Paula Deen in Cherokee, NC

On Saturday, Vince & I went to Cherokee, NC to Harrah's Casino & Hotel. They have a brand new parking garage, theater (with over 3000 seats), hotel tower, and the new Paula Deen's Kitchen restaurant. The grand opening was Saturday. To celebrate, Paula Deen held a live performance at their new theater at 5pm.

I had called for reservations to the restaurant last week. The Harrah's rep told me they only had 5pm or 9:30pm slots open for dinner. She said we would not need a reservation for lunch & could wait in line to eat lunch. So Vince & I got there around 1pm just to get told that the restaurant was closed until 5pm for "invitation only" patrons that were invited by Paula Deen.

Apparently no one told this to the Harrah's rep last week. In order to kill a lot of time, Vince & I ate in the casino's restaurant.

We walked all over the casino & hotel. They are spending $680 million on renovations. Much of the work is complete & they are still adding a lot more. It's huge now. The parking garage is brand new & really nice. There was lots to do there (except eat at the one place I wanted to). Around 3:30pm, we were standing in line to get a casino playing card when Vince saw a guy walking towards us and said "I think that's Paula Deen's son." Sure enough, it was Bobby Deen!!! I stopped him while staring at the cookbook in my hand with his picture on it - The Lady & Sons Just Desserts. I said, "Are you Bobby Deen?" He was & he signed my cookbook.

I had made some cake pops that sort or resembled Paula Deen. Her birthday was this past Wednesday. I gave them to Bobby Deen. He took them & said they were really cute. I had made two in case one broke. I told him to be careful with them. There was a little tag on them with my website & phone number. I had written Happy Birthday on the tag. So I have no idea if she saw them, ate them, threw them away, or will ever thank me for them, but it was great that I got to give them to her son to give to her. The whole day I thought I would have to give them to some lame usher or body guard if I had the chance. I never would have thought I would actually meet her or her family.

Her show was very different that what I thought it would be. She didn't cook at all. Another chef cooked while she wandered around the stage and talked to the audience, her family (husband Michael, son Bobby, aunt Peggy, brother Bubba, Bubba's daughter, Bubba's girlfriend), and the chef. She had a lot of funny stories & told a few jokes. I put a couple of the videos on youtube. You can tell we were in the nosebleed section.



Vince & I laughed a lot during the show & I was excited about my autograph from Bobby Deen & being able to give a celebrity something creative from my kitchen.