Inside a Remaining Quincy’s

Florence, South Carolina | Photography by Buffet Authority

For anyone who remembers Quincy’s from its Southern steakhouse-and-buffet heyday, the Florence dining room is a curious combination of memory and present tense. The chain that once dotted the South has dwindled to only a tiny handful of surviving restaurants, but this location remains very much alive, serving its “Whole Thing” buffet alongside steaks, a salad bar, bakery and ice cream. Quincy’s has operated at this Florence location since 2001.

The room is brighter and more contemporary than nostalgia might suggest. Illuminated buffet wells and pale ceilings throw crisp light across the food and dining room, while dark wood columns, bronze-toned sneeze guards and brown furnishings preserve some of the visual language of the classic family steakhouse. That contrast between light and dark gives the room much of its character: familiar without feeling frozen in time.

And then there are the rolls. For a generation of Quincy’s customers, the chain is inseparable from its famously promoted “Big Fat Yeast Rolls,” an advertising phrase with enough staying power that it still triggers immediate recognition decades later. The Florence restaurant continues serving yeast rolls today, keeping one of the most remembered pieces of Quincy’s identity on the table even as nearly all of the chain around it has disappeared.

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