Cassandra’s Place

Ordered French toast with bacon. Good, attentive service and polite staff. Will likely be having breakfast here at least a few more times before my project here in PCF is finished.
Also they’re fast! I normally read the news on my phone while I wait and I barely got through the first article before the food arrived. In and out in about 25 minutes.

I’m going to give I a 4! You all are undercutting this joint. Yeah it’s old fashioned but the service was excellent. The food was well prepared for the choices on the buffet and it filled my fancy! I’ll be back here as it’s quick and easy!

I almost gave this place 3 stars, but it really is a 2 star place, and I seriously doubt the clientele spends much time checking Unilocal on their smartphones and tablets.
Cassandra’s is located in a stretch of downtown that reminds me more of how downtown Panama City looked when I was a kid than anywhere else. It’s in an old, old building, near the long, long-​defunct «Marie’s Beauty Shoppe» (which to me has a very coo vintage curb appeal as this point) and Panama City’s oldest and most esteemed uh… alternative lifestyle bar, The Fiesta/​La Royale, which features drag shows among other activities.
Cassandra’s is a very basic Southern cooking buffet, except, probably due to the ethnicity of the owners/​staff, that is also features a handful of Asian/​Korean/​Chinese dishes. For example, the buffet during my visit had some beef and broccoli (probably my favorite entrée) and my table advertised a special for bulgogi that could be ordered off the menu (only buffet was available during my visit).
The food was ok. It wasn’t terrible or disgusting, but it was very boring, and I kept looking everywhere for the Sysco/​other company cans and boxes that had to be in there somewhere. The buffet also didn’t have many options — fried chicken, tilapia, pork ribs, lima beans, turnip greens, white rice, beef and broccoli, a dessert of some sort, and some fried cornbread with a piece of okra stuck in it.
I’ll spare you the play-​by-​play of each food. It was all very greasy and kind of bland. Service was sub-​par, with the chatty servers more interested in talking with their regulars, but since it is a buffet it doesn’t hurt your meal as much as it might at some places. My main beef, which pushes this squarely into the 2 star category, is that, for the price, there are much better country buffets to be found (albeit not in the downtown corridor). For that limited buffet and a sweet tea, the cost was slightly above $ 9, plus any tip you might want to leave. That’s not an unreasonable price in itself, but given the quality and limited selection of this buffet, I wasn’t happy paying that much.
And finally, I did take some issue with the cleanliness of the restaurant. Obviously this is an old building, but it had a very «lived-​in» look in that a lot of the sidework appears to take place in the dining room and the whole place just looked very cluttered and not exactly spic-​n-​span.

Cheap prices, clean bathrooms with nice toilet paper, prompt & friendly service, decent food.

This is located in downtown Panama City, so expect a «quaint» atmosphere — older building with even older furnishings. But you will never find a nicer atmosphere — hey you get to watch Matlock on tv during the lunch buffet. Great wait staff who know the regulars and have their drinks poured before they sit down.
The lunch buffet is reasonably priced (drink is included) and has fresh salad, lots of veggie choices and rotating meat of the day (bbq ribs, meatloaf, etc) but fried chicken is served every day. Peach cobbler is made fresh, but the cakes are standard wholesale fare.
It is good comfort food.

mostly rather greasy fare in downtown Panama City in a diner style environment which seems to be very popular with locals for breakfast. (Tourists don’t tend to make it across the bridge from PCB to downtown Panama City much) I did appreciate that they served some options made with egg whites, so there is a recognition of the fact that some customers may be concerned about their health. The waitress was fairly friendly and service was pretty good. Prices are reasonable. If you want a typical American breakfast with a southern flair (e.g. grits), then what they have is a good option, but there I didn’t see anything too creative here and suggest that they try to expand the menu to include some more healthy, less greasy options.