Tonya’s Hometown Buffet

Will never go here ever again.

Got to go with 1 star due to food being generally bland not worth eating. Service is friendly and welcoming. Chicken and dumplings were tasty, but lacking in chicken, like not chicken.
Deserts were somewhat redeeming.
Would go again in a hard pinch… but not if I had time to find an alternative.

I’m all for no frills dining when the food is great because, after all, dining is mostly
About the food. This place was no frills and the food was terrible. My husband and I could hardly eat it. The Mac and cheese was runny and tasteless, the mashed potatoes were dry and tasteless, the other stuff we tried was indecipherable, and surprisingly overpriced. Although it’s not pricey, the food is not worth the price they charge. Perhaps we came on a bad day, we don’t know, but we would not go back to find out. The only redeeming quality is that the employees were nice.

I liked it because of the home grown feel. Some things to work on would be the hospitality as you walk through the door. I didn’t see a sign or any host telling me to have a seat or get the heck out. Some items on the buffet were out like cottage cheese, cheese, eggs, and corn bread. The chicken strips were moist and delicious as was the corn pudding. My wife tried the deserts and said was comparable, if not better, than anywhere else. Temperature and lighting we good and the place was full of patrons.

Stopped here for a quick breakfast, which was great, and very reasonably priced. The home fries, which I do not normally care for, were very good. The sausage patties were among the largest I’ve ever been served in a restaurant. The toast and eggs, nothing extraordinary (what can you do to make either extraordinary?), but good anyway.
My only concern was that the waitress was chopping lettuce on a cutting board on the counter where customers were being served, and putting it into bags with her bare hands. That to me would be a health code violation of the first order.
Based on this experience, I would come back for breakfast, but NOT for the salad bar on the buffet!

First off, this should be prefaced by saying that I drank 4 shots of wild turkey before entering Tonyas establishment.
What a delightful place. We were greeted by a woman. I like to imagine it was Tonya, but she might have been busy shopping for ingredients. This place epitomizes farm to table, southern, down home country cooking. Even my friend who «hates buffets because they make him feel like a poor person» said «their peas are pretty good.»
There were several notable dishes. First, I began my culinary adventure with a Spaghetti casserole. This had diced mortadella, pepperoni, thin, all natural spaghetti in a sauce that was probably made from San Marzano tomatoes.
Next, I moved my culinary adventure from Italy down to the American south. There were hand breaded tenders of chicken, and a lightly smashed potato. Baked beans, mac and cheese and greens. Mmmm,
You could almost taste Tanya.
To say that Tunya has a great dessert selection would be like saying Kate Upton is Mildly attractive. My goodness. You can find any epicurean delight you would like, from carrot cake to chocolate cake.
Overall, I would say there is likely no finer food establishment serving buffet food in the greater fredricksburg area.

Very nice folks… food looked to be homemade. Best hoe cakes I have ever had… mashed potatoes were very good as well. Pot Roast was OK… didn’t try the other meats. Lots of great dessert choices. A little more expensive than I would have expected… but if you want local flavor, this is it!

Very Family friendly!
Let me start my review with the exterior of the building then quickly move to the interior & then the food that was available for today’s lunch.
The exterior looks very small with a very simple sign above the glass door.
Once you enter the establishment you quickly notice the interior is actually two building suites, side by side. The two areas are separated by a wall and the two buffet tables. It’s a very large Restaurant & would seat approx 115+ people. A ‘very’ simple environment & people from all walks of life were here eating lunch.
Now onto the food offering…
I started off with a salad topped with shredded cheese, honey ham, red onions & ranch. Then I quickly moved to the hot bar & devoured the homemade chicken tenders, homemade chicken n dumplings, homemade masted potatoes (did I mention they were all homemade) as well as corn on the cob. All were EXCELLENT! They also offered a taco bar with beef, refried beans topped with mozzarella cheese & nacho cheese.
I finished up with dessert & put away some chocolate cake topped with chocolate syrup, whipped cream & crushed butterfinger. I also tried the chocolate chip brownies but they seemed to dry for my liking. The peanut butter & chocolate chess cake was very good but my absolute favorite was the homemade peanut butter fudge! I thought my mother only made fudge this good! This place is a gem in the rough.
In ending I would have to say this is going to be one of my favorite stops for home cookin’ & I give it a 5 Star rating for food quality & taste but only 2 stars for the interior. The food quality & taste outweigh the décor so I will be back (multiple times).

I rarely give a restaurant 5 stars, but this place has earned it! Tonya’s is a little hole in the wall small town diner. I was in Lawrenceburg on business and found this place by accident. I had the lunch buffet (you can also order off of the menu) and I can’t remember having better fried chicken anywhere in my life! It was so crunchy that it rattled my head. There was also ham steaks, chicken casserole, stewed tomatoes, and assorted vegetables and breads. A salad bar was also included. The stewed tomatoes were sticky, gooey, and sweet. Just like my grandmother used to make. AWESOME! I could tell you about the homemade pies and desserts which were included, but that’s something you’ll have to experience for yourself. If you like it, they have it. And it’s delicious! There must have been 40 different slices of pie and cake to choose from. It was a little overwhelming! Prices are ridiculously inexpensive. Service was good. The ambiance isn’t something you’ll rave about, but the food is the star here! The food is simply fantastic and your life will change after the first bite of the savory, salty, juicy, crunchy fried chicken! I can’t wait to go back.

