The Sawmeal Restaurant — Restaurant in Brent

This Restaurant is just ok. It's a fairly large building very rustic inside and out and offeref a buffet. Let's start vwuth our arrival..upon entering. We noticed many of the empty tables had not been clean up at all. We stood around for10 min before someone greeted us. Then they said it will be a few minutes. So we noticed someone came out to clean up a single table..as we watched they didn't even use any kind of sanitation spray they left the seats unclean didn't clean items on table top. Definitely not covid aware. Then we observed they didn't even buss the other tables. Now I'd short staffed I could understand but we observed 4 persons with nothing to do..so we sit down sit at our table ..we quickly peaked at the buffet it was .fried chicken fried catfish beans traditional southern food. However the pans were nearly empty very picked over and just unattractive. The adjacent salid bar was looking raked over.

Out waitress finally approached us 10 mire min later to take our order. She did not smile she was bland inattentive and overworked it appeared.

Our food took 20 min to come out it arrived cold to the touch. The taste was very bland I'm not so sure much love and attention vwss put into its preparation. As we finished up our meal not one person came around to check on us refill our drinks or anything after sitting there for 15 more min we had to flag a waitress down for our check..

Our overall impression is this restaurant enjoys being the only place around in several miles each way. It's local community does not have a lot of choices unless you want to drive a little further. It has potential but you would think the owners would put some TLC on this place. Clean it up. Staff it properly train there employees about customer service. Proper cleaning practices food handling etc. Instead it appears to be just your average unclean uncarrd for restaurant. Do I think tge health department should pay a visit..Absolutely! It might be a wake up call to do it better. Talk to the cooks and prep staff flavor your food quit thinking everything fried has taste.

Guest treat your visit here with reasonable caution. Like I said it...

My family has been eating here for as long as I can remember. Birthdays, funerals, games, it's become a tradtion to have their teriyaki chicken. All these years and we have never had any issues, that is until we did . Our recent purchase of chicken looked, smelled and tasted burnt. We called immediately to explain that 75% of the chicken were burned and they said they would cook us another platter. So we drove all the way back & were then told they were not burned. They said it was because of the teriyaki sauce and the next ones would be the same. We were then told, if we wanted to return them we were going to have to pay for the new ones. I was in shock to say the least. They were most definitely burnt & we've all had them enough to know that. But that's irrelevant really, because when a customer isn't happy with the food they receive, you make it right. Just because they give you a phone number that isn't local, you don't lie to them and then tell them the solution is to pay another $64.00 to fix your mistake. This is how they treat life long customers? I'm beyond disappointed. My family has spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars here over the years and to be done this way is a horrible feeling. They thought I was from out of town and didn't know any better. It doesn't take years of buying the same item again and again to know when something is not right. I'm sure people have had many good experiences here but one should hope they don't have a bad one when this is how they conduct business and treat people. Be cautious of buying from here because you are taking a risk. If they make a mistake, you might be out of your hard earned money and who can afford that these days?

(BTW, my uncle told me that they always open the tray and have you check them before you leave, but they didn't do this with me, why is that? And shouldn't they have taken them back since they didnt do this? If I had seen and smelled them beforehand I wouldn't have left with them and if I had, then that would have been on...

The food was awful what there was left of it. The buffet had NO food on it, what was on it was NASTY!!!! The fish tasted like muddy water catfish, the okra was fried in the same grease as the muddy water catfish. The chicken was so greasy it was dripping out of it. There was no bread whatsoever. The so called hamburger steak was a frozen pattie cooked on the griddle with a piece of cheese on it. The lettuce bowl for salads was empty. The banana pudding was awful. The little blonde waitress with long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and glasses was not just rude she was HATEFUL! I don't think she needs to work in the public or she just hates her job. We had a party of 15 so we ask her if we could pull two tables together so our entire family could sit together and her reply was "no, I may need that table if someone else comes in." Our family could not even sit together. Oh did I mention we had driven 3 1/2 hours for my daughter's wedding which was at a church down the road from this place and we decided to eat there so we could all sit together and we were also told the food was good, boy that was a lie!!! I will NEVER recommend this place to anyone. We basically spent $175 for awful food and horrible service!! NEVER AGAIN. If you're looking for even halfway good food, don't waste your time here. I really wish the review stars would reflect negative reviews. I would give this place a -50. You may think just because I live out of town people won't pay attention to this review but my daughter and her husband have a lot of friends up there and he owns a business there so word of mouth does affect a business. Thanks for ruining my daughter's after...