Fred's Restaurant
02/04/2005 - By By Trent Rowe Diningout Restaurant guide
fruit, pork chops, Belgian waffle, catfish, red potato and carrot soup, salad bar, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, chicken pot pie, bread pudding.
But Fred Johnson, half of the brothers who opened BuddyFreddy's in Plant City and owner of Fred's Market in Plant City, opened his new place in early September.
Fred's Market might just work where others have failed.
The location at Harden and Beacon has been an Oriental buffet, a white tablecloth restaurant and an early-bird special spot.
All are gone.
But Fred Johnson, half of the brothers who opened BuddyFreddy's in Plant City and owner of Fred's Market in Plant City, opened his new place in early September.
Buddy and Freddy sold the original restaurant seven years ago.
Breakfast is a good place to start -- and reasonable, too.
Get there before 8:30 a.m. and you pay only $4.29 for all the food you can tuck in. From 8:30 to 10:30, it's $4.29 for seniors and $4.79 for those between 16 and senior. Coffee is $1.49 more.
Breakfast buffets are nothing new, but Fred's has a feature I haven't seen before. Our server asked how I wanted my eggs. Scrambled eggs and scrambled eggs with cheese are on the hot table, but you also can have them any way you want.
If you weren't very hungry before, a short ramble around the tables will give you lots to think about.
And you can order off the menu, too, although other than a Belgian waffle and catfish there's really little need.
The only green in the fruit was honeydew -- and that's the color it's supposed to be. Too many places have green garnishing cantaloupe. Strawberries looked as if they had come straight from a field in Plant City. Even the prunes were delicious.
Pans and pans of sweet rolls or huge muffins went well with the fruit.
Then you get to the hearty parts of the meal.
Sausage gravy had thin texture with taste to match. More sausage and more flour would help. But it's hard to hold thick gravy on a steam table. Better thin than cement.
A neighbor filled half a plate with thin slices of crisp bacon. It's hard to keep bacon hot on an open buffet.
Juicy, tasty links of sausage are also tough to keep warm.
Thick slices of ham might have been better held in liquid to keep the meat more moist. Chunks of great smoked sausage had the moisture the ham lacked.
Cheese grits and scrambled eggs go nicely with bacon and link sausage. Unfortunately they all shared the same degree of heat -- very little.
Seldom do you find pork chops on a breakfast buffet. The cooks had floured these and fried them, but not until dry and tasteless.
Dessert is nice, even for breakfast, so I tried a slice of warm, nutty banana bread. Some jam or the orange marmalade from the rack on the table would have been a nice addition. Or just butter. Cinnamon buns needed globs of butter to make them moist.
Belgian waffles are a syrup lover's friend because of all the little squares to hold tiny pools of sweet liquid. I think they should come with tiny straws. Think of all the calories you could save if you didn't have to eat the waffle. My fluffy reservoir, off the menu, cost $4.29.
Just the idea of fish and grits (or potatoes) for breakfast might gross out your Northern neighbor. The coating for one delicious, delicate, hot fillet of catfish held a lot of oil, as did crispy hash browns. ($5.59).
Whites of a pair of eggs over easy would have been a bit more solid with a bit more cooking.
Lunch, like breakfast, is available as a buffet or off the menu. And like breakfast, much of the buffet did not have enough heat.
Labels on the sneeze guard are in short supply, too.
To recheck the heat, I went back for dinner on Monday and found a few offerings hot, but just a few.
A thick soup of red potato and carrot with smoked bacon could sear your tongue. It tasted so good it was almost worth the pain.
You don't have to go past the cold salad bar for a nice meal when you add corn bread or biscuits.
The menu has daily specials -chicken pot pie ($5.49) and beef tips over rice ($6.49) on Mondays, and you can get these on the buffet, too.
Mashed potatoes with gravy, with a few delicious lumps, was hot. So was sweet potato casserole. So was mashed potatoes with cheese. So was chicken pot pie. So was bread pudding.
Everything else I tried, and I tried a lot to find heat, was in various stages of cool.
Desserts are small slices of pies and cakes, soft serve ice cream (try some on the peach cobbler), gelatin, puddings and fruit.
The best bet is to start with the salad bar, have soup and bread and end with dessert.
According to the latest health inspection by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, on Dec. 7, result of a complaint, the inspector noted "fewer than five rodent droppings in one area of the restaurant. Violation corrected."
The last regular inspection, on Aug. 31., which manager Dwayne Williams says was two days before the restaurant officially opened, found eight critical violations, most to do with food temperatures and storage. A handwash sink was not accessible and there was a problem with a backflow device.
The manager says these have all been corrected.
Judging by my three visits, food temperature is still a problem.
A few things the restaurant could do to improve are:
# Label the buffet.
# Get food temperatures right.
Fred's Market restaurant earns 2 1/2 stars.
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Trent Rowe can be reached at trent.rowe@theledger.com or 863-802-7512
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