The Gathering Place — Restaurant in Foley

You are welcome as long as you are black or white, but not if you're Asian. I have been in the US since 1971 and have never experienced discrimination in a restaurant until now. The person at the hostess station never even acknowledged me. Eventually a waitress came up and I asked her if it was just buffet or if they also had a menu. She indicated that they had both buffet and menu items and seated me and handed me a menu, pointed to the brunch section, and walked away. Considering my question, it should have been obvious that I had never been there before. But, she didn’t have time to explain the menu to me. When I didn’t see anything I wanted under the Brunch menu, I stopped her and asked if they were only serving from the Brunch menu and not the Breakfast menu. She asked “what do you want from the breakfast menu!” I said, let me go and look at the buffet. After looking at the buffet, I told her that I would just do the buffet (I didn’t want to cause her any trouble). She said ok, just go help yourself to the buffet. After I had a plate, the woman at the hostess station that had ignored me before, sent another waiter over. He asked if I had talked to anyone. I said yes, and pointed out who my waitress was. He looked over at the woman at the hostess station and shrugged his shoulders (she knew I had been seated by the waitress, because she was standing at the hostess station ignoring me when I came in). My waitress happened to come up and I asked if something was wrong, and she said, oh no, nothing’s wrong. Then I went to the buffet station to get a salad and just one piece of chicken. The woman that was at the hostess station came to me and said we will fix your plate. You can serve yourself at the salad bar, but not at the main food station. Meanwhile, everyone else was helping themselves and my waitress had told me to help myself earlier. I came by myself to check out the restaurant to see if it was worth bringing our staff or recommending to our guests (we have almost 70 vacation rental condos and guests often want referrals for restaurants). Being by myself, I was able to really observe what was going on in the restaurant since I wasn’t engrossed in conversation. All of the servers seemed friendly and attentive to their customers. My waitress did come and ask if I needed anything several times. At the foyer of the restaurant, there is a blackboard which shows the buffet price. It indicated lunch all-you-can-eat $15.99 and dinner all-you-can-eat $21.99. When the waitress came with the check, it indicated $21.99. I questioned her on the charge and she said that that $15.99 is only Monday – Friday, weekends are $21.99. They need to indicated that on the blackboard, especially since their menu or their website doesn’t mention anything about the all-you-can-eat buffet. The pictures on their website, ignore. Their food does not look like that. The Gathering Place is a typical southern buffet and the menu items are...

Delicious but salty. I don't know how else to start a review of this place except, delicious. It's definitely soul food-leaning southern cuisine, the kind of food that makes you happy and reminds you of grandma.

I got a chance to sample several different things on my initial visit, and everything was at least good, if not outright great. The smoked dark meat chicken I had was really good; two legs and a thigh that weren't just "smokey flavored" but actually smoked over wood. Savory! I also sampled some of the country fried steak, and it was extremely tender, although the white gravy was a touch on the bland side. All the sides I tried were wonderful, too. There was cabbage as the vegetable of the day and it had a good meaty sheen to it. Mac and cheese was as homemade as it gets. Green beans had the same meaty, smokey flavor as the cabbage; if they were from a can, I couldn't tell! Likewise, the baked beans were stellar. So many places around here do canned beans that are just barely touched up, but these had some rich deep sweet and smokey flavor. They would go great with the chicken or the pulled pork. But the star of the show in my opinion is the sweet potato bake. I guess it's like a sweet potato casserole on steroids -- tons of brown sugar and pecans, and cooked until it's as soft and tender as mashed potatoes. Mouth wateringly good stuff, although I shudder to think what it's doing to my blood sugar!

Even the sweet tea was strong and sweet like mama likes.

I suppose the only things worth complaining about would be the service, which was by no means bad but not quite polished yet, and the for being overly salty. That's understandable, as they have only recently opened, so hopefully it'll improve as time goes on.

There have been so many failures at this location (at least 9 since I moved here a decade ago) so I'm really hoping that this time, this restaurant sticks around a while. It's got the good food, and fairly decent prices for what you get, that I hope the community embraces it. I've been wanting a good southern style "home cookin'" restaurant in this area for a while -- we have several, but they're frankly terrible compared to what I was raised up in northern Alabama. This, on the other hand, feels like it could be the answer to that prayer, a prayer for really good food...

I'm torn on this restaurant. It's cafeteria style, and that isn't a bad thing, however, when you're charging steakhouse prices, it is odd. Got the porkchops with green beans and a salad. (Didn't have the hamburger steak I originally ordered.) The salad was riddled with brown romaine lettuce, and had to ask for ranch dressing, as there isn't any on the salad bar! The server (I believe she said her name was Quinn) was super friendly and very helpful, and very appreciative of us as customers. If I were to go back, it would be for those fried porkchops and the service. The green beans had strings and stems throughout the whole side dish. The brown gravy was also really good. My husband got the country fried steak and he loved it. I just think, overall, the food is good, the service is exceptional, but the prices for food that sits under heat lights is a bit overpriced for me, which isn't saying much, because I think everything is overpriced. I don't think anyone would be disappointed with the food here, but the food at those prices seems...