Hey Y'all!
I feel horribly guilty even feeling this way about Paula....after all she is like America's Grandmother. I have great respect for her cooking, personality and her success....and because I know she is so wonderful....I expected so much more.
Is it a sin to give Paula Dean a bad review?
She is known as one of the world's most popular and greatest cooks. Her southern hospitality and butter filled cooking feeds the souls of people across the country via the Food Network and her countless cookbooks and magazines. 
Simply said, she is my kind of woman. She makes fattening food with lots of butter and her portions are huge. For this reason among many others I was overwhelmed with excitement when a recent trip through Savannah, GA landed me in her downtown restaurant called Lady & Sons.
The restaurant is located in a three story old building in downtown Savannah and connected to the restaurant is a Paula Dean store full of more Paula Dean merchandise than you could ever imagine.
As we walked up to the outside of the building my heart grew with excitement and sweat started forming on my brow....I was about to taste Paula Dean's cooking and I could barely contain myself.
We turned the corner and were greeted by a pack of at least 100 people standing across the street from the restaurant waiting to get seated. These people had arrived around 9:30am to put their name in and be seated in the restaurant at 5pm when Lady & Sons opens for dinner.
I walked over to the host to find out how we could get in and she instructed me to form another "stand by" line on the other side of the street outside the restaurant. The process I watched unfold before me was simply amazing. Paula Dean isn't running a restaurant....she is managing a factory.
The host called every party from across the seat, checked off their name and led them into the restaurant. This process lasted around 15 minutes, after it was complete she then came over to me and the line of 40 people behind me to begin filling the tables that were still left.
Fortunately I was first in line and we were instructed to go inside the restaurant, take the elevator to the third floor and wait to be seated by a hostess. (How exciting to take an elevator in a restaurant!)
Once we were on the third floor we were escorted to our old, wooden, worn down table and old fashioned chairs. We were in a large room which resembled an old warehouse with little decor. It was jam packed full of people elbow to elbow and I felt more like a large cow in a barn then a guest in Paula Dean's restaurant.
The main focus of the menu revolves around the dinner buffet which costs $18 a person. On the buffet is some of Paula's best fattening entrees....mac and cheese, fried chicken, sugar covered yams, baked beans, mashed potatoes, and a salad bar.
For obvious reasons, I opted for the buffet.
However the set up was nothing special....it was an 8 foot stainless steal mobile buffet line with mobs of hungry people swarming around it.
I went up 4 times and each time got a couple of
things on my plate. I attempted to try it all and nothing really moved me like I had imagined. The best thing on the line were the yams and only because they were soaking in a pan of brown sugar.
After I was done stuffing my face with the rest of my fellow cows in the restaurant our server brought out our choice of desserts in little bowls like you would find in a school cafeteria. I chose the "butter cake" which is basically butter, cake and chocolate chips.
A-M-A-Z-I-N-G....by far the best thing at Lady & Sons. Moist and sweet it touched my fat soul in a way like nothing else.
However....the rest of the experience was far from revolutionary. Maybe I'm being too difficult to please, maybe I'm wrong to think that Paula Dean should have the best restaurant on earth...or maybe I just had some bad luck. Whatever the reason, it was far less than I had hoped for.
The atmosphere wasn't very welcoming.
The seating process wasn't warm.
The food was good, but nothing to rave about.
The service was average.
If Paula Dean's name wasn't on the outside of the building I'm not sure how popular it would even be. Clearly it's a tourist destination and is run like a theme park ride....but this ride had little magic.
I feel horribly guilty even feeling this way about Paula....after all she is like America's Grandmother. I have great respect for her cooking, personality and her success....and because I know she is so wonderful....I expected so much more.
Am I going to restaurant hell for not loving Paula Dean's famous restaurant?
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