Paula Deen's Family Kitchen announces October opening near Opry Mills Mall

Paula Deen's Family Kitchen is bringing the Southern cook's well-known Southern Fried Chicken and Ooey Gooey Butter Cake to Opry Mills this month.

The 406-seat family style restaurant is slated to open Oct. 26 adjacent to the Opry Mills Mall, and intends to hire more than 200 employees. It will be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.

The menu includes "classic dishes" based on recipes from Deen and her family, according to a news release.

"The dishes that are passed around the tables at Paula Deen's Family Kitchen are the foods my grandmother Paul taught me how to cook at her own kitchen table," Deen said in a statement. "It means so much to be able to share those traditions and recipes with the Nashville community and its visitors."

The menu at the restaurant's Pigeon Forge location includes several Southern staples: fried green tomatoes, fried okra, chicken and dumplings, chicken-fried pork chops and catfish and others.

The 17,000-square-foot space will also include a Paula Deen Store featuring products hand-selected by Deen, including several products from her own line and a few that will be "exclusive to her Nashville store," the release states.

Deen launched her first culinary venture, a lunch delivery service, in 1989 from her home in Savannah, Georgia. She went on to open The Lady & Sons in downtown Savannah in 1996. 

Paula Deen's Family Kitchen started with a restaurant in Pigeon Forge in 2015, growing to include locations in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Branson, Missouri, and Foley, Alabama. Nashville marks the restaurant's fifth location and second in Tennessee.

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Reach Cassandra Stephenson at ckstephenson@tennessean.com or at (731) 694-7261. Follow Cassandra on Twitter at @CStephenson731.