Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — Restaurant in Saint Charles

Went in with my mother for a chicken dinner. Firstly, it seems difficult to find anyone anymore who actually makes REAL bone in chicken, fried chicken! Everything is chicken tenders, fingers, or nuggets. So we wanted a real fried chicken dinner. We checked before we went to this location that there was indeed a real fried chicken dinner available. We arrived, it wasn’t super busy ( about 7:45 pm), and were seated. The waitress was pleasant. We looked over the menu and did decide to go with the southern fried chicken dinners. The picture on the menu looked good.

It came within 5 minutes, which was a red flag right away. 5 minutes to make fresh fried chicken is impossible. I’m willing to wait for a good fried chicken dinner and expected it to take at LEAST 30-40 minutes or so. So 5 minutes says premade/frozen/, or cooked earlier and re-warmed. It came out, and was very dark in color. Not golden, or flaky/fluffy, crispy looking….,

We each got two sides with it, and biscuits.

The first bite was like trying to chew on a jaw breaker. I thought I just got a tough part of the breading. But when I took a second bite, it was like trying to chew on gravel. HARD!

I seemed it was as if it was either breaded, cooked, and frozen to be recooked later, or cooked earlier and then recooked before serving.

When I asked the manager, he insisted it was freshly done. That they make their own breading, and breaded and cooked it as it was ordered. AHHH…. I DONT THINK SO.

It would have taken a lot longer than 5 minutes to do fresh fried chicken.

WHY LIE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS WHEN ITS CLEAR THAT THE PRODUCT is CLEARLY FROZEN OR PRE MADE AND WARMED ONLY BEFORE SERVING!?!

He did ask if I wanted something different. I opted to try the pot roast. He brought out a plate with a blob in the middle…, REALLY? IT LOOKED LIKE DOG FOOD! Honestly! He said he wanted to check to make sure I liked it before he brought out an actual serving.

It had a lot of fat in it, and even when I found a big enough piece for a bite, it was awful. It wasn’t brown in color, but looked like the gravy it was in was made with a lot of flour? It was tan in color. So was the meat. It tasted like it had been frozen. Very mealy.

I chose not to take the roast either.

We ended up having a dinner of mashed potato’s, broccoli, and biscuits. That was it. And the sides are small.

Were we offered a refund or discount on the chicken? NO! I didn’t care about paying for the sides. I ate them. THEY WERE MY DINNER!! But to end up paying $40 for 4 sides and biscuits… ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS, DISAPPOINTING, and totally INAPPROPRIATE MANAGING!!

Nothing like paying $40 and walking out hungry.

We will NOT EAT THERE AGAIN. I will be contacting the district manager/head of company and reporting these issues.

And to add insult to injury, no sooner did we walk into our door upon arriving home, we had to head to the bathrooms.

Treat your guests with better respect, don’t lie to their faces and think they are believing you, and for gods sake, at least give a refund or discount the meal.

Just awful! ...

I placed an online order at 6:37pm. The automated response said food would be available for curbside pick up at 6:57pm. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to get there from where I was so assumed I would have a short wait. Jump to 7:20pm. Nobody has come out with my food. I attempted to call. The automated assistant asked if I was call in for my seamless care side pickup and to press 1. It rang about 4x then went back to the same recording about did I need help with my Seamless car side order sent me back to a ringing phone and again back to automated voice. I hung up and went inside. No hostess. Casey leaning on the counter said someone would be back in a minute. I said I had an on line car side picky and had checked in and had been waving for over 20 minutes. She said oh I guess the system isn’t working and I said I called and nobody answered. She said that the phone never rang. I said well that doesn’t help me I had to come in because nobody was trying to let me know they had an issue and they did know because there was at least 3 other people with the same issue. Worst of all my food was not ready even though it was now 30 minutes pass when they said it would be ready. About 7 or 8 minutes later a waitress brought out about 4 orders, one was mine, I said it should have need ready a half hour ago and I got attitude from the server that it just got done. Not what was promised. Asked to speak to a manager and the cashier had a look on her face when the manager replied back. I can only assume the worker worded it differently than what was related as she hesitated and took a minute to tell me that it would be a while before the manager could talk to me as they had 5 other things to do before they could talk to me. So here I am, extremely upset, frustrated because I tipped for car side to avoid spreading germs as I am fighting a virus and instead get horrible service and a rude staff including the manager. WOW. The food was correct so kudos to the cook, but everybody else failed miserably. I would first of all like the tip removed from my bill as no one truly deserved it. Secondly, I would like you to have a conversation with the manager about their attitude and how it obviously reflected on their , and lastly a sincere apology would go a long way to avoid me taking to social media about your restaurant. In these times when food prices are so high and people are not going out as much and restaurants are having to file for bankruptcy protection and closures it might be a good idea not to over promise seamless service and have staff who can’t handle working with the public. I get this is a hard job, been there done that myself, but this was the worst of all possible outcomes. You got a lot of work to do to fix this situation. Btw. There were still 2 more customers waiting for their food after me that had been waiting as long as me. Very bad. Sorry for the bad energy dump and being a Karen, but that is just how bad your staff...

ZERO STARS WORST CRACKER BARREL TO EVER EXIST! My family and I sat down to eat. I ordered the country fried steak. It was so burnt and the gravy tasted like straight flour it was completely inedible I took only one bite. During our meal I ordered on the app an iced s’mores latte and an order of cinnamon rolls to go. I ordered at 5:30 for it to be ready at 6:15 when we were finished with our meal. We were done right on time. I told the front desk associates I had placed a to go order 45 minutes in advance to be ready by 6:15 and it was only 2 things. They walkie’d to the back to see where my order was. They said it was being boxed up and would be out in a couple minutes. 20 minutes go by and the front desk man asked where my order is again just to be told they are out of the cinnamon rolls that they just said was being boxed up. The man told me a manager would be coming to speak to me. 10 more minutes go by and the manager walks up and I’m explaining the situation obviously frustrated, but respectfully. All he had to say is “so what do you want” with a nasty annoyed face as if I was the problem?! HOW UNPROFESSIONAL!! Not an apology or nothing! I asked what they had available which was one option the chocolate cake so obviously I said it was fine as I was just ready to leave. Another 10 minutes go by and I was brought the cake and a plain iced coffee. They were given an hour and a half and couldn’t even bother to make my coffee right.

This is only today’s experience. Any time we have ordered to go it has taken no less than an hour to receive the mediocre tasteless trash they throw together. The only person working there with any sort of common courtesy and respect is the man at the front desk he was very apologetic and was equally frustrated with the situation suggesting I should call corporate as this is an every day issue with the staff. The rest of the staff are rude. They don’t care what so ever about the service they’re providing and these so called “managers” are the worst of all! I wish I got the manager’s name because that man needs fired what a disgrace no wonder he’s in food service you can definitely tell he has zero life skills can’t even maintain bare minimum good customer service. 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻

Update: the cake was just as terrible and smashed together. Didn’t expect anything...