Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — Restaurant in Oklahoma City

My daughter and I stopped by here to eat breakfast. The food was good for the most part, but I do have a few critiques.

First, how can you have a full breakfast menu, but then not offer any normal breakfast sides like hashbrowns or fried potatoes?! Instead of offering normal hashbrowns, or even a hashbrown substitute like tater tots, they have their signature "Hasbrown Casserole." I wouldn't care so much, but I'm pretty sure that it's just a bunch of tater tots mixed with cheese and onions and baked into a casserole. So it's not really hashbrowns in their hasbrown casserole. You can't even order the tater tots by themselves, which tells me that they most likely don't even make it fresh at the restaurant, but instead, it comes frozen. I opted for the fried apples instead, and those weren't very good either. It would've been good if the apples were actually cooked, but they weren't.

Secondly, this is a pretty big one for me. It's really hard to mess up plain white gravy, but they sure managed it. Their gravy, which again I think probably comes to them pre-made or as a mix, is severely lacking in flavor. Literally, all it takes to make a good white gravy is some shortening, lard, or butter (don't use oil because it won't thicken as well and will leave the mixture really greasy), plus some flour, milk, salt, pepper, and maybe a little bit of water to help thin it if it gets too thick as it cooks. Hands down, one of the easiest things that I cook at home on a regular basis. Theirs is thick, greasy, and tastes like flour, grease, and water, not even milk. I had to add quite a bit of salt and pepper to try to cover up the taste.

Lastly, for a restaurant that obviously doesn't make many of its dishes fresh, it's way too expensive for what you get. Breakfast is usually one of the cheapest meal options at any restaurant, but this meal was about the same as if we had ordered lunch or dinner.

Now that I got my complaints out of the way, I'll tell you all what I liked about this restaurant. First off, the rest of the food was really, really good. The bacon had superb flavor, the eggs were cooked just like I ordered (so were my daughters), and the biscuits were amazing. I want to get their biscuit recipe because they were so good. They weren't too heavy but heavy enough. They weren't soggy, but they were really soft with crisp edges.

Second, the service was very good. Not the fastest, but she did her best. There were a couple of servers there, but one was running between her tables and trying to help on the store side. I'm guessing they were a little shorthanded. Some people would be frustrated by that, but I am not one of them. When you're trying to serve 10 tables, plus checkout customers in the store, plus trying to be around enough to get a good tip, which is how most servers make their money, it can be very difficult and overwhelming. However, regardless of the circumstances, I think the young lady did a fantastic job, and I really appreciate her hard work. I wish I could remember her name so that I could give her proper credit on here, but I can't.

Lastly, they have a general store attached to the restaurant. The store sells a pretty big variety of items. They even sell rocking chairs, which they invite customers to try out for free on their front porch. So the facts that you can look around the shop before and/or after you eat, they have upbeat music playing throughout the place, and that there's so much to keep you entertained, this is truly a unique dinning experience.

Check it out for yourself. Maybe you'll enjoy it even...

I'm used to this place being a family oriented place that's cozy with home cooked food. By no means do I expect 5 star service, however the service we received today was the worst service I've had in Oklahoma. Debra was our waitress and she more than dropped the ball today. The only thing that could had made this experience worse was if she had been belligerately rude. First off, the building was colder inside where we were sitting than it was outside. I know it's not our waitress's fault, but it made the experience worse. I'm not sure how long it took to get our drinks, but it seemed to be a long while. It took around an hour or more to get our biscuits to the table. By then, we already were more than ready to order and tried to order. But she pretended not to hear us when we said we were ready to order. Then I had asked for a craft mimosa thinking it would save me some money. So Debra suggested me getting a "Kit", which she had explained to me that it comes with 4 drinks. She kept telling me "I got you". So I ordered that. Then she doesn't tell me that those kits aren't available for dine in, only take out till I'm on the last drink. Which she failed to even convey that when she told me, the only reason why I know the kits aren't available is because of the people at the front who check out customers whom explained it. I even asked Debra again on the first drink, where was the rest of the craft and she told me, she could only bring me one at a time. My drink came in a small glass similar to a wine glass, that was filled just over half of the glass. It seemed like I wasn't getting a full drink. That's including the flavoring that was in the drink as well. Lastly, the food sucked. I got cream cheese pancakes, the pancakes were slightly warm and the filling was cold. She sets down my plate, told me it wasn't pretty and took it back. So after waiting some time over an hour for this food, they couldn't even get simple pancakes right, I couldn't even get it fresh. This was after 2 tables came in after us and left before us. My friend ordered loaded fries and fried pickles for her meal. Her loaded fries no joke came out with no cheese, some spare scallions, but did have the bacon. But her pickles were the worst. They were either old, freezer burnt, or over cooked because they were so crispy, the pickle inside was either dried up or gone. We were eating straight breading. Then going to check out, Bri the manager there, explains the kit ordeal because I wanted some clarification on how much the kit was because my bill didn't reflect what I ordered. So I spent almost $40 on 2 below par filled pancakes and 4 drinks that weren't filled to the top. To be honest, I feel swindled. Talking to Bri, she didn't seem to care or even understand what happened. She just wanted to make sure I knew we didn't have kits. After the initial first impression of her, I didn't push it because she didn't present herself well, she seemed to not well maintain her clothes and I noticed a lot facial hair. Someone to me that doesn't maintain they're uniform or their personal hygiene especially a manager, doesn't care if anyone messes up a drink order. She didn't even apologize for the waitress selling me something that didn't exist. She told me they offer kits for to-goes and that was it. So today was the first day I didn't tip. What service was worth tipping extra today? The greatest part was leaving. I don't think any of the 8 of us or our families will be coming back...

My family will never be returning to this location. We arrived around 11:30, waited about 30 minutes to be seated which was expected at that time on a Sunday. We shopped around and everything was fine til we got seated. The host that was seating us knocked over a coffee pot almost spilling it on a customer then once we were seated it all went downhill from there. Our waitress was absolutely awful! We had to ask for the same things over and over again and she forgot them every single time. For example my little sister asked for jam probably about 8 times and we never got it the entire time we were there but each time we would ask again she was acting like it was the first time we had asked, she never once acknowledged that she made a mistake and like I said never even brought us what we asked for. Our drinks were empty the entire time and the service was just overall terrible. There were a few other employees that dropped things off at our table because she obviously couldn’t keep up and they were fine but our waitress was awful.

To make matters worse my husband and I were surprising my sister with the news of our pregnancy. I had a few cookies made up that said “you’re an aunt” and things like that and I gave them to the waitress and asked if she could bring them out at the end of our meal to surprise my sister. She obliged but it was executed horribly. She didn’t wait til we were done eating and we still had food and plates all over our table so she brings it out and says “I guess this is for someone” and just starts shoving plates out of the way, reaching over the table in front of me completely blocking my view of my sister so I couldn’t video or even see her reaction to the news. I honestly blame myself for expecting that they could handle the task but I’m still just so disappointed that it went so badly. The waitress acted like she could not care less and boy it showed. I know it was a bit extra of a thing to ask but we fully intend on tipping generously for her help but with how badly it went and how bad the overall service was we didn’t tip at all because she simply didn’t deserve it not only for screwing up our announcement but for completely neglecting us the entire time we were there.

We did a similar announcement at Olive Garden for my mother in law and they were so excited to help us out with it and they comped the dessert we ordered, multiple staff members came out when the dessert was brought out, they clapped and were all excited for us, congratulated us and just made it a very great memorable experience for us. I didn’t necessarily expect all of that here at Cracker Barrel but I had hoped that it would t have been completely ruined...