The Tunica buffet, which opened in 2008, was the first Deen affiliate outside her famous Savannah restaurants the Lady & Sons and Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House. (“I don’t know a whole bunch about Joliet,” Deen admitted in a post-ceremony interview, “but it’s above the Mason-Dixon Line and I’m so damned proud to be here!”) There are others: one at Harrah’s in North Carolina, which expanded on the concept of two previous Paula Deen Buffets at Horseshoe Southern Indiana and Harrah’s Tunica in Mississippi. Paula Deen’s Kitchen at Harrah’s Joliet isn’t the first of its kind, but it’s the farthest north, which counts for something. Just don’t look up the recipe unless you want to have a heart attack. On the menu: a crispy stack of dangerously tawny fish-and-chips piled a half-foot high, fried green tomatoes with sweet-onion relish (one of several “signature items” flagged with a tiny ladle), and a deceptively modest-looking yellow square of Gooey Butter Cake. Thank y’all so much.”Īmid the Southern-seashore decor, lunch was already cooking, and a tribe of servers in still-creased blue polo shirts beamed from one corner, ready to swoop in post-photo ops to start their debut service.

The most important people here are you gamers and guests. I’m funny about putting my name on a brand, but I’m proud. “This is the largest grand opening we’ve had,” she said. A Deen-themed retail shop buffers the cavernous 364-seat restaurant from the slot-machine soundtrack.įlanked by a trifecta of Joliet Mayor Tom Giarrante, casino senior vice president and general manager Darren VanDover and executive chef Peter Jeschke, Deen accepted a ceremonial key to the city. All the while, the steady beeps and bells of slot machines rang from the gaming area, where patrons carried on oblivious to the Deen-sparked pandemonium. From the casino’s main lobby, an impatient crowd snaked across the dizzily patterned carpet back to the parking garage. But last month at Harrah’s Joliet, Paula Deen was a bona-fide celebrity, leaving a trail of shaky camera-phone snapshots and yelping fans in her wake.įlown into Joliet for a matter of hours, Deen was there to cut the ribbon on the casino’s new Paula Deen’s Kitchen restaurant and buffet. To her critics, she’s a hypocritical diabetic she-devil. To her followers, she’s a half-sugar, half-butter demigoddess.

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