By Kayla Evans
For the Opelika Observer
Good Ol’ Boys, a family restaurant in Auburn has announced the hiring of a new chef for the restaurant. Anthony Shiffer will be leaving the position of executive chef at the Marriott Resort at Grand National in Opelika to join Good’ Ol Boys.
“He has such a passion not just for food but for people and service and making people happy,” said owner Gwen Adams. “He just has a unique way of connecting with everybody he meets. [He] takes it way beyond food service.”
Shiffer himself reflected on how he came to Good’ Ol Boys.
“I became a chef 25 years ago,” Shiffer said. “I’ve been a hotel chef with Marriott for an awful long time…I don’t know if I want to say that it is the end of my career, but you know, it’s the final stopping place where my career has taken me here in Auburn. Auburn is our home now.”
While at the Marriott Resort, Shiffer had the opportunity to work on his craft with Auburn University on gamedays.
“I had the opportunity to work closely with the university feeding our beloved Auburn Tigers,” Shiffer said. “It was a great opportunity and great experience … it was a lot of fun and met a lot of good people and served a lot of good food.”
Shiffer, along with owners Dan and Gwen Adams, are planning to make the restaurant a family-friendly place with home-cooked meals, Shiffer said.
“We’re going to elevate the menu that it currently was,” Shiffer said. “We’re going to be making a whole lot of changes … but it’s going to keep the main staples like steak and catfish with a lot of elevated country food. Lots of chef specials and lots of theme nights. We’re making it a family-friendly oriented restaurant that’s going to be able to encompass the entire area and neighboring communities to go along with it.”
Gwen is excited about the new possibilities that Good Ol’ Boys has with Shiffer now at the helm of the kitchen.
“We’re going to take it back to that home-made, fresh-cooked, hand-cut fries and that type of thing,” Gwen said. “We will still have a few items that are ready to go like mini corn dogs for the kids that are such a hit and stuff like that that you don’t really make from scratch from the kitchen. Most everything will be homemade.”
Good Ol’ Boys having a lot of history in the Auburn area is a reason that Shiffer wants to work at the Good Ol’ Boys. And the opportunity to grow roots deeper in Auburn and bring home-cooked food to the people who want to enjoy it is what he is most excited about, he said.
“I’m just grateful and thankful for the opportunity that was presented to me and my family, and we look forward to getting after it and cooking some really good food,” Shiffer said.