Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — Restaurant in Lafayette

My daughter & I had never visited a CB because we don't have them in Iowa. Our first & probably last visit was to this location in Lafayette. No one was really apl that friendly. We went after the busy dinner rush. It was around 8 last night. We were seated where I could see inside the kitchen. That's where it all went wrong. After we had our food, I could see the cook, who was wearing a black tshirt & had a tattoo on his forearm "Est. 19XX" i think is what it said....... lick his fingers while handling food......TWICE!!!!!!! And then wiped them on his shirt! He was plating someone's meal. I was speechless. My 9 year old kept asking what I was staring at.....it was so disgusting. I would have said something to my server but she was back there as well. At that point we were just done & grossed out. I saw him put on gloves later but he'd already been pawing at whatever he was plating.

Our food was awful. The cheeseballs were good though. The meals, were not. My daughter got fried chicken. It seemed like it had been fried a few times. The skin was so hard & zero seasoning. The meat was so dried out, even gravy couldn't save it. I had the chicken fried chicken........same thing. So over cooked or maybe it had been cooked a few times. Idk but it was terrible. I packed it all up to bring home for my dogs to eat because there was no way we were going to.

Our server, brandy, also terrible. She was friendly but really wasn't paying much attention to her tables. There were only 3 tables for her but she was too busy in the kitchen with the finger licker talking & then they went outside to smoke. I get everyone needs a break but she legit left empty drink glasses & didn't check on anyone before going outside.

I get to areas that have cracker barrels once or twice a year, glad I've never wasted money there before. And won't bother again. I should have taken my daughter...

I've never been to a Cracker Barrel in my life until today. I traveled about 30-35 minutes to try it out. Turns out, I shouldn't have.

Issues:

Starting with the drinks. For alcohol, they have basic piss water "beers" and some juice "wines". Nothing spectacular. I ordered a lemonade. Can't mess that up right? Nope. They sure did. The lemonade was super salty. No tart to it or anything. Just saltwater with lemon squeezed in. I tried an iced vanilla latte instead. ALSO EXTREMELY SALTY. Got coffee. Plain coffee. Tastes like it sat in the warmer for way too long. Way too bitter. Awful.

Got my food. Rainbow trout which I myself catch, skin, and eat. So much pepper on the lemon pepper trout that my mouth was burning. Couldn't eat it. Biscuit was dry. Cornbread was bland. No flavor profile at all. Mac and Cheese was gritty rather than creamy. Casserole was the smallest side I've ever seen. Probably a 1/4 cup portion and was mostly onions. Didn't even bother.

Fiance ordered vanilla latte hot and she said it was salty as well as her Grandma's Sampler. The pancakes, eggs, bacon, and sausage were all salty with no flavor. The bacon wasn't even cooked through. It was still pink in the middle and the whole slice was floppy. No crisp at all. She loves bacon and didn't touch it.

Overall, I have no idea how this place gets such consistently high reviews. I imagine everyone is either A) older than 50 and lost their sense of taste or B) too friendly with everyone here so much to the point where they can't give an unbiased review anymore or bring themselves to ignore issues that might occur.

This place is awful and we won't be coming back. What a waste of a beautiful Sunday.

Edited for clarity: our server April S. was great. The only highlight of the meal. She tried her hardest even...

Sorry to say this was the worst Cracker Barrel experience I have ever had in my lifetime. Normally Cracker Barrel is very good with service quantity and quality. Today was a bad day. 10 of us arrived for breakfast was seated promptly and it all went downhill from there. We had our order taken about 10 minutes later we had empty coffee cups placed on our table 10 minutes after that, and then 10 minutes after that we started receiving our food, and some of the orders were not correct. About halfway through everyone's meal we finally received our first cup of coffee after asking several times. After our waitress never came back and one of our parties food was incorrect we tracked down a manager and the poor fellow did not have a clue as to properly run a restaurant. He adjusted our check with a discount and apologize for any inconvenience but he put all of our tabs on two bills and said they would separate the bill at the checkout. The girl at the checkout separated the bills and the register took the discount off of everything and put it back to full price. After tracking down the manager once again and standing at the cash register for over 20 minutes he finally said just forget the bill and have a good day. After spending 2 hours at Cracker Barrel to have a breakfast I would have been more than happy to just pay full price for my meal and had good service and hot food. Definitely not what you expect when you go to...