Sam's Original Restaurant — Restaurant in Fairfield

Google has this listed as barbecue for some reason, but it’s actually an American style buffet.

Super cute restaurant! Had a cool old car out front. Very clean place with a relaxed atmosphere. It was pretty empty which for me is a plus (probably due to the weird time and day we came, a Thursday at 3pm.)

Service - We were seated nearly instantly. We were asked if we wanted menus, and we opted for menus. When seated, a nice older lady came and took our drinks. She offered us fresh warm bread and cornbread. Our drinks were always full. At the end, she offered fountain drinks to go which is always a plus in my mind :)

COVID - This was my first time being back at a buffet since COVID, but thankfully they were being extremely clean. They had someone consistently cleaning the buffet.

Food - The fresh bread and cornbread that was offered was super good. My husband and I looked at the menu as well. It has lots of sandwiches, a few proper meals. The main draw of the place is the definitely the buffet, but I am glad they offer other options (including small portions.)

We both ended up opting for the buffet. The buffet food is probably best described as Thanksgiving fare, minus the turkey and stuffing. Very “American homestyle buffet” food. I grabbed some of pretty much everything on the non salad side, so if you look at my pics, you’ll see what I mean. I don’t eat salad, but my husband told me the salad side was very good as well.

Some of the buffet food: fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, sausage, brisket, corn, two types of beans, mashed potatoes, soup and salad bar, and a few other things I think I didn’t grab.

If you are looking for a buffet that has 1,000 options, this isn’t the place. However, what they lack in quantity they make up in quality. Every single thing in the buffet was super good. I definitely prefer when a restaurant has a more limited menu, especially when it means they have perfected the stuff they do have.

They also have homemade pie and desserts that you can buy for $5 a piece, or they come with the buffet. I had coconut cream pie. My husband had a vanilla cupcake and peach cobbler. This was my personal favorite part of the meal, but I’m also a big dessert guy.

Price - $18 per person for the buffet. The other standalone dishes were similarly priced except for a few things like the smaller portion meals and some of the sandwiches. Definitely more on the pricey side, but not terribly so. I think it’s a fair price for the quality of food and to support a local business.

Gift shop - This is worth mentioning on its own because it’s very cute. They had a surprisingly wide variety of things in there. Clothes, toys, jewelry, locally made goods like soap, their own homemade jellies and canned goods, and even geodes you can take home to break open yourself. It was fun to go after dinner and have a nice little shop to browse.

All in all, glad to have come and will definitely be back. I would recommend anyone who is in the area to stop by, especially if they are a fan of...

General question here,

We haven't been to Sam's Restaurant since September of 2017. We used to go every now and then since we don't live in Fairfield. My question is, has the place gotten better in the past almost 8 years since we dined there last? We stopped going because that last visit that we made to have dinner there was ruined by cockroaches.... the parents were sitting there about to dine on their first plate from the buffet and there was a roach crawling on their side of the table and to top it off when I came back from the buffet with my plate and sat down at the table I went to pick up my fork and there was a roach sitting there on the tines of my fork. I picked the fork up and went to the stand where there serves were standing and showed our server my fork with the roach still perched on the tines of the fork. The server's eyes got huge and she took the fork from me and went in the kitchen doors telling me she was going to go show her manager.

We've passed by Sam's several times over the past almost 8 years and I just wonder if the place has been cleaned up and gotten better or if it's hanging in there at the same level as our last visit.

Anyone know? Please message me and let me...

My wife has rattled on about this place, literally, for decades. She remembers it fondly from family road trips in the eighties, and I always wondered about it. Well, work put me in the area one evening, so I thought I'd swing in and see for myself. Long story short--dreams die hard. They have a huge buffet, which is obviously where they focus their attention. I was traveling, so I didn't have time to get $16 or more out of the buffet. I ordered a turkey barbecue plate with two sides. My salad was the best part, because --you guessed it--it came from the buffet. The turkey was so thin I could read through it. It was just a basic baked turkey that they then drowned in the runniest sauce I've ever seen. Bland and disappointing. Then the peach cobbler was basically some canned peaches dumped into a tiny bowl with what seemed like raw crescent-roll dough thrown on it. After my gourmet feast, I then got to sit for twenty minutes, waiting for my check.

I had words with my wife when I got home.

I might try them again, just to be fair, but I'd probably hit the buffet, next time. The extra $4 is...