Backroad Buffets & Country Cafes: A Southern Guide to Meat-And-Threes & Down-Home Dining

Once they dotted the landscape like McDonald's and Burger King. Every town big enough to have a stop sign (and some that didn't) boasted of one or more meat-and-three restaurants that featured country food and plenty of it. When the lunch whistle blew, everyone from lawyers and laborers to tourists and truck drivers stopped what they were doing and headed to the local establishment. These days, these country cafes and backroad buffets are as endangered as old barns, the victims of fast-food restaurants and frantic work schedules.

But thanks to this new guidebook covering the states of the Deep South, you can now find your way to over 200 of these gems. To add even more flavor, well-known Southerners such as John Berendt, Roy Blount, James Lee Burke, Jan Karon, Larry Brown, Willie Morris, and Lee Smith describe some of their favorite backroad eateries.

Don O'Briant has been a journalist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for 25 years. He has also written Looking for Tara, Atlanta, and several books using the persona of good ole boy Sonny Bubba.