Martha’s Place Buffet

Martha’s Place Buffet sits on Atlanta Highway in Montgomery and has grown from a single owner’s dream into what its own website calls a local gem and a nationally known destination for Southern comfort food. The restaurant is the work of Martha Hawkins, who opened it after a life that included raising children as a single mother without a high school diploma and living through serious mental illness. According to the restaurant’s own account, she grew up as one of twelve children in Montgomery and drew on memories of her mother’s cooking, and a lasting dream of running a restaurant that made people feel at home, to eventually open her own place.

That personal history shapes how the restaurant is run day to day. Martha’s Place makes a point of hiring people who are facing hard times economically, a hiring philosophy the restaurant describes as a direct reflection of Martha Hawkins’s own journey. It is a detail that separates the restaurant from a typical buffet operation and helps explain why it has become something of a Montgomery institution rather than just a place to eat.

The format is a scratch-cooked buffet, prepared fresh each morning, built around the kind of Southern staples that regulars come back for again and again: fried chicken, vegetables cooked low and slow, cornbread, and desserts made in house. Pricing follows a straightforward structure, with separate lunch and dinner rates for adults, children five and under, and seniors 62 and older, plus a 10 percent discount for active military and seniors. Lunch runs $15.50 for adults and dinner $16.50, while children eat for $8 at lunch and $9 at dinner.

Hours are built around lunch and early dinner service rather than a late night crowd. The restaurant opens for a shorter Sunday window from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., runs Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., extends its hours on Friday until 8 p.m., and closes entirely on Saturday, a schedule that reflects a kitchen built around home-style, made-to-order-feeling food rather than fast turnover.

Martha’s Place has been written about well beyond Montgomery, including features that call it one of the best buffets in Alabama for Southern food, and it draws visitors who plan a stop specifically around it rather than finding it by accident. For anyone wanting a plate of true Southern buffet cooking, from candied yams to fried chicken to made-from-scratch desserts, in a restaurant with a story behind every part of how it runs, Martha’s Place remains one of the defining soul food stops in Montgomery.

Because the buffet format rewards a leisurely visit, many guests plan to arrive early during lunch or dinner windows to get the freshest trays as they come out of the kitchen. Between the food, the pricing structure for families and seniors, and the restaurant’s own story, Martha’s Place has earned its reputation as a genuine Montgomery landmark rather than just another buffet on Atlanta Highway.

The restaurant’s presence on Atlanta Highway, a busy commercial corridor on Montgomery’s west side, makes it an easy stop for visitors driving into or out of the city, and its national media coverage has turned it into something of a required stop for food writers passing through Alabama. Even so, the restaurant has kept its focus firmly on the buffet line and the regulars who treat it as a weekly or even daily habit rather than expanding into a larger, more corporate operation.

That combination of a deeply personal founding story, a scratch-cooked menu, and a hiring philosophy built around second chances has made Martha’s Place stand out even in a state with no shortage of Southern buffets. It is a restaurant that asks to be judged as much by what it does for its community as by what comes off the steam table, and both sides of that equation have kept it running strong for decades.