicken fantastic and cobbler equally yummy but shocked by bill. I don’t eat enough to justify. On the plus side the serenade by cook/​owner made it all worthwhile and I wasn’t hungry rest of the day!

Superb fried chicken in a wonderful surrounding exists in this Lorman restaurant. And, Arthur Davis is a very friendly entrepreneur. I took some video of him singing and doing a two-​step, but apparently the post did not happen on Unilocal.
Anyway, this is a special place in a 130 year old general store. You will leave with a smile on your face and a sated tummy. It is worth the detour if you are headed down I-​20. You will not regret it.
The buffet also includes vegetables and corn bread. It is all you can eat, but the chicken is the star. The vegetables are mediocre and the rolls and cornbread are so dried out that they are not edible. It is also best to get your chicken when they just put it out and call out «hot chicken».

AMAZING SOULFOOD!
food that will feed your emotions and keep you happy!
This is a store/​restaurant in one, really nice to look at while you enjoy your wonderful meal.
Once you walk in the door and make your way around some of the antiques setup, you then walk your way to the back left into an open room with a buffet.
The buffet is amazing! Fried chicken, casserole, beans, salad, meatballs, green beans, mustard greens, coleslaw, and everything in between!
The sweet old man (owner) came out of the kitchen and started singing some blues to everyone! We couldn’t help but have a good meal and smile the entire time. Such a pleasant visit!
Oh, and don’t forget the blackberry cobbler! It’s a MUST

After seeing Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt about this place several years ago and reading many of the more recent reviews we decided to add a detour by 2 hours to a road trip weekend.
For those of you used to Interstate convenience… this isn’t it! You drive from Natchez, if coming from the south and go about 20 miles on further up. The road is plenty wide and fast and very little traffic. If on Interstate 20 traveling through or visiting Vicksburg, MS the go south on Hwy 61 about an hour.
The business sits literally in the middle of no where! The building has been there since the late 1800s and is/​was a large store serving the community.
It suddenly appears on the side of the road, mixed in with the Pine Trees. We went arrived at about 3 p.m. And there were 4 cars there. Even though the information was that they stayed open until 6 on Friday I was afraid the weather and little traffic had caused them to close.
Finally saw the small open lighted sign in window and pulled in.
As I said, the building is old and actually a very large structure for the time frame. I reckon folks back them looked at it as a WalMart as they sold everything from groceries to farm implements and feed to fabric.
We went inside and were greeted warmly by a younger man, and saw what I knew had to be the infamous Mr D talking to the group of 6 people at the only table with customers. He was singing as they say he does often. I mean serenading the table!
I went to the restroom and in the unused portions of the building saw probably several thousand business cards tacked to every wall and every nook and cranny. Many were yellow with age so it is obvious that this place was doing business well before Food Network and Southern Living made it famous.
We were directed to the two Buffett style steam tables and told to help ourselves.
Let’s start with the CHiCKEN since that’s what we came for.
There was a huge stack of fried chicken on one table. It had all the pieces of course and they were all huge. None of the splitting breasts into two or three servings as many modern chicken joints do.
These were most likely the largest breast and thigh pieces of chicken I have ever seen or eaten. They were crusty golden brown but not in the hard crispy way as Popeyes or Churches. Did I mention they were huge!
I took a single breast which filled a large oval plate.
The sides were purple hull peas, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, green beams, turnip greens, macaroni and cheese, chicken and rice and ribs as well. There was also cornbread and biscuits.
I got the purple hulls and sweet potatoes and a little chicken and rice.
The place has a lot of table filling the large space and all are covered with white table clothes which gives it a little dressier feel.
Taste
The crust or breaking on the chicken was crispy but not hard and appeared to be floured not dunked in batter. It was still boy inside. The crust was very well seasoned and reminded me of my grandmothers fried chicken which she used to cook in an old old electric skillet.
It was very very moist and flavorful inside and not at all dry as most breast tend to be.
Overall that it would in fact certainly rate up on the scale of being the top one or two best restaurant fried chicken we had ever had. Very old country home cooked style. It was certainly where others claimed it to be.
The sides were NOT the best I have ever had.
They did all appear to be fresh and I would guess locally grown.
They were good but I have eaten at a lot of «soul food» places in my life and these were not at that level. Grantee we were there in the middle of the afternoon so that could have affected it as well.
If one has not eaten many fresh vegetable «soul food/​country cooking» before they will most likely enjoy these.
The cornbread and biscuits were tasty enough but dry. Once again it was the middle of the afternoon and I doubt they were fresh.
Desert was a blackberry and peach cobblers with ice cream.
They were very good but again in my opinion not the best I have every had. No complaints about them really.
Over all the meal for 2 with 2 cobblers with ice cream and two really good sweet teas came to $ 37.00. keep in mind thIs is a Buffett and you can get more so the price is really pretty good!
I was more than full from the huge breast and my wife had the same and also a large thigh which, as dark meat usually is, but more so… very tender and juicy!
The 2 young women and young man were very nice and service was great. Mr. D appeared to be congenial but I was sort of surprised that after the other table left and we were the only one in the place that he didn’t at least speak as he passed by a couple of times. I didn’t want or need a song, but rust expected more from the owner on a slow business day.
If you are traveling on Interstate 20 through or visiting Vicksburg, MS or south visiting Natchez (both really cool old towns with civil war history) the get on Hwy 61 from either and go EAT!

If you’re a student of southern cuisine then this is a place you must visit. Famously known as the place that serves the fried chicken that celebrity chef Alton Brown claimed was the best he’d ever had, this restaurant provides an authentic experience in all that is good and simple about southern cuisine.
Enjoy a wide variety of southern staples from their buffet while being serenaded by the owner who sings soulfully about his cornbread queen!

What a FANTASTIC spot. Worth every minute of turning off the Natchez Trace and onto interstate61. Park outside and head straight inside. At the back of the 140 year old store you’ll see Arthur Davis — creator of the wonderful fried chicken that is known for miles around. It’s a buffet, so just grab a plate and fill up with everything that’s on offer. The okra was delicious, corn on the cob, dirty rice, potato salad and lots of fried chicken.

I don’t reckon’ Mr. D reads Unilocal reviews and I don’t blame him. But here it goes.
I am a native Mississippian now living in Portland, OR. My last visit home, I grabbed my Grandma and we took a trip down to Lorman.
It was rainy and cold. It was a Monday and we were the first people there. We got there at about 11:30, and knowing what I know now, it’s probably best to get there a little later on – say 12 – 2 — for the lunch rush.
But, there it was: the mound of fried chicken straight out of the fryer. I am a cook in Portland, hopefully at some point to «specialize» in fried chicken, so I was ready to be schooled in the craft.
It was perfect. So tender and juicy. The salt was just right and it was crunchy and pulled away from the bone like it’d never been attached.
The other buffet items are about as classic as a Mississippi buffet can get. Enjoy them in their simplicity, but know that’s what real Mississippi dining looks like.
It’s an interesting old antique shop. Nothing on the walls are for sale, but there’s a comfort to that.
Grab some cobbler and a cup of coffee before you head back out.
Mr. D was kind enough to come chat with me for a few minutes. It really meant a lot. I’m truly humbled by this man. He has so much love for what he does and the people he feeds. His story lives on through that store and with the food he puts out there.
Was thankful to have had the opportunity and will most definitely visit the next time I’m in town.