Around here we have the standard southern Meat & 3 fare, a couple are pretty good. For folks who don't know the term... The lunch special - a meat with 3 vegetable sides. Usually have a choice of 1-3 meats like, meatloaf, baked spaghetti, chicken fried steak, fried chicken, fried fish, chicken dressing, chicken dumplings etc. Then you can get 2 or 3 vegetables on the side. Most places will have 10-12 sides to choose from, mashed potatoes, greens, cabbage, peas, beans, fried squash and fried okra, etc. The choice of meats change daily, some menu's are laid out by day of the week.
Lots of bbq joints, a few exceptional. If I want a great steak the chain restaurants are the only choice.
In the big town there are some exceptional foods, a Lebanese place geared toward fast food. They have great gyro's and shish kabobs, I wish they did a more upscale sit down menu.
There is 1 great asian place, best food I've had outside of Chinatown, SF. And one other that is a close second. The rest are average.
Only 3 hours from the gulf but no great seafood restaurants, disappointing. If you want to cook at home there is one place that specializes in fresh gulf seafood. They sell raw shimp, crawfish and oysters, some fish but you'd better order by Wednesday for Friday or Saturday pick up. If you wait until Saturday morning many times they are sold out of everything... But the seafood is first rate.
The south has many great catfish restaurants but the best is from the volunteer fire dept down the road, they sell catfish plates one Saturday a month with all the fixin's and homemade desserts.
There is no great mexican food within 50miles, just average.
Since covid the quality has really dropped in many of the restaurants. There was one place for great po' boys, shrimp, oyster etc but the last two times I stopped the food was poor.
good meat n 3
Good catfish plate
Poor Po' Boy... shrimp was tuff, had sat too long.