Morning Munchies | Sascee’s Southern Style Eatery satisfies the soul – kcentv.com

WACO, Texas — Located on 719 S 11th st. in Waco, Sascee’s Southern Style Eatery fills souls with love and stomachs with delicious homestyle cooking.   

It all started when Marcia Neal, one half of the Sascee’s duo, was an events coordinator for the campus out of Texas State Technical College in Waco. She would be asked to bring in certain meals for Black History Month. From there, her meals garnered attention and people started asking her to cater events. At the events more people would ask for her card (which she did not have at the time).  

“I told John, I think we have something here,” Mrs. Neal said.  

John Neal is the other half of Sascee’s and he has been working around food all his life. When he wasn’t working at restaurants washing dishes or as a fry cook, he was intently watching his mother cook.  

“I didn’t want to do cotton picking and I told my mom and dad I didn’t want to be a part of that.” Mr. Neal said. “So, they put me in the kitchen.”  

Now Mr. Neal thanks his cooking ability and strong palette to his time spent with his mother. A few of the recipes that he uses today are passed down from family and others are just his creations.   

“I usually find things that I like, I do research on how it’s made, and I add my own twist on it to make it even better,” Mr. Neal said.  

When the opportunity came to start a catering business, Mr. Neal was on board.  

“I was gonna call [the business] ‘Too Full’…I thought it was catchy,” he said. “Eventually we settled on Sascee’s. [Marcia] fit the bill because my wife has always been a people person.”  

Mrs. Neal was given the nickname of ‘Sascee’ as a child, and it stuck to this day. 

Sascee’s is a buffet style restaurant, so the food options rotate between beef, chicken, pork and seafood options every day. 6News stopped by on Thursday. The menu included rice, beef tips, cabbage, corn and spaghetti.  

In the kitchen cooking everything that is set out for the day is John and one other cook. John arrives every morning at 6am and has until 11am when the doors open, to prepare the food.  

The signature dish of the day that Mr. Neal wanted 6News to try was his Oxtail soup. The soup contained pieces of oxtail, noodles and vegetables. The oxtail was tender, melting away with each bite and the broth was savory and packed with flavor.  

Meanwhile, Sascee herself focuses on the dessert options made fresh in house.  

“We have sweet potato pie, homemade butter pound cake, buttermilk pie and banana pudding which is what put us on the map.”  

The Restaurant Guru placed Sascee’s at #21 out of 1,351 places to eat in Waco with several reviews specifically highlighting and praising their banana pudding. 

Sascee’s takes pride in changing the idea of soul food. To Mr. Neal, soul food goes beyond the plate, it often brings back fond memories. 

“Soul food is something that satisfies the soul, the inner man,” Mr. Neal said. “One of the things that always gets me the most is ‘man that taste just like my Grandma’s when I was a kid. That taste just like what I was raised up on,’. I get a lot of satisfaction out of that.”