Smith's Restaurant Bolivar

We've eaten at Smith's many times this past year after moving to the area. They have an extensive lunch and dinner menu featuring a variety of comfort foods. The breakfast menu is a little less robust, but features the typical eggs, omelets (3 egg), pancakes, waffles, meats, biscuits, gravy, and hash browns. They also offer a Sunday buffet, but I haven't tried it. On this Thursday morning, we were in before 10 AM and couldn't order our usual chicken fried chicken, mashed potatoes, white gravy, green beans, and a dinner roll - which is almost always delicious (more on this later). Instead, she had pancakes with two scrambled eggs on the side and I had a western omelette (with sausage instead of ham), hash browns, and a biscuit with gravy instead of toast. A frosty bottomless glass of sweet tea helped lubricate the pipes. My meal was, as usual, absolutely delicious. Her pancakes were a little overcooked, but still were very flavorful. The tea is almost always excellent. This brings me back to the previous "almost always" comment and the reason I gave four and not five stars. We have, at times, experienced inconsistencies in the quality, quantity, and preparation of our chicken fried chicken meals. There have also been times when the sweet tea tasted a little off - I'm guessing because the prep and/or storage container(s) went too long without a scrub. We have also experienced the rare instance where our server underperformed. These events are unusual though. And as this restaurant has regularly 100 or more people to serve and the occasional bus load stopping for a meal during its transit along highway 13, the food volume and staffing support required to meet demand can be no small task. Speaking of servers, on this day Kim took excellent care of us. Thank you! Johna, who is almost always there, greeted us like family. We appreciate the kindness. Many of the staff have a long history working here and they make their customers feel like "welcome home".