Tales From an Urban Chef

There’s this old adage that has forever rang true to me. “First time, shame on you, second time, shame on me.”

Enter Cracker Barrel. This is one of those shame on me moments. I’m currently seeing my mom, who is in hospice, which in itself is painful enough, but then you add an excruciating trip through the culinary gates of hell called Cracker Barrel, I believe I must have committed some mortal sin that carved a path to what they consider a foyer.

If every exploited nation that produced useless Tchotchkes were to take a gigantic dump at the same time, all of these consumer feces would have landed smack dab in the lobby of The Barrel.

The lobby was a horrid labyrinth of isles chock full of shit no one needs, a cacophony of keyboards playing music that would make baby Jesus ears bleed rivers of blood and a tsunami of olfactory aromas where you could literally smell fried food and sandlewood at the same time.

Just trying to navigate our way to put our name in for a seat triggered my afib. I’ve seen Japanese subway cram videos that were less claustrophobic than a Cracker Barrel lobby. My head was spinning.

The entire seating procedures were culled straight from a Six Flags business model. Replete with a PA system, we heard our name unfortunately called, which blasted out from a speaker and proceeded to navigate past a horde of ravenous groups of people that should have sworn off this establishment years ago.

The noise level was deafening with screaming kids, food chomping parents, and staff that had to yell over everyone to just do their jobs. It was like being in a wind tunnel.

Speaking of the staff. I genuinely felt for them. Dealing with people that treated them like paid slaves, unruly kids, and huge groups of people wanting everything immediately, every one of them had the appearance of someone that had every ounce of their soul drained from bodies. I actually felt guilty ordering, but we needed to see this through.

I ordered the fried chicken, and my wife ordered over easy eggs with pancakes, and our friend ordered biscuits and gravy.

It’s painfully obvious these places only goal is to stuff asses into seats but as a chef, what I saw coming out of the kitchen resembled every short cut you could take to handle the greed they displayed by over seating  this place.

Every item we had besides my wife’s eggs was pre made and then reheated. Reheated pancakes, my chicken was luke warm, and the sides were all slop and serve.

My friends biscuit gravy was so gelatinous that her spoon stood straight up in the serving cup. I looked at her and said, “Are they mad at you? We finally took our last edible bites and begged for the check. Another bizarre moment is when you have to pay. You are once again forced to endure their hellish gift shop to line up in front of a row of kiosks to pay for your “meal.”

It would be easy enough to just pay and leave but the staff is required under penalty of the business end of a cattle prod to bombard you with merchandise questions about if you want to buy any of their garbage on their shelves. My wife almost lost her shit on that poor soul taking our money, but to her credit, she kept her composure as we sprinted to our car.

Yeah, lets not boycott Cracker Barrel for their shameless peddling of foreign produced garbage, the glaring culinary sins committed, or their obvious seating missteps but instead lets boycott them because they changed their fucking logo. We are so cooked as a country, I swear to God. In the fifteen years of contributing to this blog, I’ve never written a negative review about food, but this shame on me experience warranted it. Full fucking stop. Never, ever again