Deborah's Kitchen, a country-cooking buffet in Maryville, is located at 1926 South Island Road. The restaurant built its name on fried chicken, meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, biscuits and cornbread served buffet-style.
A Family Business Built From Scratch
Deborah's Kitchen is a buffet in Maryville.
Scott had no restaurant experience before opening the buffet. She spent 22 years in the jewelry business. Her father moved to Georgetown in 1957 and managed a jewelry store on Front Street; her mother took over the shop after his death. Scott herself learned watch repair at a school in Orangeburg and traveled to Alabama for a week to sharpen her jewelry skills before eventually leaving that trade behind to open the restaurant.
Before Deborah’s Kitchen opened in 2000, the South Island Road building had served as a bank, an Italian restaurant and a bar and grill. Maryville had only one other restaurant at the time, and Scott’s buffet became a neighborhood gathering place as customers from beyond Georgetown County began stopping in while traveling between Charleston and Myrtle Beach, as GAB News recounted.
Fried Chicken Daily, Clam Chowder On Fridays
The restaurant's menu followed a weekly rhythm that longtime customers came to count on: pork chops on Wednesdays, clam chowder and fish on Fridays, and fried chicken every day on the buffet line, according to earlier Post and Courier reporting.
More Than A Restaurant To The Community
Deborah's Kitchen was woven into local life well beyond its lunch buffet. The Georgetown Lions Club first met there about six months after it opened and kept meeting at the restaurant for more than 26 years, with a gathering planned for the Monday before the closure. The restaurant also distributed hundreds of bookbags through a back-to-school giveaway it ran in partnership with Erin Bailey Law, and it even hosted a family wedding over the years.
The club’s long-running use of the restaurant fits the Lions’ broader community-service mission: Lions International says its volunteers work to strengthen communities and support people in need. The organization describes itself as a global network of clubs, but its stated mission is carried out through local clubs and their community work, as outlined in the organization’s overview.
During South Carolina's 2015 flooding, the restaurant fed National Guard personnel, including members of the 1st Battalion, 178th Field Artillery, who received meals from the kitchen while responding to the disaster. Scott said customers have shown her love and appreciation as word of the closing spread, and she said she would like to keep bringing food to customers even if she someday has to do it from a wheelchair.
The 2015 flooding Scott recalled came during a historic deluge: Georgetown recorded about 23.5 inches of rain over five days, and the town sustained an estimated $44.8 million in losses, with 670 homes damaged, the National Weather Service says. The disaster prompted widespread flooding, road closures and water rescues across the region, placing the restaurant’s meals for responding National Guard personnel in the context of a major local emergency, as the weather service’s event summary details.
What Comes Next Remains Unclear
Curtis Scott said the restaurant's future is uncertain, though he and Hailey hope to continue Deborah's Kitchen in some form down the road. He has denied rumors that a barbecue restaurant is taking over the space. Among the building's more colorful history: a customer once drove a car through the restaurant's wall after mixing up the gas and brake pedals, an incident the Post and Courier noted as part of the restaurant's long run at the South Island Road location.
Deborah’s Kitchen was one small business within a sizable state industry. The National Restaurant Association projected that South Carolina eating and drinking places would generate $24.81 billion in direct economic output and support 251,803 jobs in 2025. Those statewide estimates do not measure the impact of an individual restaurant, but they illustrate the broader economic footprint of the sector that includes independent, family-run dining rooms such as Deborah’s Kitchen.
The buffet line at Deborah's Kitchen features country cooking.
