It's not often that I miss the thing to order at a restaurant, but I did this time. Not that I did wrong, starting with fried green tomatoes and moving on to their chicken pot pie topped with a haphazard checkerboard of puff pastry. I could probably just made a meal out of a plate of their corn hoe cakes and a tub of butter.

But the thing to order at The Lady and Sons is the Buffet. Fried chicken, collard greens, creamed corn, macaroni and cheese, creamed potatoes, rice and gravy, butter beans, cheese biscuits, peach cobbler and a few specials. That's what I'll do next time - for either lunch or dinner.

The lady of Lady and Sons is Paula Dean, of TV and Cookbook fame.

July 2004