EAT. PLAY. GO. enjoy southern comfort food at McNeely's Place

NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. - One sit-down restaurant in North Augusta wants to take you down memory lane with every bite.

At McNeely's Place on Georgia Avenue, customers feel like they just took a trip back in time to grandma's dinner table on a Sunday.

"This place is kind of just like a little step back in time," server Korinne Brownlee said.

Their menu includes creamy seafood au gratin, homemade chicken salad or steamin' hot chicken and dumplings.

"You smell all the good things cooking," Brownlee describes. "You've got the checkered tablecloths and just mismatched chairs and tables and it just feels like what you would've had growing up."

Cook Sonya Cowan said there's one secret ingredient at McNeely's Place.

"Everything is made with love, really. Seriously. Made with love. We love what we do. And concern. We care. We really do," Cowan said.

The way they cook is inspired by the women who came before them.

"We get up every morning early. We start, we cook from scratch. Can't find that most places anymore. Even the country cooking places, they buy things already premade and stuff and we cook our stuff from scratch mostly," owner Julie McNeely said.

Smothered chicken and dressing is their top menu item.

"It's a chicken leg quarter. Homemade dressing from scratch. Cornbread dressing. Our cabbage, people love our cabbage, say it's some of the best they've ever had," McNeely said.

They're serving up hot meals like chicken and dumplings you may not be able to get elsewhere.

"I make fluffy dumplings," McNeely smiled. "I don't make the little skinny dumplings. We make fat, fluffy dumplings."

Suga Buzz Bakery will take care of your sweet tooth, selling cakes inside McNeely's Place.

"She puts a little bee on the top of all of her cakes and they're just absolutely wonderful," McNeely said.

McNeely says a restaurant was her husband Bobby McNeely's idea and her lifelong dream.

He passed in 2020.

"After that, you know, COVID hit and I really didn't know what to do and I decided well, you know, it's now or never," McNeely said.

She made that dream a reality, welcoming families into the more than 100-year-old building for a down home meal.

"It's a place where people bring their grandchildren or when people are visiting them, it's the first place they think of to come and sit down and enjoy," Brownlee said.

Many come in the restaurant saying they actually used to live in one of the rooms inside the house decades ago.

Julie McNeely is also famous for her catering business called something so right.