The Southeastern United States is a little different from the rest of the country in its styles of food and the way of serving it. All of this is based on my own experience, so if you don't agree with what you see here, blame it on me.
The two big cafeteria chains in the Southest which feature good Southern cooking are Picadilly's and K&W. The main difference between the two is that Picadilly's is typically located in shopping malls while K&W is more likely to be free-standing or in a strip shopping center.
Both of these do a good job of seasoning their food, particularly their vegetables. My preference at either one is for a vegetable plate and a slice of pecan pie.
Farther west the Luby's cafeterias are just about everywhere. Their food is good, too, but not as well seasoned.
The two big all you can eat buffet chains are Ryan's Family Steakhouses and Golden Corral. Both are good, but Ryan's is a touch fancier and a little higher in price.
I prefer lunch over dinner at Ryan's. Most of the food is the same but the price is lower. The main difference is that the evening meal features a chef custom carving roast beef and ham.
Golden Corral has senior citizen specials which very from location to location, usually based on time of day.
Shoney's restaurants offer a small all you can eat buffet, but also have ordering from the menu. I like to get the soup and salad bar. They may not have it on the menu, but if you ask, you can get it. In most locations that includes hot vegetables and dessert--everything but the meat. Be sure to ask. The soups usually include a vegetable beef soup or chili and either clam chowder or potato soup. The busier locations may have all four. I don't like the meat dishes anyway. Buffet meats tend to be rather greasy and rich. This is a good place for an evening meal because you can fill your belly without paying a dinner price. And they offer a senior discount which you can claim at the cash register when you pay.
The best fried fish you can find anywhere is at Captain D's, a fast seafood chain run by the Shoney's organization. I like to get the fish and fries, and have a couple of extra pieces of fish added on. This gives me all the fish I want, some French fries and a hushpuppy or two. The fish dinner would cost a little more but would also include cole slaw. I don't care for their slaw because it's chopped too coarse. Get the sweet iced tea with all the refills you want, and help yourself to seafood sauce or ketchup. Be sure to wash your hands afterward--they will be greasy. Their other stuff is good, too.
A distant second to Captain D's in the fast food sector is Long John Silver's. Their stuff is ok, but sometimes the fish gets cooked in the same grease as their chicken, and gets a chicken flavor.
There are a lot of expensive seafood buffets in the beach towns. At Myrtle Beach, S. C., I shop the newspaper and the tourist handouts for off-season specials. Some are two for the price of one, or buy one full price and the second eats for half price. Read the fine print on these. Some will add a 15 percent service charge based on the full price, which really cuts into the discount.
Pay attention to advertised menu items. Some places feature stuffed items, like a shrimp split open with a big gob of bread dressing heaped on it. Others have Calabash style, which is fried with a very thin coating of crumbs.
One of the best seafood buffet deals I have found at Myrtle Beach is the Seafare Restaurant's Sunday brunch. The buffet is about half seafood and half traditional breakfast items, but the quality is good. I found their halibut steaks very tender and tasty.
Captain George's on the Highway 17 Bypass at 38th Avenue North in Myrtle Beach is good but expensive. If you're a senior citizen, or could pass for one, call ahead or check the ads for specials. Sometimes you can get two for the price of one.
One place I don't like is Crabby Mikes at Surfside Beach. I ate there once on a two for one special. The waiter tried to steer us to the salad bar first. They had a lot of different kinds of fish steaks, most of which were cooked dry and hard. Their fried oysters were rather meagerly put out on a small buffet at the very back where they could easily escape notice.
If all you want is some good fish and shrimp, some of the Chinese buffets offer good seafood deals. Some of them in the Myrtle Beach area will advertise seafood buffets. These are about half seafood and half Chinese food, but they run half or less than the fancy buffets charge.
Barbecue is something you have to eat where you can find it. There are no big national or regional chains. Many barbecue restaurants are mom and pop operations and may be open but two or three days a week.
The secret to good barbecue is very slow cooking. The traditional method is to burn hickory wood down to the coals, and then shovel the hot coals into the barbecue pit under the meat. A lot of places take some shortcuts, but if the meat is cooked very slowly, it sould be tender.
Barbecue sauce varies from place to place. Most places in the Carolinas will have either mustard-base or tomato-base sauce, but there are some that offer a vinegar sauce which I have never eaten.
In the Columbia, S. C. area, my favorite is Myers Barbecue, just off Interstate 77 at Exit 24. Turn north on U. S. 21 toward the gas stations and it will be the first business on the right. This is a family operation which is now open most days. They have a variety of stuff, but I usually get their chopped pork sandwich with mustard-base sauce.
Getting into Columbia, Maurice's is a very commercial chain offering mustard-base barbecue. This stuff is factory-made at their headquarters in Cayce, S. C., just across the river from Columbia. There are numerous locations around town. Some offer buffet service, others are mostly carry-out.
East of Columbia, on Highway 378 toward the MeEntire Air National Guard base, is Sikes Barbecue. It's open just two or three days a week and features mustard-base. The place is rather rustic. Take your tray through the line and sit down at a picnic table on a bare concrete floor. The food seemed to be better before they took down the posters for their septic tank business.
At Myrtle Beach, S. C., Big D's Barbecue features tomato-base barbecue at their locations near Waccamaw Pottery and Surfside Beach. They offer an all you can eat buffet but I settle for two barbecue sandwiches. The cost is a little less and the two sandwiches are all I care to eat.
