Hi Judy!

Friday evening we were returning from Atlanta late. Well, late for us; too late to go home and cook. I think it was about 7:30.

We decided to try out a new restaurant that was only about a mile away. The name of it is JUDY’S COUNTRY COOKING on Sandy Plains Road in Marietta, Georgia, next door to BIG LOTS in a shopping center next to Sandy Plains Baptist Church.

She has the word BUFFET on the front to let you know it is an “all you can eat” place. And others see the word Buffet and instantly think PIGOUT!

Before in that same place was a pizza buffet place. Surprisingly, it did not draw much of a crowd.

Country Cooking Buffets are here and there. The food has to be good or the customers will thin (in more ways than one) themselves out. You need word of mouth endorsements and return business.

JOHN-BOYS, the same type of buffet, on Canton Road does well. The food is delicious and it is hard to find a parking place there. It appears that an Asian group owns and operates it. They do an excellent job.

GRANDPA’S COUNTRY BUFFET lasted a while but finally went under. There are a couple more country buffets here and there. Some last, some don’t. I’m sure the taste, quality, service, and cleanliness are major factors in the success of restaurants of any type.

Now we have JUDY’S COUNTRY COOKING. It fits all the above.

We went down lines and made our selections. The fried chicken looked delicious, and it was. So was the fish. The vegetables were good too. After I was seated I saw that someone had potato salad and a deviled egg. I had to go get that too.

All the food was delicious and the place was very clean. Not bad for $6.13.

An Asian lady walked by me wiping tables and straightening our chairs and maybe a table that wasn’t quiet in line with another one. I looked up at her and did a double-focus. I knew her. She glanced at me and also did a double focus. She knew me too!

We hugged. She said she was so glad to see me, and I felt likewise and told her so. We were co-workers at the Post Office. We enjoyed each other’s company, in a buddy-buddy co-worker kind of way.

Her name is Hy and she is Korean. She speaks in broken English. Maybe not “broken” but stiff English. I asked her about her daughter that was going to Georgia Tech before I retired. She is now going to a college in Virginia studying to be a doctor. I remember her husband was an artist. I saw him at a distance with some tools fixing something.

Hy owns JUDY’S plus three other Country Buffets. She told me where they were, but with my retention problem the names of the cities went in one ear and out the other. I do remember one is in Greenville, South Carolina.

Shortly after I retired they changed Hy’s job to one she didn’t like, so she quit. It must have been the best move she had made in a long time.

I decided I would drop by there this morning about 10am, hopefully before they opened, to take a picture of the exterior for this blog. While I was outside with my camera, two female workers inside saw me and quickly disappeared. I tried the door to stick my head in to tell them I was making a blog and found myself looking at Hy smiling. I greeted her, as I did for years at the Post Office, saying, “Hi! Hy!”