Paula Deen brings Southern favorites to the Dallas area. Just don't expect a diet plate
Bless her heart — Paula Deen is back.
It has been six years since a former employee alleged that the doyenne of butter-‘n-cream — and her brother — discriminated against her while she was a manager at a Savannah, Ga., restaurant.
In a deposition during the lawsuit, Deen admitted to having used a racial slur, and soon enough, the Food Network had severed its ties with her.
But now her shining visage resides over the new Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen — located north of Dallas (and just south of McKinney) in Fairview — for all to bask in while downing butter-soaked biscuits, chicken and dumplings, beef pot roast and/or creamed corn.
Hardly stuff for the bikini set, Deen’s stock-in-trade traffics in caloric largesse. To dine here is to accept that notion — or to face the deeply unsatisfying consequences.
Take, for example, the complimentary biscuits atop hoecakes, which are summarily deposited on your table pre-meal. Don’t be misled by the flecks of greenery in the biscuit’s crust. These guys are dense, salty and unctuous — about as far as one could get from the current trend to reinvent them as light-as-air.
The food is served family-style, meaning our party of two adults ($18/per) and two kids ($10/per) were directed to select two entrees and four sides.
The options are straight from Southern Comfort Fare central casting — pork chops, fried catfish, meatloaf, mac and cheese, collard greens, coleslaw. The white rice is buttered, the corn and potatoes are creamed, and your diet is toast.
But a few surprises were in store during our weekend lunch. Namely, the food is above average and in some cases, terrific.
A trio of appetizers is available should the regular menu not completely suffice. Paula had me at fried okra ($3.99 for a half order), which was emptied onto a white platter, over an underwhelming garnish of a semi-wilted lettuce leaf. No matter: These lightly frittered pods were excellent, crispy and yielded a discernible vegetable inside, which added fresh zing to the starter. Some of the pieces were actually two-in-one — all the better to dunk in a tangy, honey-fortified, slightly spicy aioli.
The entrees, a platter of dark-meat fried chicken and sticky spare ribs, and the sides — coleslaw, collard greens, creamed potatoes and mac and cheese — were served in simple ceramic stoneware bowls.
Among the standouts, the creamed potatoes — nearly whipped but studded with pieces of more-solid spud — were outrageously good, buttery and then over-the-top when helped along with a few glugs of Paula Deen’s “The Lady and Sons’” signature hot sauce on the table.
The fried chicken, with its thin batter, was not on par with Gus’s or Babe’s, but was reasonably tasty. I didn’t care for the overly sweet glaze on the spare ribs, but they were cooked well, nearly falling off the bone.
I liked the mild coleslaw, which had subtle blue cheese notes, and the collards were not too acidic and kept things interesting with a handful of nubby ham hocks. The mac and cheese was disappointing — clumpy and needing seasoning.
Of course, there’s dessert. With four options available, we were forced to try one of each: the Ooey Gooey Butter Cake, a chocolate Ooey Gooey Butter Cake, banana pudding and peach cobbler. I have no idea what was in the cakes other than the obvious, but they were outstanding. Blondie and brownie-like, the former two were melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and addictive as all get-out. Thankfully, the pudding and cobbler were forgettable.
Despite ordering only one round of all of the dishes — diners can ask for an unlimited amount of servings — we were told by our server that we couldn’t take anything home.
“Paula doesn’t believe in to-go containers,” he said, adding that it would mean the servers would have to police people who would try to take advantage of the situation. That may be, but it seemed a bit wasteful to us.
We were surprised in a pleasant way, however, to learn that if you arrive when the restaurant opens at 11 a.m., your wait for a table is brief, and you hardly have adequate time to get lost in the adjoining Cracker Barrel-esque store that stocks licensed hot sauce and kitchen aids, and items sure to be dear to Deenophiles.
"Butter Y'all" mug, anyone?
Paula Deen's Family Kitchen
- 163 Fountain Court, Fairview
- 844-853-7335
- pauladeensfamilykitchen.com
- Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday
This story was originally published April 25, 2018 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Paula Deen brings Southern favorites to the Dallas area. Just don't expect a diet plate."