New Southern-Style Restaurant Opens in Loganville

A new Southern cooking restaurant called Rocking Chair Home Cooking opened in Loganville just last week.

The buffet-style eatery, which is located off Rosebud Road, offers traditional Southern comfort food with a twist. Customers can find dishes in all 32 slots of the serving stations filled with spaghetti, ribs, chicken, steak, fried tomatoes, okra, fresh fruits, soups, cakes, salad garlic bread and more.  

A week after opening the restaurant, co-owner Chong Mun and manager Ashley Mun, her niece, spoke with Patch about the new family business.

Patch: Is this the first restaurant your family has opened? 
Ashley Mun: We've been in the industry before in Gwinnett. We had Gwinnett Park Cafe [in Duluth] for some time, and we still own Mocha Delites in the physician's center of Eastside Medical Center in Snellville. There, we sell coffees, sandwiches and snacks. 

Patch: What inspired you guys to open a location in Loganville?
AM: We're not too new to the area since we've had Mocha Delites for such a long time, and my family has been in the food business for a long time. They enjoy cooking and they enjoy other people's company. At Gwinnett Park Cafe, it was in a business park and was a buffet-style restaurant, which is very similar [to Rocking Chair]. 
Chong Mun: I've [cooked for restaurants] in Marietta, Rome and Carrollton, too. But we've been at Mocha Delites for such a long time, I said, 'Let's go out,' so we looked around the Loganville community and we liked it, so we decided to try it. 

Patch: How do you make the recipes for your cooking? 
CM: I love to cook. I'll go and eat somewhere and see what's in it, and then cook it a different way and see what's good. I make a lot of my own recipes. 
AM: It's the love she puts into it, and passion. She tries to follow the traditional way, but tries to mix it with her own [Hawaiian taste] to enhance the familiar.

Patch: Can you give me an example? 
CM: My spaghetti and meat sauce. A lot of folks will say it's better than Italian food. I was trying Ragu sauce with different seasonings, but I didn't like it. I now use straight tomato sauce and different seasonings and mix it. Instead of meatballs, I use ground beef and drain all the fat off, and I add stir fry vegetables. I then crush fresh garlic. It tastes good. I have my grilled pork chops, too. I use ginger, garlic and real fruit, usually pineapples. I grind it and use the fruit juice.
AM: That's the Hawaiian side of her.

Patch: What do you think people like the most at Rocking Chair?
CM: A lot of people love my meat loaf and barbecue ribs. 
AM: The menu changes seasonally and depending on the condition of the vegetables. 
CM: I only use fresh vegetables. I never use frozen. I don't use MSG, and I don't like a lot of fried food. For my chicken, I peel the skin off, but I use a lot of buttermilk so the chicken is crispy. I only use one item that is canned, and that's green beans.

Patch: What are your seasonal items? 
CM: For summer, I use a lot of watermelon, and I make fruit cocktails. A lot of strawberry cobblers, too. Around Thanksgiving, I'll do a lot of ham, turkey and sweet potatoes. [This week] I made sweet potato cobblers and we had a lot of people say, "I've never heard of sweet potato cobbler!"
AM: Someone said it tasted like a souffle. 

Rocking Chair Home Cooking is located at 2944 Rosebud Rd. SW in Loganville. The restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. from Monday through Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. 3 p.m. Call the restaurant at 770-985-8500.

Buffet prices vary with age: Adults are $8.49 plus tax and kids are $4.59 plus tax, and meals include water, sweet tea, unsweet tea and coffee. Take-out is available for $4.99 per pound. Adult meals are currently 10 percent off for the grand opening special.