5. Mary's Place

I used to work close to this "restaurant" and we would go there for lunch. Had the buffet one day, and will never go back again. The buffet had spaghetti on it, and the noodles tasted like they had been cooked in dishwater. No seafood at all on the buffet. And then to top it all off, the waitresses would clean off a table and if there was a glass with tea in it, they would pour the tea back into the pitcher and go refill someone else's glass with it. I swear to God that this happened. We immediately called for the manager and he said that he would "have a talk" with the waitress about it. If you have a choice of Mary's Place or starving, I'd opt for the latter.

FRIED CORN?!? AWESOME! all you can eat fried corn........count me in.

We went to Mary's Place and would never recommend it to anyone else. We tried their buffet since they pushed it and claimed that was what they were famous for. The gumbo was cold and disgusting, the fried shrimp and fish were average at best. The waitress noticed my wife was trying their boiled shrimp, at which she actually volunteered it was old and not very good. That was about the only service that was worth mentioning from the staff. The selection was very limited, maybe what you would expect of a seafood buffet far away from the coast instead of something right on the coast. Vegetables, salad, and dessert were clearly an afterthought -- they seemed to just believe fried shrimp and fish and oysters and chicken was enough. It was the worst restaurant we went to on this trip to Dauphin Island by far -- Barnacle Bill's was better and doesn't claim to be very good, and we would highly recommend Pelican Reef which was only 15 minutes north of Dauphin Island.