I was excited to visit Tennessee for the first time and experience old country home style cooking of the area. The event I was attending was catered by Cracker Barrel, so having home style goodness delivered directly to us from Saturday - Monday sounded like a pretty sweet deal! Looking back, I don't think you could pay anyone to eat this food knowing what we know now.... Do give it a try if you're curious and have money to throw away.
The pro's. Here goes, trying really, really hard to be positive here!
Cracker Barrel catering was on time for all three meals for each day of the event. The food was packed up in partitioned to-go trays complete with a main, two sides and biscuits (on most days) and a corn bread on the last day. Dessert was available in a separate container. Plastic (non-compostable) cutlery was available as well. This was the only thing Cracker Barrel had going for it. -no wait, there was bacon one of the mornings. My friend said that was par. So, punctuality, packaging and bacon. There you go, the pros of the place.
How I really feel (basically all cons... sorry!!):
My friend paid $200 for her meals and skipped on buying me the veg meals since it wasn't even guaranteed. Who does that? "Pay us money and we might provide you veg meals if we feel like it."? My friend received 7 meals total. She probably would have spent less and covered the two of us by Door Dashing food to the park from pretty much anywhere else and had better quality food honestly. Even the neighboring gas station mini mart food might have been better. For context, she did enjoy instant mashed potato in a cup + one chicken bouillon cube, something I had picked up from Walmart.
To paint a proper picture of this "experience", the food was reminiscent of the childhood horrors of "mystery lunch". Mysterious slop the grumpy lunch lady with a cigarette half hanging out of her mouth flings onto your tray as ash floats down to garnish your delectable mystery meal; something that you poke around with your fork, take a sniff so you can writhe your face in repulsion, then escort that tray straight into the trash bin. -and theeennnn feel guilty about the non-compostable plastic tray that contained said wasted food which you sent off into landfill. So many disappointing feels! Ugh!
I'll tell you right now, unless you enjoy buttered corn, there's nothing for you here! NOTHING. Maybe at other Cracker Barrel locations, but for sure not this one! You're better off saving your money and enjoying corn kernels straight out of the can. - No butter needed because lightly salted canned COLD corn would be magnitudes better than the meals my friend received.
To be fair, she really gave every single meal a shot and couldn't bring herself to eat any of it except some of the corn and potatoes. The biscuits were super dry, hard and not good even when we attempted to salvage them by dousing in melted butter! The corn bread (only offered once) was disgusting. I don't know what kind of restaurant you are operating if you can't even get corn bread right. Nothing about it tasted good. It was salty, dry, and had a really weird putrid flavor about it. I had one nibble and spit it out. My friend didn't bother having any based on the smell and my reaction.
Off the top of my head, the mains across the days we picked up food were: a tough meatloaf, (questionable greenish-hued & tough even though it was served hot) seasoned "chicken", biscuits & gravy, chicken & dumplings. Sadly, my friend ate none of it. Some of the meat dishes were too tough to tackle. The gravy for the biscuits was bland and overly salted, and the chicken & dumplings dish didn't look appetizing from the outset. Upon taste test, my friend said the texture of the dumplings were really mushy and off-putting, the chicken & dumplings not quite discernible from each other when you look at the slop. That was sad because she wanted real, hot food and the chicken & dumplings were a massive disappointment, especially when they're a comfort food of hers. After running 130+ miles, I don't think people are as picky about food anymore. I think it says something when she wasn't able to put down any of this after running for days already. I'll reiterate here though that the corn was par and that she did enjoy the bacon.
Unfortunately, I didn't take any pics of the food since we threw them all away so soon after. I guess you could say I was worried my iPhone would break if I attempted to make it capture this "food"! I was able to clip a pic that had the meatloaf though.
When in Manchester, avoid stopping here. The food doesn't taste fresh and is poorly made. read more