Hickory House Bar & Grill

The Hickory House has been around a long, long time.  It still looks like the old road house it once was and is clearly divided between 'the bar' and 'the buffet'.  There is no menu at Hickory House and little decor and no ambience, you come for the buffet, that's what you get.  For $10.99 plus a drink, you will get the most awesome ribs you will find around Pomme de Terre lake.  The fried chicken is perfect and crisp and juicy without being greasy.  Hot, spiced, boiled shrimp, which I hadn't seen done right in years.  I was in heaven!  There was also Catfish, but I'm not a fan, so I didn't have any although many diners were filling their plates with the filets.

Also on the buffet were a couple of vegetables of the day, when I went it was corn on the cob and fried okra.   I didn't understand why they would put out whole, foil wrapped baked potatoes and halved, 'twice baked' potatoes as the only two starch selections.  That could have been thought out a bit better.  But you can hardly go wrong with a baked potato, so that was okay.  The twice baked were very, very dry, so I passed on that.

Decent salad selection; green salad, a couple of mayonnaise based vegetable salads, some fresh fruit and for dessert, banana pudding or the sheet cake of the day.  The cake of the day I went was a deep, dark chocolate with a cream cheese glaze.  We got there early, so that cake was still warm from the oven when the put it out.  I couldn't pass it up.

On an interesting side note, about two years ago, Hickory House had "The Kentucky Headhunters" as part of a July 4th weekend celebration.  For whatever reason, Mr. Man and I decided not to go at the last minute.  All through dinner, we berated ourselves for passing that up.  It's easy to see that when they can afford a live act in the bar side, everything on the buffet side gets pushed against the wall or carted off to make room.  I'm sure they rocked it and to have heard "Dumas Walker" in that intimate setting would have been sweet!   Ah, regrets...

The vibe of the place is awesome, the food was very good, the service and friendliness of the staff was exceptional.  We will definitely be going there again.  The place opens around 4:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday.