Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — Restaurant in Rockwall

Our Cracker Barrel Experience For Brunch on Saturday, February 15, 2020.

So the widely anticipated roadside pitstop known as Cracker Barrel has finally opened in Rockwall, Texas. I was not one of the ones swooning.

Our waitress came with a sweet hospitable spirit and offered menu suggestions to help us a bit in navigating the Crackle Barrel menu. Right off the bat we ordered coffee, water and chocolate milk for the girls. The chocolate milk arrived in cartons, which we poured the chocolate milk into plastic cups.

The food we ordered arrived hot, fresh and the service was excellent! I have no complaints of the service we received. The food is completely a different story. I can not believe this has been such a big talk about how great this place is when it comes to the food. I had high expectations of quality with southern tastes of homestyle cooking.

The Old Timer. Fun titles on the menu such as the Old Timer is a gag. Two farm fresh eggs and Grits I did find very good. From our choice of Thick-Sliced Bacon, Smoked Sausage Patties or Turkey Sausage, the Turkey Sausage was not something that I expected. It was way too salty! The Hashbrown Casserole was not appealing at all. It was mushy hash browns drowned in an overly cheesy and heavy dripping sauce. It was like the ingredients were not mixed well at all. Or is it possible that was their intent? I hope not. This dish came with homemade Buttermilk Biscuits and a side bowl of Sawmill Gravy. I ate a piece of the biscuit and it tasted like raw dough. Not sure where the buttermilk comes in to play. There was no butteriness to it. And the gravy had no flavor or seasonings–It was just goop! I had biscuits out of a can that tasted better baked in my oven.

Grandma’s Sampler. I was looking for a waffle with blueberries and I ended up choosing Grandma’s Sampler. No waffles are served at Cracker Barrel. On this item, we requested blueberries to be added to the 3 Buttermilk Pancakes. After adding some butter it was a perfect taste of salty and blueberry tartness. Very nice crispy edges on the flat pancake overwhelming won me over as a delight. Not sure if it was an accident or intentional. But our waiter left us a couple of mini bottles of Wild Maine Blueberry Syrup by Dickinson’s. I poured this over one blueberry pancake and oh it just added more to savoring the salty and sweet warm buttery combination. The syrup dropped little blueberries with each swirly pour. And it was not in a jam clumpy way.

The eggs were scrambled and tasted okay. I would argue that the bacon was not thick sliced as it was listed in the menu description. The Country Ham was not something I would probably consider ordering again. The meat just wasn’t season well or it was just overcooked. The Fried Apples was a chunky sweetness of real apples with the skin that easily unwrapped with your tongue as you savor the seasonings. If you are not a fan of apple skins or texture this is probably not a side dish you will enjoy.

We ordered for our girls another dish that included blueberry pancakes, eggs and turkey sausage. Afterwards, we concluded that we should have just let them have the 2 of the 3 blueberry pancakes from my order and just add an extra of scrambled eggs to our orders.

Finally, I do see that the location for Cracker Barrel is going to do well. There is a culture following and it is off a major highway. If you are local and you plan to make this a weekly outing. Probably should consider splitting the meals with another patron. The portions are very big and may not be so heart-friendly. Even if it sounds like it is health conscience –they absolutely are not.

Paying our bill was done in the back of the country store. I admit that was a very clever way of placement to add another chance for a customer to pick up additional items to purchase.

Crackle Barrel will forever be remembered where I ate raw dough...

I went with my mother, step dad and child. 1st of all we are a mixed culture family of White and Hispanic. The woman that sat us placed the menus and paper bagged utensils on the table and said someone would help us but never placed them in position per service just bunched up there and I had to do it. We were waitered much later by a Hispanic waitress who declined providing us with bread after we asked for it because it was never brought out to us as customary at other cracker barrels. She said our food was almost out and thus never brought us the bread which is not even for her to decide when us as clients are requesting it since they never brought it out to begin with but they did for another table...I noticed that in the tables against a wall or window is where somehow people of color were being placed and the very evident anglos were only placed in the center tables. An Hispanic helping the hispanics a black waitress with black customers and so forth...the food took forever to arrive my mother requested her gravy on the side and that was never received either thus her chicken fried steak was dry as a parrots beak and we were never even offered drink refills (one was actually drinking coffee and never was offered a refill as small as the cups are) overall I've been going to cracker barrels my entire 43yrs and I've never received such evident lack of service and definitely never been noticeably segregated at any other cracker barrel location. I will never go again nor my 4 grown children & spouse nor my mom and step dad and so forth... I don't care who serves us as long as its a good job done and we aren't declined things which are common sense. I also know it wasn't just an us issue with us because I saw the black waitress serving only the black customers and white waitress only the white customers...

Strangely abysmal service. Usually, I think of Cracker Barrel as one of the gold standard for restaurant service, yet tonight they missed the mark by far. Our party was a 7 top, so not massive by any stretch of the imagination - but for whatever reason, they had our table split into two with two different waiters. So whenever one came by to drop something off and we needed something on our side, it wasn't paid any attention to as it wasn't 'their table'. There was little communication, I never received a single refill from our waiter who was significantly less attentive than her counterpart. They asked us about biscuits and cornbread prior to our ordering, and we didn't receive anything until way after our meals arrived. We had to ask multiple times to get anything and when they actually did something they seemed frustrated. When we requested some apple butter for the table, they returned with one little ramekin. Then, to top it off, despite splitting us up into two tables, the check was all together and the waitress said it wasn't possible to split it up. The employee at the front counter was great and did her best to get things separated quickly so we could pay, but still, it was immensely frustrating to have to wait even longer after a disappointing visit just to pay and leave. We were hardly checked up upon, the waiters didn't seem to care about our table for whatever reason, and the only reason it's not a one is because the food was fine. I understand growing pains but this was just a little much - I've never had this many issues at any Cracker...