Call it soul food, or call it country cooking.
Whatever you call it, it’s the way that many people around here grew up eating.
Now, there’s a new restaurant option for this type of cuisine in Milledgeville, and it’s a buffet, because who doesn’t love buffets?
Green Tomato Buffet opened to the public on Monday. By Tuesday, after the restaurant had gotten the word out on Facebook, there was a line out the door during lunch.
The restaurant is located in the Milledgeville Mall, in a space once occupied by JC Penney. There’s only one point of entry, and it’s a standalone entrance, separate from the mall interior. The buffet was $14.50 after tax, and that includes a drink, although there are reduced prices for senior citizens, military, law enforcement and children. It’s slightly more on the weekends.
For anyone familiar with Ole Times Buffet, based in Macon, Green Tomato is a similar concept, focusing primarily on three things – the salad bar, the country cooking and the dessert line.
So, how is the actual food? Well, when grading a restaurant like Green Tomato, it’s perhaps best to use four specific menu items as the barometer – macaroni & cheese, cornbread, banana pudding and fried chicken.
• Macaroni and cheese – Is it made with real cheese and tastes like grandma’s, or does it look like it came out of a box? This is the litmus test. In the case of Green Tomato, the macaroni & cheese indeed was made with real cheese. In fact, there was ample cheese, and the “cheese pull” was genuinely impressive. Despite being a buffet, Green Tomato’s macaroni & cheese is really good, flavored well, and stacks up against any restaurant macaroni & cheese in Milledgeville.
• Cornbread – The cornbread was moist and sort of mimicked Jiffy cornbread, not that this is a bad thing.
• Banana pudding – The banana pudding was really good and flavored well. The top layer actually mimicked more of a merengue, and the bananas and wafers were both fresh. “Chef inspired” might be a bridge too far, but Green Tomatoes banana pudding is really solid.
• Fried chicken – The restaurant owners should go back to the drawing board on this one. The fried chicken was somehow dry and greasy at the same time. Also, the cut of chicken wasn’t very meaty, leaving the meat-to-skin ratio all out of whack. But, hey, no $14.50 buffet is perfect.
The menu is relatively expansive. Included in one station is pickled beets, crab salad, carrot salad, potato salad, pasta salad and chicken salad.
In terms of niche country cooking menu items, at least on Tuesday, there were chicken gizzards and fried whole catfish.
The layout is spacious and modern. There are very large windows looking into the Milledgeville Mall. In other words, the owners did a really good job on the interior.
Green Tomato Buffet is open seven days a week, and the hours of operation are 11 a.m. til 9 p.m.