Abele's Family Restaurant — Restaurant in Morganton

My family went for a drive and found Abele's on I-40W.

From their website, it had all the makings of a great place to eat. The menu is quite extensive, and it includes a buffet.

The atmosphere is very "southern friendly," and the dining room is decorated with a variety of witty sayings and pictures, and it made us comfortable and relaxed.

We were 6 in our family and ordered a mixture of food, both appetizers and entrees. Unfortunately, the apps entrees came out before the apps. Although the server blamed the kitchen for the mix-up, she was very nice and ended up bringing us the apps which made our table completely full of plates with food. The table itself seemed a little small to start with for 6 people and we were a little cramped. Most restaurants squeeze as many tables as they can to maximize the number of seats, but overall, at least in the area if the dining room we were seated, the tables were so close you would bump the chair at the next table sitting down.

The food itself was not bad, but a little disappointing. Overall it was good. The steaks were decent, but some of the other meals were not as flavorful as we were anticipating. This was surprising for a southern restaurant. We did not eat the buffet, but it looked good. Some of us did add on the salad bar which was very good with a lot of variety.

Prices were pretty good, staff was friendly. They also have some homemade items like natural honey, which my wife purchased a jar, at the checkout counter.

Decent place to stop and eat when traveling through that area. If we are headed that way again, we may give it...

Update: 7 months later I tried to eat there again and they still have not cleaned their plates. If you flip over the bottom of any plate you can write your initials in the grime and grease trapped on the bottom. The manager's son washes the plates and she'll get very angry if you mention it. They have no intention of fixing them. Be prepared to pay $40 for dinner to eat off dirty plates.

DIRTY plates and OVERCOOKED meat sitting on bar for HOURS. It's 2:30 in the afternoon and I just stopped by one of my former favorite restaurants Abeles and was SO disappointed. Every single plate in the restaurant is DISGUSTING! The top LOOKS clean but flip it over and there is food stuck on them and gray scum build up that I could scrape with my fingernail. Do not eat here or you will be at an increased COVID risk from dirty dishes! I told the staff and they did NOTHING but give me a foam to go box...well actually the server brought me more dirty dishes and I scraped scum off it for her in front of her and she took it back because they didn't have any clean ones. I was so hungry I still tried to eat with my 3 year old child and the food was hard and overcooked..I mentioned it and was told it sits there ALL morning from breakfast!! I thought there was an amount of hours you're allowed to keep food out and this seems way too long. This is unacceptable to me. They charged me $10 for food I didn't eat and told me oh well maybe I could try them again some other time. I said absolutely NOT! Elderly people were there eating off these plates too and they didn't even try grabbing and...

First of all, i saw a comment here that some lady complains how this place supports white people only with good service. Let me assure you that is NOT the case, looks like she likes to leave comments like that if she doesn't like the service and not treated like royalty after spending $20 or whatever. As an immigrant in this country who feels discrimination on almost daily basis, let me tell you, there isn't any here. It's just the floor manager which is at front door greeting people, she's obviously rude towards anyone, looks like that just how her personality is. No big deal for me, but if you're cupcake or better to say Karen, you'll probably have issue with that.

Anyways, Service is top notch. Lady which served us is attentative, polite and in short - does everything she needs to do.

The bad: with the buffet style resturant, you can expect which kind of people come in here. It is not the owner...it's customers who make this place nasty. I saw a half ton lady filling her plate which was already overflowing and while she was doing it, Mac n cheese and whatever else she had was spilling back into buffet container while she ignorantly continues to overfill her plate. Absolutely disgusting. I was done with eating right then and there. Hope you caught up what I'm trying to say.

Country fried steak I had was pretty decent. They even gave me plenty of gravy which is weird as any other place is stingy with it. Nice touch.

All in all, I'm not local, I was just passing by, we live hour away so I don't know if we will be...