Stopped here because of the positive reviews. The food was terrible the only meat on the buffet was beef and gravy. Did not taste home made to me. Service was slow. Waitress highly recommended the buffet. Price was reasonable. But food was terrible.

Tonya’s Hometown Buffet in Lawrenceburg, Ky., is a rare gem offering no frills, just fantastic Southern comfort food at a phenomenal value. I knew I was going to like this place when I walked in and saw rolls of paper towels on the tables and «The Dukes of Hazzard» on the television — my first bite of the twice-​baked mashed potatoes is when I knew I was going to LOVE it.
Lying in the heart of Kentucky’s outer Bluegrass region, Lawrenceburg is the seat of Anderson County and a short 30-​minute drive from Lexington. It’s also about one hour from Louisville, three hours from Nashville or Indianapolis and six hours from Chicago – and I’d gleefully drive from any of those places just to eat at Tonya’s.
Occupying the location of a former bar, the restaurant is nestled between a professional wrestling venue and tattoo parlor in a run-​down old strip mall anchored by a Dollar General store. A few doors down, there’s a drive-​thru liquor store you quite literally drive right through. There are few necessities of life not readily available from some place adjacent to this one parking lot.
Menu service is available (including breakfast any time), but I don’t go to a restaurant with «buffet» in the name to order off the menu — I go to stuff my face with a vast assortment of food served from a heated human feeding trough. Tonya’s trough is among the best I’ve found at any price; the fact it’s usually priced at $ 7.99 to $ 9.99 should be used against Golden Corral in a court of law.
On my first visit, the salad bar was quite well-​stocked. The only lettuce was iceberg, but it was very fresh, as were all the various toppings offered (including bits of good, non-​funky ham and grape tomatoes, as opposed to the mushy tomato wedges found on many salad bars). The cold bar also featured potato salad, a few other cold salads of various pedigrees and some big fancypants cheeseball thing, none of which I ever got around to sampling because I was too busy cramming meat and potatoes down my gullet.
They had me at the homemade chicken strips, but the pot roast was good, too. Country-​style barbecue ribs were the main dinner entrée and looked promising, but I never got around to trying them since there was such a large pan of chicken just setting there needing eaten (it wasn’t nearly as large by the time I finished).
The homemade chicken and dumplings were good, too, albeit a bit salty for my taste. (With so much great food to choose from, I made an executive decision to only eat one bowl of dumplings lest I end up dead before making it to dessert.)
Beans and fried cornbread, corn pudding and rich, cheesy, twice-​baked mashed potatoes that caused me to gain two pounds just by looking at them were among the highlights of the non-​meat offerings, but the bar also featured regular mashed potatoes, green beans, some sort of light-​colored beans (possibly butter, great northern or lima; I’m not a legume anthropologist) and several other things I’m forgetting. If you leave this place hungry, it’s nobody’s fault but your own.
The dessert bar featured an incredible selection of cakes and pies, many of them pre-​sliced, individually plated and wrapped in plastic wrap. As such, some of the individually-​wrapped desserts — possibly left over from previous days — are a bit soggy and taste like leftovers from the fridge, which they probably are. This was the only feature of Tonya’s buffet I found less than desirable; it wasn’t a big deal to me, but it might be to some people (we probably don’t like those people).
Who cares about a little soggy pie crust and meringue when there’s a pan of fresh homemade fudge setting right next to it? (At least there is until the old lady a few tables down eats it all before you can get more than one tiny piece.)
With multiple fresh cakes, cobblers, pies and/​or cookies — not to mention fudge — being offered on the dessert bar, the utility of having such a large quantity of sugary options from which to choose far outweighs the slight quality hit suffered from keeping some plastic-​wrapped pie slices in the refrigerator before they’re served. (Besides, some people actually prefer them that way.)
Combining copious amounts of great food, adequate service (I’m low-​maintenance, YMMV) and good value all under one roof makes Tonya’s Hometown Buffet one of my favorite restaurants. If that’s your idea of a good time, too, head to Lawrenceburg and bring your appetite — but don’t get between me and the fudge, because next time I’m throwing elbows like Black Friday.

We were in Lawrenceburg for some other business and decided to have lunch. My husband and I love the small town one of a kind places and this was definitely one of those. The best home cooked food (away from home) I have ever had. Chicken n dumplings (yes home made), meatloaf and the desserts where unbelievable!!! I only have one issue with this place they are 50 minutes from home :). But we will be back!!!

The absolute best country cooking you’ll ever find! Awesome breakfast all day long, and delicious HUGE BUFFET for lunch and dinner, fried chicken and fried pork chops are amazing!