The Dinner Bell Restaurant

Talk about Soul Food! You can read about this place in Southern Living or ask any blue haired lady within 50 mile and find out this place does southern style right! Egg plant is loved by those that hate egg plant. Fried chicken will make you slap your mama’s mama.
Awesome experience! Giant Lazy Susan with more food than you can taste. This place should be on your bucket list.

Great Southern hospitality and food. Perfect place to eat after a cold morning deer hunt! Fried chicken and eggplant were outstanding along with every type of bean you could imagine… yummy! Time for a nap!

I love Dinner Bell! It’s not only loaded with great food, but the experience itself is fun too. The fried chicken, baked chicken, eggplant, squash, black eyed peas, and banana pudding are some of my favorites! Great tea too!

I’ve been going to the Dinner Bell since I was a boy in McComb. You’re seated communally at a Lazy Susan. Give it a chance, a table full of Southerners is unbeatable. Ice cold sweet tea and a table full of delicious Southern cuisine will not leave you disappointed. My favorites include the fried chicken, fried eggplant, butter beans, sweet potato casserole, and corn bread. Definitely my favorite place to eat in McComb.

Cats… cats everywhere outside. I was really intrigued by this place but when we pulled in there were so many cats. Under each car, darting through the parking lot and when we got out of our car, holy heck the smell. I think there must have been a dead cat (s) in the lot somewhere, not surprisingly. So for some reason we still go in and we’re told there there’s a two+ hour wait… we left. So maybe my review is unfair since we didn’t get to try the food, but…

Such a great experience! A buffet right at your table. You sit at a huge 18 people round table with a Lazy Suzie. All the food is cooked and displayed beautifully… Mind you, it’s great southern food! You sit with a bunch of strangers, but at the end of your meal… You will walking out knowing something about them. Highly recommended… Y’all need to come visit!

Good southern style home cooking at a unique lazy susan style community table. Highly recommend the fried chicken, fried eggplant, chicken and dumplings, and cornbread dressing.

Food was pretty bad… The only good things were the fried chicken and chicken and dumplings. The food I’d give one star. The only reason I added two more was the friendly people who worked there. Our host, waitress, and the owner were all super sweet. I wouldn’t visit again unless the food improves.

They have the best home cooked food! Fried eggplant and fried chicken are my two favorites. The staff and owners are so friendly. Only open for lunch!

Love coming home and coming to eat here! Great food! Sweet people! Definitely a southern place!

I have only been there once; and it was delicious.
My daughter and I stopped to eat there, on the way to Jackson, MS. We were sitting with a group of older people and some younger children ages 9 — 15. The older people and younger children were putting their fingers in the plates of food, when it was their turn to get their helping. A few picked up a piece of Chicken, with their hands, and decide that was not the piece they wanted.. Also, some of the kids where playing with the table. Either they would stop it from turning at all; or they were spinning it real fast; when it was not their turn to get food.
So, next time I go; it will be with a group of people that I know.

While visiting the area and family we decided to try this place …
The thought of a large family meal where there is no cooking needed while everyone gathers around one big table was enticing, but the food left everyone wanting to leave and go home to cook.
The cost is average for a buffet type of meal, but drive an extra few miles and go to Golden Corral if you are seeking buffet style food in the area (will taste better too).
There was a long hair in one of the «fresh» dishes of food, we complained and not even a discount was offered or an apology.
The food was served flavor-​less and mildly warm (as if sitting under a heat lamp)
I don’t see a return

Great home cooked, authentic southern food! It’s a great experience with amazing service and a must try no matter how far you have to travel!

To reply to «ES»! Not from the South I take it!
The food at The Dinner Bell is as good as any I have
eaten at other buffets. It is what a lot of us
Southerners grew up eating.
Your review seems to imply that this is not a
good «dining experience»! Seems you are in
the distinct minority.

First of all, as a long time patron of The Dinner Bell, I would like to clear up a few things. This restaurant does not serve steaks as another poster stated in their review. That review was obviously posted about the incorrect restaurant. Second of all, any person that believes the vegetables at The Dinner Bell to be «canned» must not be a fan of vegetables because this restaurant definitely does not use canned and it is evidenced in their flavor and texture.
The food served at this restaurant is home style southern cooking at its best. The fried chicken is some of the best in the area and the fried eggplant is widely sought after by people across several nearby states. The dining experience at The Dinner Bell is one that will not be experienced anywhere around. The food is served on huge lazy Susan’s and you are seated at a round table that holds 15 – 18 people. Be prepared to wait for a seat because this is one of the most unique and delicious dining experiences to be had in south Mississippi. You don’t believe me? Just watch for the charter buses to pull up in the parking lot that have made a trip from another area just to visit the restaurant.
Give this place a try. You WILL NOT be disappointed. Just remember to save room for the numerous dishes to choose from.

Great down home food and great experience. The best friend chicken and fried eggplant. Ever. They have the coolest round tables with a lazy susan.

