Paula Deen's at Harrah's

Last week I went to Paula Deen’s at Harrah’s in Joliet. I was looking forward to this as my daughter likes to watch her cooking show.

The restaurant offers a full buffet as well as an ala carte menu. My host told me that she thinks the food off the menu is a little better than the buffet. I thought this was a slam of the buffet food and if true, was unfortunate. But I didn’t say anything to her. We ordered an appetizer of fried green tomatoes and some cheddar biscuits while we talked. I thought both were good.

I opted for the buffet because of the quantity of items. I was told that this was a smaller buffet than the one Harrah has in Mississippi. But I thought there were a lot of choices. My comments on the items I had:

Cold shrimp and cold crawfish – just ok
Grilled oysters – ok, but kind of small and a lot of butter (it is Paula’s)
Oyster stew served over white rice – not good, very watery with not a lot of oyster flavor
Fried shrimp – not good, 90% breading
BBQ ribs – not good, they were baked, and obviously no smoke flavor
BBQ salmon – not good, the sauce was a little too sweet and the salmon was dry
Baked beans – not good
Fried chicken – good I like the meat to breading ratio, moist, nice flavor
Mashed potatoes – very good
Collard greens – not good, extremely salty
Yellow fin tuna – grilled with lemon and butter, very bad inedible, tough
Prime rib – excellent, rare, and the au jus was nice
Red velvet cup cake – not good, awful, dry, maybe it had been sitting out too long
Banana cream pudding – ok

Oh, the service was fantastic. Every server on the buffet line welcomed me, told me their name, and seemed very knowledgeable of the food. They seemed to be enjoying their job. Our waitress was also very good. She refilled drinks and cleared the plates very efficiently.

I guess overall I was disappointed and can’t see me going back, especially with my luck.

D.

dodger wrote:My host told me that she thinks the food off the menu is a little better than the buffet.

dodger wrote:
I guess overall I was disappointed and can’t see me going back, especially with my luck.

D.

Luck aside, if my host was nice enough to warn me off the buffet in favor of ordering from the menu, I would have taken her advice.

Went a few weeks ago for dinner(comped).

Took a look at the buffet and opted for the menu. Deep fried pork chops were decent.

cant say id go back even with the another comp.

The concept is being rolled out at several Harrah's locations.

http://www.harrahs.com/pauladeen/

I suspect it's the functional equivalent of the casino buffet staff preparing recipes from a Paula Deen cookbook (albeit with usual food service cost restrictions).

On my luck comment, I was referring to my gambling luck or gambling skill. Both are not very good.

I guess I chose the buffet over ordering off the menu, because this was my first time and I wanted to sample more items. My host told me next time we can try the Steak House at Harrah’s in Indiana.

D.

dodger wrote:I guess overall I was disappointed and can’t see me going back.
D.

Every person that I've spoken to that has dined there has said the same thing.