As eaters who've had the opportunity to stuff themselves silly at a dinner on the ground know, Southern churches can be fine places to dine. Church potlucks, socials and family night suppers are sometimes the most reliable bets for knee-weakeningly good deviled eggs, pimento cheese, tomato salad, ham casserole and caramel cake.

But a recent trend means folks no longer have to monitor bulletins for edible events: Baptist churches throughout the region have lately formalized their role in upholding Southern food traditions by opening full-service cafés on their now sizable campuses. While chefs across Dixie are succumbing to the allure of molecular gastronomy and global cooking techniques, some churches have become important outposts of culinary preservation.

"Our clientele here would rather have a piece of fried chicken than a piece of beef tenderloin any time," says Chris Harwell, a professionally trained chef who helms the kitchen at Immanuel Baptist Church's Solid Roc Café in Lexington, Ky. "It's not the most sophisticated of palates."


Harwell's lunch menu is heavy on the hamburgers and fries, but he rolls out country favorites like glazed ham and country fried steak for the restaurant's weekly Wednesday night dinners.

At Biltmore Baptist Church's Café on the Rock in Arden, N.C., lunchgoers feast on smoky black-eyed peas, tenderly fried okra and flaky rhubarb pie. "All Baptists have one thing in common," jokes Mike Buster, executive pastor of the 20,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Tex. "They love to eat."

Prestonwood's 600-seat Main Street Café has a slightly upscale flair -- "there's an expectation of quality in Plano," Buster says -- and a health-consciousness nurtured by church member Ken Cooper, George W. Bush's personal physician. But alongside the salad bar and pasta station, Buster says "we've got what we call home cooking ... roasted chicken and chicken fried steak."

Still, for most megachurches, the menu doesn't matter as much as the milieu. Church leaders say restaurants allow their congregations to engage with non-parishioners in a fairly secular (most cafés' spiritual leanings are apparent only in their slightly, er, churchy names) but meaningful way.

"It opens us up more to the community," Harwell says. "It gives people a place for fellowship."