If you consider «southern food» to be bland fried chicken and tepid canned vegetables, this is your place!
Okay, I’ll try to refrain from too much sarcasm. But the effervescent reviews on here bewilder and enrage me. Let me just describe this for you.
I walked into the holding pen after a group of about 30 old folks, all waiting for the start of lunch. Fitting, it turns out, because the entire place smells like the institutional cafeteria of a nursing home. This did not bode well.
We were seated at a giant, but incomprehensibly cramped table laden with bowls of side dishes. As I say, most of it looked canned. I think particularly of the flavorless lima beans and green beans, floating limply in water. It’s corn season around these parts, but all you will find at the Dinner Bell is the soggy, furiously boiled once-​frozen things that have no taste.
Maybe you’d think it’d be better with butter. I did. But instead of butter (a staple of southern cooking), all you will find are the little disposable tubs of «whipped spread» (artificially flavored vegetable oil). You can add some salt if the ridiculous table wheel is anywhere near you at the time you need it (rest assured, it won’t be).
The fried chicken was crisp, I’ll give them that. But, in keeping with the theme, it was as if it were prepared for a convalescent who isn’t allowed spice or salt. I am not exaggerating when I say that nearly any fast food fried chicken place would be better. Even Church’s.
But I fear the fried chicken was the highlight. There were some greasy sausages. Fried eggplant that was mostly breading around goo. Dried cornbread-​like muffins. Etc.
It was incredible how fast we all left. Then entire table was done in about 10 minutes. People gorged themselves on bottomless boxed mashed potatoes and were outta there. We left these heaping bowls of bad food on the table for the next seating. And that’s where you really start to wonder. Now this dreary food which has been poked at and left to cool even further will be served to the next group? No warmers, no covers, just big heaping bowls of food, rapidly assuming the temperature most conducive to growing the colonies of bacteria left by those greedily pawing at it.
If you know anything about southern food, don’t go to this place. It is an offense to the idea of food – southern or otherwise.

A great experience. Gives you a feel for the South. Staff extremely helpful and friendly. Round tables. Food moves on large circle in middle so you don’t have to get up. It was $ 12 for lunch on Thursday. You could eat at much as you wanted.
All the great Southern classics were there but my favorite was the fried chicken and sweet potatoes. The choices on the table included pork chops, fried eggplant, lots of different vegetables, dumplings, iced tea, sweet tea, and amazing deserts. The peace cobbler was outstanding as was the banana pudding. Everything included for just $ 12.
Tremendous value for the price. Great experience. Not like a regular buffet since you didn’t have to get up and walk around to get the food. It came to you on a large circular table.
The staff at the Mississippi welcome center as we entered Mississippi from the South suggested the place… they were right. A great place to eat. Not far from I-​55.

Wonderful example of great souther cooking and hospitality.

Lemme set the record straight. If I only had one day left to live on planet Earth I would drop whatever I was doing and book a flight that got me closest to the front door of The Dinner Bell in McComb, Mississippi.
If I landed in Baton Rouge, I would steal a car to get to the Dinner Bell. I would hitchike from New Orleans, catch a ride with a trucker in Jackson. I would crawl to the front door and with my dying breath I would say, «Pass the fried chicken please… and yes I would love some more fried eggplant… and a bit more okra… may as well have just one more catfish filet. Spin that beautiful, giant Lazy Susan just one more time, for old times sake, and don’t stop until the sweet potatoes are in front of me… or the corn casserole, which ever comes first.»
I truly believe one would have to be a bit insane to think Cracker Barrel is better than The Dinner Bell. What The Dinner Bell represents, food aside, makes it 1000 times better than Cracker Barrel. Cracker Barrel may have some long forgotten, dusty roots as an original country store that cooked up original recipe dishes, but there is only ONE Dinner Bell, only one place located in McComb where you sit 17 – 18 to a table, side by side with perfect strangers while a small army of expert cooks emerge from the kitchen to serve bowl after bowl of mouthwatering Southern cooking.
Anybody can follow the bag-​on recipes of a Cracker Barrel or Blackeyed Pea or wherever, but you can’t just learn how to cook like they do at The Dinner Bell. I could master the cooking at Cracker Barrel in two weeks, but I could never truly master the kind of cooking that takes soul and heart and history and depth.
Of course its fried, of course its loaded with real butter… it better be loaded with real butter! I don’t go there for the salad! I go there for the entire experience and I always, always leave happy.
The place better have wear and tear and look old because it is old! Don’t spruce it up, don’t paint it. Cracker Barrels are fake! They’re not real, they’re mirages of restaurants easily packed up and torn down, like carnival tents.
Would I drive out of my way, say 15 hours out of my way, to go to The Dinner Bell for lunch? Yes, because I have and I would do it again. If you believe in the soul-​restoring power of Southern food, God bless my Arkansas born, Louisiana raised grandmother, you should believe in The Dinner Bell… and I live in Chicago.