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Plenty of Piedmont Triad restaurants specialize in traditional Southern food. Lightly fried pork tenderloin. Collard greens. Buttery mashed potatoes. Tender pinto beans and black eyed peas. Crispy corn bread.

A few places you visit because the restaurants themselves offer a unique dining experience. These are hard-to-find, tucked away kitchens that have developed just such a reputation through the years. Most people learn about them through word of mouth. The Hillbilly Hideaway, Snyder Farms and The Old Place, to name a few.

To reach these dining spots, travel along mostly two-lane roads, past dilapidated barns and rolling pastures. Chances are, your only reason for being out that way is to go to those restaurants.

Once there, you realize you're not the only one making that journey.

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You'll see the sign for the Hillbilly Hideaway Restaurant from U.S. 220 near Walnut Cove.

It's a simple white sign with an arrow directing you to Pine Hall Road, which carries you past old farmhouses and meadows. Just as you start to wonder if you missed the restaurant, there it is.

The Hillbilly Hideaway Restaurant looks like a log cabin in the middle of the country.

You enter through the screen door, then through a set of double wooden doors into a dark dining room. The walls -- wood planks -- bear evidence of previous diners, their names written in ink or carved into the wood.

A waitress delivers your meal on a cart. This is why. The menu rotates, but on Saturday nights, you get ribs, fried chicken and country ham. And bowls of mashed potatoes, green beans, pinto beans, baked apples, corn and slaw. And a basket of corn bread. She'll keep bringing bowls of food until you can't eat any more.

Also on Saturday nights, you can walk across the parking lot to the Hillbilly Hideaway Music Hall for a free concert. The Hi-tech Hillbillies play gospel, bluegrass and country music from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Again, there's nothing fancy here. There are names written and carved on wooden walls, adorned with country folk art and American flags. You sit on old school bus seats, and signs tell you that alcohol, smoking and dancing are prohibited.

The band, led by Hillbilly Hideaway owner Sam Bray, plays on a stage. The 71-year-old said there's no money in the music business, but he does it for fun.

"I work eight days a week so I can play music for three hours," he said.

The audience -- made up of regulars, mostly senior citizens and families -- usually has a few requests. Dancing isn't permitted, but no signs say you can't tap your feet.

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It used to be granny's house.

The Moore family gathered there on special occasions for a righteous spread -- chicken and dumplings, green beans, cornbread, biscuits, and macaroni and cheese. And there was always a variety of homemade jellies on the table.

Families still gather there. But granny's home, now called The Old Place, draws diners from far beyond its Chatham County boundaries. Her grand-daughter, Lu Anne Moore Johnson, runs the restaurant with her father, Bertis Moore, and daughter Laura Johnson.

They serve a buffet that includes your basic Southern staples: fried chicken, pot roast, country fried steak, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, pickled beets, corn bread and cracklin' corn bread made with pork fat. They even have chitlins and fried chicken livers.

Lu Anne started the restaurant with her mother when she was just 15. Bertis likes to say his daughter did it to "earn a little spending money."

But Lu Anne comes from a family of good cooks. Her mother, the church hostess, often fed large groups. When Granny Moore died, it seemed logical to turn her home into a little restaurant.

The Old Place has expanded several times since it opened in 1979, including two dining rooms and bathroom renovations. And there's more on the buffet.

But what hasn't changed through the years is that strong family presence. It's a business run by a close family, and it's a popular gathering spot for families.

People have asked Lu Anne if she ever considered opening other restaurant locations. She wouldn't think of it.

"I don't want to do that," she said, "because you'd have to split up the family."