Coming south into South Carolina on Interstate 26 in the Spartanburg area, there are a couple of convenience stores which advertise Aunt M's food. They offer a well-filled pork barbecue sandwich that's very tender. The only drawback is they use an out-of-the-bottle tomato base sauce, probably Kraft. They also have some very nice fried potato wedges.
It's not hard to make your own barbecue sauce which is just as good as any of the secret concoctions used by barbecue restaurants. I make my tomato base sauce with a quarter cup of ketchup, a quarter cup of Kraft original flavor barbecue sauce, a tablespoon of yellow mustard, two or three tablespoons of sweet molasses and two or three tablespoons of vinegar. I add some oregano and sage. For open pan cooking I dilute this with a half a cup of water. Mustard base is pretty much the same but leave out the ketchup and commercial sauce. Sometimes I will cook a pork butt or beef chuck roast overnight in a crock pot, pouring the sauce ingredients less the water over the top of the meat early in the cooking. Sometimes I will fry the meat in an open pan and add the diluted sauce so it will cook down and candy the meat.
The time was when tourists driving south were sucked into expensive restaurants if they wanted Southern fried chicken. The fast food chains changed that. Now they just about all offer fried chicken. But if you really want the fried chicken that Southerners eat, try some of the convenience stores, the kind with the gas pumps out front.
Hot food in convenience stores is a fairly new thing. Back in the sixties I traveled all over South Carolina in my work. Some of the local people I worked with, when out in the country at lunch time, would buy a can of beans at a little store. The storekeeper would open it for them and give them a plastic spoon. Later, in the seventies, some of the stores started offering hot beans, served in a plastic bowl. This quickly developed into full scale lunch counter service.
A typical convenience store lunch counter will offer fried chicken and other items to make up a box lunch. There will also usually be hot dogs, sausage dogs, fried potato wedges, and maybe fried chicken livers and gizzards. This stuff sells big time to blue collar workers. For the most part it's carried out. Few convenience stores offer significant seating. Many of the customers prefer to eat at their job sites. My experience has been that after working half a day in the summer heat, I will feel miserable if I sit down in an air conditioned place to eat lunch.
It's unusual for me to find a Chinese restaurant I don't like. They seem to be everywhere, and offer good food at reasonable prices. I like them because they have a style of food which I don't eat at home. I also like the ambiance at Chinese buffet restaurants better than at either Golden Corral or Ryan's. At Golden Corral it seems like the customers are afraid the food will run out before they get theirs. There's a lot of rushing around and unnecessary crowding at the buffet. The Chinese places seem to have a more docile crowd.
The name China Buffet crops up everywhere. Nobody has exclusive rights to this name, and these are not chain restaurants. In South Carolina, the China Buffets in Columbia and Myrtle Beach are very fine restaurants.
I frequent a China Buffet on U. S. 1 (Two Notch Road) which is northeast of Columbia and very handy to Interstate 20 between the Alpine Road and Clemson Road interchanges. It's in a strip shopping center in front of Wal-Mart, and there's a Ryan's Family Steakhouse out by the road. This place advertises over 80 items. There's a fine variety of Chinese food, plus a buffet table of Western style food. I usually start out with some cold peel and eat shrimp, some mussels on the half shell, a piece of baked salmon, maybe a piece of fried fish, and an egg roll or spring roll. Next I fill another plate with cooked mushrooms, maybe some roast beef or the house special beef, house special shrimp, oriental green beans, and some chicken breast meat on a stick. For dessert I'll fill a plate with some chocolate pudding and dessert pastries, and finish with a bowl of ice cream. This is just a sampling, so I may eat entirely different food the next time. The chef here is always trying new dishes so there's often a surprise or two.
The China Buffet at 38th Avenue North and Highway 17 bypass in Myrtle Beach offers similar food, but not as much variety. The Myrtle Beach operation has two or three locations.
On this same stretch of U. S. 1 in Columbia there's a Golden City Buffet down low from the road in a strip center. It's not as fancy as the China Buffet, but the price is the same all day, no increase for dinner, and the food is good. Closer in to town, the first place south of the Interstate 20 interchange, is the Splendid China Buffet. Food here is excellent, too.
Florence, South Carolina, is on the road from Columbia to Myrtle Beach. For a good cheap Chinese buffet, head on into town on Business 20. Don't sucker for the beach route signs. Stay on the main road which curves to the right before making a T intersection with Highway 76. Take a left here and you'll be on the highway to the beach. About a block past McDonald's on the right is the Golden Crown. The building is old and shows a lot of wear. The non-smoking room is much nicer than the worn out smoking room. The selection here is limited. My favorite is meat balls in sweet and sour sauce. There's also batter fried shrimp, fried fish, plus a typical array of Chinese preparations. I always try to get a couple of pieces of carrot cake for dessert. This is a very economical place and attracts a lot of blue collar workers and their families.
Lizard's Thicket is a local chain of traditional restaurants in Columbia. There's one on U. S. 1 a short distance east of the China Buffet and Ryan's. The feature here is home-style Southern cooking in a country-style decor. It's a favorite with locals.
Get off Interstate 95 at the Highway 378 interchange and go a mile or so east into downtown Turbeville, South Carolina. Actually it's a laugh to call it a downtown, more like a wide place in the road. The Chat 'N Chew is a long-established mom and pop type of restaurant. The last time I was there it had switched to buffet service. The food here is as traditional Southern country as you'll find anywhere.