Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — Restaurant in Battle Creek

Tl;dr: Manager has a tantrum and turns red, we leave without paying for our cold food and get better service elsewhere.

It was a slow Sunday night at the Beckley road Cracker Barrel. 4 tables other than us present. To begin our visit we were seated at a filthy table. We literally had our feet resting on top of food and napkins from the guests before us. Server who was assigned to take our table loudly complains to another server about being sat and asked her to take our order. Food took just over an hour to get to the table from the time we ordered it, and was cold when it did show up. The server told us the food took so long because they only have one cook and he was in the bathroom so the manager had to cook our order. The manager was extremely rude when we asked to see him. He trudged up to our table and grunted "Can I help you?" This guy seemed burned out and ready to fall over. Instead of owning the poor experience he and his staff had provided he turned bright red and began accusing us of lying saying we only waited 20 minutes. He didn't have anything to say about the filthy table or the cold food he himself had apparently sent out to us... He instead just wanted to reduce our hour wait to a mere 20 minutes. The crazy part is that we were literally calling him over to ask for a discount on the cold food, and 2 to go boxes so we could take the food home to heat it up to finally eat it, but with this guys unprofessional attitude, and apparent lack of training on the line, we got up and left. We found much better service and food at the other nationally known breakfast place literally right next door to this poorly ran dump. Save yourself the headache, shop at their cute little store, but eat...

I don't like to post bad reviews, let alone on only 1 bad occasion, but this evening did it in for me. We waited over an hour after placing our order for our food. We didn't recieve an apology for the long time waited or an explanation only "here's some Biscuits and corn bread since you've been waiting". We definitely weren't the only family out that had issues either, we watched multiple other groups complain as well. We finally get our food, still no apology, no explanation. The food was warm/room temp, it was not hot. 3 of us chose premium sides, 2 of them were loaded Mac and cheese and then mine was loaded mashed potatoes. Their Mac and cheese only had a sprinkle of bread crumbs, no bacon, nothing extra worth the extra $2, my mashed potatoes were absolutely dry, even when i asked for sour cream it still did not make it any better. I informed our waitress and she took off the premium sides. The rest of our food was mediocre, not the usual for Cracker Barrel what so ever. THIS IS WHAT GOT ME, in my mashed potatoes I had a piece of RAW CHICKEN. IN THE MASHED POTATOES. I had it in my mouth, spit it out and examined it. The waitress believe it to be "bacon fat" but it did not feel or taste like bacon fat. At first our waitress only wanted to say that the premium charge was already taken off and if there was anything she could do for us, I told her we would not be coming back what so ever. She then removed my meal entirely. Our drinks were empty on multiple occasions, not just one of our drinks, but 4/7 of us were empty, our waitress filled them up twice. Unfortunately we will...

The only reason I'm giving three stars is because of my server, she was fast, courteous and she dealt with the problems quickly. Now for the problems. My friend ordered Chicken and Dumplings, fried apples, hash brown casserole and biscuit. Her entrée was cold and only had one tiny piece of chicken, the hash brown casserole was cold and obviously old, it was dried out and crunchy/rubbery at the same time, didn't get the fried apples or the biscuit either (our waitress didn't serve our meal, she was taking orders on a large group). I had Buttermilk fried shrimp. The shrimp was perfect, but no biscuit and the dried out nasty hash brown casserole. I told the waitress about the potatoes and she said the manager was bringing me fresh casserole. Wellll, she sent out the same old nasty hash brown casserole! I asked to speak with her and after I told her about sending nasty potatoes out again she tried to blame it on the fact she was short staffed/ they were over cooked. That is nonsense! Slow service is because of staff shortage, long wait for a table is due to a staff shortage but dried out nasty potatoes are not due to a staff shortage! It is due to not changing out the potatoes that have been in the holding table too long, I am a chef and I know the difference between over cooked potatoes and potatoes that have been left in the holding table for too long! Shame on the kitchen staff for sending that mess out and double shame on...