Quinet’s Court

“We use the area’s finest hobby chefs’ recipes often,” boasts the printed menu of Quinet’s Court, where the choice of items on multiple buffet tables is cornucopic. Although presented in big institutional pans on room-length steam tables, most of the dishes do seem like home cooking at its finest – from cake-smooth corn bread to stuffed peppers to cream pies, cobblers, cookies, and pudding.

While we love the baby back ribs, kielbasa, chicken casserole, and ham loaf with pineapple glaze, we are even more smitten by Quinet’s vegetables. Indeed, this is a smorgasbord that vegetarians might pray to find in heaven. The selection is staggering. Silk-tender butter beans, sweet hunks of carrot, scalloped potatoes, homemade noodles, 5-cheese mac & cheese, and baked beans fill a plate with a variety of flavors that add up to a memorable meatless meal.

The buffet rule is that you pay one price and help yourself to as much as you want. A sign at the beginning of the first table does warn, however, that a surcharge will be added to the bill of anyone who wastes food. Our waitress was generous. As we walked in the door, early during lunch hour, we noted a couple of beautiful sticky buns in a pan leftover from breakfast. When we asked her if we could have one, she brought it, no charge, and told us simply to consider it as part of our lunch buffet.

Accommodations are appropriately capacious: big tables in several spacious dining rooms. Décor includes an awesome picture of prize fighter Jack Dempsey (who ate here in the 1940s) and a thousand of pictures of town history and local citizens. It is possible to dine non-buffet style: breakfast, lunch sandwiches, and a selection of hot meals listed on the menu under the heading, “Great Specials For Our Not So Hungry Friends.”

(Thanks to Adam P. of Charleston, SC, for tipping us off to this great place.)