Dan'l Boone Inn — Restaurant in Boone

EDIT: I just happened to see on Facebook this morning a post from the restaurant advertising a complimentary Veteran's Day meal. I served 26 and 1/2 years so I decided to come up and partake. I appreciate everything about the visit today. The food was great and the staff is always nice. Thank you so much! I love this place. I've been going there for many years. Over those years things have ebbed and flowed in terms of quality and service.

On this visit, the service was ok. I suppose based on the format, you kinda get what you get. They're trying to get an enormous amount of people in and out as quickly as possible. Don't expect a ton of interaction from all of the servers. Some of them are fantastic and do a fabulous job. Others are there for the paycheck only.

The important thing. The food. On this day the food was pretty good. I've been there many times for lunch and dinner, but never breakfast. I think timing is everything. If you can hit the beginning of the rushes you'll enjoy the food more. It's being turned over quickly. If you wait until later like maybe a later dinner, the food's quality is reduced a little. Probably like most places. But for me it's a key issue because of the cost.

The format is based on family style all you can eat. You have three courses. Soup or salad based on time of year, main spread, and desert. You can get as much as you want of any of it, just don't over order and waste food. I prefer the vegetable soup as an appetizer but that is only available Nov and after until spring. Otherwise it's salad. Next you get fried chicken, chopped steak in gravy, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green beans, slaw, stewed apples, country ham biscuits, and a drink. Then there's desert. I love the fried chicken, especially when it's freshly fried. I love the slaw also but many don't like their style. Food wise, I give it an overall grade of 4 stars based on the totality of my visits, but on this day because the food was fresh for the most part, I give it 5 stars.

I highly recommend the place and it's a must do when you're visiting Boone if you have time to wait in the up to 2 hour line. I think on average the line is probably an hour when in the midst of their rush. Larger parties will definitely wait longer. The atmosphere is cool and the history behind the location is...

I haven't been to this restaurant in 25 years. I remember really enjoying it thinking it was great then. I told my husband and kids all about it and raved through the years and swore if I was ever in the Boone area I'd go. We took a vacation last week to Boone and I couldnt wait and really talked it up to my family. It was $23 a person which is ridiculous and more expensive than any all you can eat buffet. All other buffets also have more options to choose from. So $98 for four people to eat which I accepted for the family style experience. The food came out barely warm. The green beans were inedible and just bland and gross. The corn was ridiculously sweet like they added even more sugar to something that was already naturally sweet. Being from the south I couldn't even rave about the biscuits really. You'd expect them to at least be good. If I had to pick something decent it would have been the fried chicken. The slaw was flavorless and tasted of just cabbage not the sweet southern slaw you'd expect. The hamburger steak had no seasoning just floating in bland brown gravy. I got the chocolate cake as a dessert and it was like pure sugar frosting and the cake was hard like it was cut that morning and left to dry out all day on a counter. Then as we are leaving I see that they don't take anything but cash and check. Y'all it's 2022. They do have an ATM for you to use butt this was a vacation and I use our rewards on credit cards to pay for our trips. So this not only was bad but I had to pull cash out of the bank to pay for a overpriced meal. $120 after tip and all. Overall very disappointing and not the food I remember...

I've been coming here since the early 90's but took a bit of a break from skiing for about 25 years. Getting back into it and this place was on the radar because it used to be a highlight of the trip. Maybe my palette has changed or maybe I was just young and didn't know any better but man, has this place gone downhill. Veggies are all straight out of the can. Mashed potatoes are instant. Coleslaw tastes like it's a bag mix. Soup also appears and tastes canned. Gravy is also from a can. I have to wonder how much of their "cooking" is simply "warming things up." The proteins, on the other hand, are OK. Fried chicken was a little dry, but good. Salisbury steak was good. The biscuits and country ham were the star of the meal, though. Ultimately, it was not as I remembered it and after spending $100 on the meal, I was sorely disappointed.

Also, I didn't remember (or maybe they have changed their policy) that don't take debit or credit cards. The ATM in the lobby should have been a warning but I figured it was a tourist town thing. They don't tell you either, no sign, no warning from the waitress, nothing. So not only did I over pay, I had to go stand in a second line and pay an ATM fee to boot.

If you're looking to gorge yourself on subpar "country cooking" and spend far too much money in the process, by all means enjoy yourself. Just know what you're...