Western Sizzlin – Athens Tennessee

A few weeks ago, Laurie and I drove on down to Athens Tennessee to do a little shopping at Dunham’s Sports, a 79 year old Michigan based sporting goods chain whose offerings are a bit less expensive than they are at the big name sporting goods stores.  To check out Dunham’s website and to see if there is a location near you, just go to http://www.dunhamssports.com/.

So…after buying some golf shirts and related items as well as some fishing gear, it was time for lunch… We drove west in the direction of the I-75 interchange with TN Hwy. 30 looking for the most popular restaurant along the way.

The parking lot at the Western Sizzlin Restaurant was packed!  We figured that the food was good, plentiful or inexpensive…with the possibility that these desirable qualities were combined.  If we’d ever eaten at a Western Sizzlin before, it was so far back in our memories that we just weren’t sure… 

  

The inside of the restaurant was large and spacious, with 2 major dining areas for seating.  Between the dining sections there is an expansive buffet set up…although customers can also order from the menu. 

Note:  For the sake of brevity, I only included photos of 2 of the several buffet serving areas.  There were additional hot food areas, a salad bar and a dessert bar.  The fried chicken shown at the end of the first serving area above looked pretty good and I would have focused on that if I’d gone with the buffet!

We decided to order off the menu rather than partake in the buffet.  While our meal was not light, I’ve always looked at a buffet as a challenge and consequently, I try to eat everything in sight that I find tasty...maximizing my bang for the buck!  

Our extremely friendly and helpful server brought us these sweet rolls accompanied by honey butter.  I wasn’t crazy about the rolls but Laurie liked them…

To place your order at Western Sizzlin, you go through a line and up to a counter and then you choose what you want to eat from menu signs on the wall.  Perhaps because she felt pressure to order with people behind us and a counter server waiting, Laurie surprised me by ordering a ribeye steak and baked potato for lunch.  

The steak was surprisingly good if not great.  It was medium rare as ordered and the baked potato was cooked correctly…not to mushy or too hard and it came with lots of butter.  I didn’t get a detailed receipt and I couldn’t find a menu on line, but I believe this meal came in at a tad under $19.00, not too bad for the size of the steak given today’s beef prices…

I ordered the country fried steak for my lunch…  It was about $10.00.  It was large and the breading was fairly tasty complementing the meat.  I’ve had better but this was a very satisfactory rendition of this type of offering. 

Then I was off to the soup and potato toppings buffet bar to see what I could add to my luncheon plate…

I added a plentiful amount of shredded cheddar cheese to my baked potato and I covered my country fried steak with jalapeno slices.  The waitress brought me some white gravy which I ladled over the top.  Unfortunately, this Western Sizzlin Restaurant didn’t have any Tabasco for me to sprinkle over the top of my meat…

Laurie decided to partake of the dessert bar scoring a cup of soft serve ice cream with cookie crumbles… It was part of the price of dinner.

We weren’t expecting much when we chose Western Sizzlin for lunch.  However, it was pretty decent with average to average plus food, the quantities served were enormous and the price was right. (It was soup only for dinner after this big meal!  We will try Western Sizzlin again…perhaps the buffet the next time.

The Athens Tennessee Western Sizzlin Restaurant is located at 1804 Decatur Pike/TN Hwy 30.  Phone: 423-745-2626.  The company’s website is found at www.western-sizzlin.com.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a light lunch!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave