Review Cracker Barrel Restaurant
This review is about our recent experience at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Sacramento. It seems that we needed to attend a quilt show in March and after the show, we needed to fuel up before returning home. So my wife chose the Cracker Barrel Restaurant as our stop for this trip.
Cracker Barrel Restaurant Menu Cover
Location and parking
We found the restaurant location to be very close to the quilt show and a short trip from the show to the restaurant made it very easy to find. When we arrived it was slightly past noon and the parking lot was packed. I fully expected us to have some wait time before we would be seated. Well, it was good luck for us as we did our “parking lot vulture” circle and a spot turned up very close to the front door on the second circle.
Opening the front door
We parked and walked into the restaurant. If you’ve never been to a Cracker Barrel the layout of the buildings is very similar. When you open the front door you walk into a gift shop. You will need to walk thru the gift shop to get to the entrance to the dining room. A host that will take your name and if you’re lucky you will be guided back into the dining room immediately. If not and there is a wait time there are rocking chairs out front that you can use until you are called.
Seating and server
Our luck was holding and we were guided into the dining room immediately. We sat down near the center of the dining room. Our server was Robert, but he likes to be called Bobby(ask for him if you should stop by). Bobby stopped at our table and asked for our drink order. I also asked him a couple of questions about the menu.
Bobby our server
Not on the menu
I asked Bobby if I could get a meatloaf sandwich since I noticed that they had a meatloaf meal on the menu. He didn’t know about that kind of option but his curiosity was piqued and he was going to ask the kitchen if it was possible. I also asked him about another option to have sweet potato fries instead of regular fries. To this request, he had some bad news for me. They, the sweet potato fries were not an option.
The difficult one
I explained to Bobby that it was his bad luck to get me as a customer as it is very difficult for me to choose what I want to eat. My wife, on the other hand, is very easy to please. She can look at a menu and pick out exactly what will “fill the bill”. This usually leaves me in the dust as I ponder what it is I exactly need. Well off to the kitchen Bobby went and when he returned there was more bad news. No meatloaf sandwich. So it was going to be a long process to figure out what I want to eat. But he did leave a small plate of cornbread and biscuits.
Lack of options
As I was looking at the large print menu(I had forgotten my readers) I kept noticing that there were not many options for any particular type of meal. For example, there were only two types of hamburgers. There were also only four sandwiches(2 chicken, grilled and fried, BLTs, a French dip, and open-faced roast beef) from which to choose. Pretty dismal pickings. I was teetering between the fried chicken BLT and the French dip sandwiches. It was the Peppercorn Horseradish Sauce on the French dip that won. Then throw in some regular fries as a side dish add a small container of coleslaw, and along with the beef au jus it made up the rest of the plate. My wife chose the grilled chicken BLT with fries and the same coleslaw. She also noticed the lack of options on the menu.
Cracker Barrel Restaurant Interior Decor
The atmosphere
As we waited for our food to arrive I started to look around the room. The room was clean. I noticed that if there was anything on the floor that shouldn’t be there it was removed quickly. The room was mostly decorated in fake antiques in the upper part of the walls. You know the kind. They look like antiques but have been recently manufactured(for example copies of antique photos in frames).
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The food arrives
The food arrived by way of another worker(I didn’t catch her name). I asked for a bottle of Tabasco sauce for my fries. The sandwiches we ordered arrived hot and ready for consumption. But I must say that both sandwiches appeared to be rather small as sandwiches go. In fact, all the items on the plate were small. My wife noticed this as well.
French Dip Sandwich Missing a Couple of Bites.
Grilled Chicken BLT
My French dip sandwich
My sandwich didn’t contain much meat. It felt like a sandwich from a well known national sandwich chain. A skimpy portion of meat. Every bite produced a taste of bread, beef au jus, and onions and left my palate searching for the taste of meat.
The one thing that had sold the sandwich, the Peppercorn Horseradish Sauce I couldn’t taste. In fact, I opened up the sandwich looking to see if they had forgotten it. If you are a horseradish lover you know that horseradish has a very distinctive flavor and a little bit goes a long way. Well, something had been spread on one side but there was no horseradish sauce flavor in any of it.
So let me recap, the sandwich was small, didn’t have much meat and the principal flavor was lacking in the sauce.
The sides
The fries were ordinary. Nothing distinctive about them. The coleslaw was, on the other hand, was very sweet. I could definitely tell that sugar had been added. Too sweet for me. I handed it over to my wife. The beef au jus was ample and very flavorful. I liked it.
What about dessert?
When we were eating, the table next to us asked about dessert and I overheard Bobby utter something about a no sugar added pie. So when he arrived at our table I asked about it. It turns out that Cracker Barrel has a no sugar added apple pie option. My wife and I ordered a piece for each of us.
That out of the routine order must have thrown the kitchen for a loop as it took a very long time for the pie to be brought to the table. So long in fact that I was about to call Bobby to the table and ask him to cancel the order. As I was looking for him, he appeared with our pie. It was presented with a small scoop of what appeared to be vanilla ice cream.
The piece of pie was ample and the apple filling had just the right amount of spices. Not very strong on the cinnamon and the apple flavor dominated(which I like). The crust was perfect, light and flaky. I tried to push the ice cream on my wife as I thought it to be regular ice cream(which as a diabetic I can’t consume). She informed me that the ice cream was, in fact, a no sugar added version. So the pie became the single most liked choice of my entire meal.
Conclusion
Will I be back? If I return it would be for the dessert. But I don’t believe that I would show up for anything else.
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