Robbins Nest

There is the legend of the old southern dive (hopefully with a jukebox loaded with B.B. King or Ben E. King), a waitress who calls you honey and Atticus Finch in the next booth dispensing fatherly advice to young Scout who ill advisedly followed Daddy into town. And y’all from up North keep looking for that place in the middle of little old dried up towns where the only businesses making it are the Mexican restaurants and antique stores and the one surviving Qick-​E-​Mart.
Thing is, the guy who ran that dive saw that all that traffic that was running up and down 301 had long ago moved to the interstate, and closed up shop and started up one of them buffet type restaurants. Sure he missed some of the ones hunting for authentic South in all the dead places, but all his regulars and truck drivers, and maybe a Yankee or two, was spending their coin in his new place, and his dive had been barely earning a cent.
So, it’s in places like this where you will find southern cooking today. Lots of it. Done by home style cooks who know how do a proper Sunday mid-​day dinner, in a big giant room that was updated with ruffles and ducks in the 90s sometime. Get the fried chicken, the vegetables cooked in various meat juices, the east Carolina bbq (vinegar – try it, it’s as good here as anywhere) and a chicken and dumplings variant they called chicken pastry. Heck, even the turkey was moist and flavorful (a triumph in a buffet — which can dry out a glass of water). All for less than $ 13.00 per person.
But adjust your expectations on ambience. The place is dated and there might be a Confederate flag on a bumper sticker in the filled (overflowing) parking lot.

Southern county Buffet. Average food. Wait staff was friendly. Both of us ate for $ 22.00 so wasn’t expecting much. Wasn’t overly impressed either.

Gross
I don’t understand why it was crowded this was the worse buffet I have ever been to

We ate here recently on a Sunday and the buffet was fully stocked and full of great tasting food! Many people thought so because the place was packed! I’m usually particular about my fried fish but theirs was great and was not greasy! I will be back! (I only live 15 minutes away but it was my first visit.)

Awesome #Southern Lunch in North Carolina… Nothing fancy here, but it’s legit Southern food and a great break to the never ending chains on I-​95. The fried flounder is the clear winner. Excellent sweet tea. Chicken and Dumplins, black eyed peas, and all sorts of cobblers and pies. Basically looks like a big cafeteria but for $ 9pp it’s pretty great southern food and lots of nice people. #FriedFlounder #FriedChicken #BlackEyedPeas #Dumplins #RobbinsNest

I usually don’t give one star, especially a buffet that is cheap enough for the food. But this buffet, is bad… I saw the reviews said it was good, those reviews were kind of out dated, I guess.
I had good experience at another southern style buffet several days ago. So when we saw the this one called Southern buffet on the way home, it sounded good. We were actually looking for a BBQ place, but couldn’t find it .And it is so close to JR Cigar, we were going to stop there anyway. So we decided to give it a try.
I should just leave when I saw the food was very limited for the lunch buffet at 12:30pm. One buffet table with less than 10 different hot food and some salad items. Another two buffet tables were almost empty, only 4 different kinds of dessert, and two of them had a little bit left on the bottom, they never refilled them during I was there.
I thought, well, maybe the food will be good taste, then I don’t need that many varieties. But I was wrong.
Fried chicken was over fried, skin was dry, not that crispy any more. The meat inside was totally dry, the worst fried chicken I had this time during my vacation in NC. I love Fried chicken, the fried chicken here, was bad.
Harsh browns tasted tough and chewy, bad.
Mashed potato with super salty gravy, bad.
Only one green, it was canned green beans. Two kinds of beans.
Sweet potato was not that bad.
Coleslaw was good. There was some potato salad sauce left in the bottom of the container, it never got refilled either. No fresh fruit, only one canned peaches.
Well, at least the BBQ pork was pretty good. But it’s buffet, right? I can’t just eat the pork.
I can recall everything on the buffet table now, because the varieties were so little. Desserts looked nasty and tasted nasty.
I haven’t had bad food like those for a long while. I go back for more plates of food if the food is good in a buffet. But this one, I didn’t want to go for another plate. The food here reminded me the prison food, even I didn’t go to prison before. But it just looked like that.
The price is cheap. Only $ 7.4 for lunch, $ 1.25 for ice tea. Even it’s cheap like this, I still have to give one star, cause the food was really horrible. Don’t go there! There are much better Southern buffets in NC for the almost the same price.

I joke around that this is the ‘Gravy Shack.’ No, it’s not healthy. Nothing on the buffet or on the menu is particularly good for you. But my goodness, can these folks cook. I’ve had better southern comfort food, but the Robbins Nest is some of the best around in Johnston County. If you like southern staples — fried chicken, salisbury steak, fried fish, mashed potatoes, etc., then you’ll be a fan. It’s good food served up by local folks.

This place is awesome. If you like good home cooking and friendly people, this is the place for you.