Cracker Barrel Old Country Store

I realize that it is Father’s day, but they employees are condescending when I asked about the wait time. When we registered we we’re told one time, then about 25 minutes in, we were told another time. When I argued the reference time, my husband saw the girl roll her eyes. And the guy next to her was shaking his head. This is before we were even seated. So we will have to see how the rest of this experience is… So far, we are not impressed.

Road trip! According to the GPS, this location is the closest to Orange County. The new Las Vegas one (ready in July 2016) would be closer, but I still have to wait a month or so for it to open.
I was hankering for some Cracker Barrel, and decided to drive out from Orange County (Anaheim, to be exact) and get some lunch. Sure, it’s a 4 hour drive, but what do I have to do on a lazy Sunday?
So I piled Karen and Stephen in my jeep, and headed out to Yuma, Arizona, by ways of the 5 south, back ways of San Diego County to Imperial County to the Arizona border.
We arrived just before 1:00, waited 15 minutes for our table, waited a bit longer for our waitress (I actually thought she forgot about us!). I ordered the Sunday chicken with the popular Hash Brown Casserole, potatoes covered in cheese and cream then baked, along with their fried apples, while Karen had the bbq chicken, daily vegetables, and also the fried apples. Stephen had the fried catfish, mac n cheese, turnips, and yes, the fried apples.
Our food also came with corn bread or biscuits (which I had both) and be sure to ask for the apple butter (free, but must ask).
Overall, a tasty, comforting southern lunch… but a long drive back to Cali!

Country fried chicken and pancakes are amazing! The only down part here is the service. The people are rude. The lady at the register was horrible.

This was my first experience at a Cracker Barrel. I have seen the commercials but never visited one as there are none in San Diego. Before you get to the restaurant, you walk through a very cute general store that has all kinds of items including clothes, gifts, lotions, candy, doll, quilts, jewelry, hats, etc. The restaurant is warm and inviting. Everyone was friendly. We had a great waitress in Heather. The menu is quite extensive. I had the chicken fried steak — so yummy! My family all agreed that CB has the best orange juice ever. Coming from southern CA, their prices are very reasonable for the amount of food your receive. You will most likely leave with a doggie bag. The ambiance is American pickers with various signs and memorabilia on the wall. I will definitely come back at the next opportunity.

One day after bad service at cracker Barrel in Phoenix Arizona I was super excited to have awesome service at this location! The food was really awesome too!
I ordered the campfire chicken wrapped in the aluminum foil and it was moist and seasoned just like you would imagine a campfire to be! The potatoes and vegetables or soft not soggy.
My kids ordered the shrimp and mac & cheese. They all ate the mac & cheese first and pulled off the fried part of the shrimp… Apparently they are grilled types of kids!

My brother took me to a Cracker Barrel back in Virginia about 3 years ago it was good, so when we moved here to Yuma and I seen there’s one here I knew I had to take my wife and just like I figured she loves going there for breakfast, have even had dinner there once !

It has a nice atmosphere, and you have to be careful with the wife and kids. They want to shop in the little country store.
The food is pretty good, and meets all your expectations. What you do not get is surprises. You will get the same meal whether you order it in the morning, noon, or night. And that is OK.
If you want good food, you will do fine with Cracker Barrel.

Cracker Barrel is one of my all time favorite Southern food chains in the world. I always wonder if it’s my favorite because it’s that damn good or that the closest one is 200 miles away and I only get to eat there 4 or 5 times a year.
I say both!
I’ve taken numerous southern food «virgins» to Cracker Barrel and gotten them hooked. I love the glassy-​eyed look they get when I tell them I’m going to Arizona or North Carolina and they ask «are you going to Cracker Barrel?» I feel like I don’t even have to write about the meal but here we go.
First stop into Arizona is the Cracker Barrel in Yuma. You usually think of a front porch with rocking chairs nestled somewhere in the Smoky Mountains of NC, not the stifling, radiating heat waves of Arizona. Don’t matter where it’s located, go inside and loosen your britches.
My favorite is the breakfast here but since it was afternoon I wanted dinner. I ordered a favorite of mine, country fried steak with mashed potatoes, mac n cheese and fried apples. Awesome as always so no amount of adjectives is going to do it justice.
Now for the wife.
Catfish.
Again.
But, this her favorite and her favorite place to get it along with her fried okra and collard greens. Soul food.
Now, for the end all, beat all reasons that I love Cracker Barrel above all: Sweet tea, cornbread, and biscuits. As I’ve stated before, it is so hard to get a good biscuit west of Texas so that’s why Cracker Barrel is such a saving grace. You’re going to get great biscuits and cornbread and generous amounts in just about every location you visit.
The sweet tea ain’t as good as my Mama used to make but it’ll get you by.
I would tell you about dessert but I very rarely get dessert. Frankly, I don’t see how anyone has room left for dessert.
(I don’t know, maybe everyone don’t commit one of the Seven Deadly Sins and glutton themselves to death like me.)
If you do decide on dessert, I recommend the Pecan Pie. You know, I always recommend the Pecan Pie (Kind of a one trick pony) Sure, go for the pie! With vanilla ice cream!
So now you’re finished. Well, just stroll through the gift shop and buy some old fashioned candy, pecan logs, moon pies, and soda pop for your road trip. Because, eventually, your meal will subside and you’ll want something to remind you this place.
Enjoy!

I’m a Cracker Barrel junkie! My husband supports my habit by driving me 200 miles to Yuma, AZ, the closest location! The 3hour drive is worth it though!
The pancakes are the best item (in my opinion) and served with a real maple syrup blend, not maple flavored corn syrup.
You can order breakfast, lunch or dinner items pretty much all day and the pricing is cheeeaap! Our typical gorge fest for 2 people includes 5 menu items and beverages for ~$ 33 with a 20% tip.
I know not everyone is willing to drive this far, but if you are ever in a state that has a Cracker Barrel (pretty much every state but California) stop by!!!

The grilled seasoned lemon pepper trout, Mac n cheeze, baked sweet potatoes and steam broccoli was to die for. Will come back again. Very pleased. The gift store was also awesome. Great stop for those of us in between SD and AZ

This is what happens when you’re from the south and have trained your kids on the nostalgia of home cooked food at Cracker Barrel. We started driving from San Diego to the Salton Sea to visit Salvation Mountain. I casually mention that CB is in Yuma. They notice that Yuma isn’t very far from our highway 8 turn off. Then they plan how to make this happen. We hit Salvation Mountain around 10:30 AM and took our time touring the site. Which you should too if you’re nearby or love art. By 1:00 we were eating chicken and dumplings at CB. Some had breakfast and some had lunch. Almost all had sweet tea. Worth the excursion. A fun little high light of Spring break.

Great experience as always from Cracker Barrel.
The service was great. Was part of a party of 10 (4 Adults and 6 kids) and the waiter never skipped a beat.
Highly recommended!

Always nice to see a Cracker Barrel when one needs a good hearty country breakfast to start the day! Interesting, though, at this particular location of CB, I had to actually request a breakfast menu from the server. And that’s a concern. Are people actually ordering other food from CB? Who? Why? Why would you order anything on this menu if it doesn’t come with hash brown casserole? Are you mad?
I got over that initial shock, and we enjoyed the usual breakfast. There wasn’t anything special or notable about this particular location — it’s just comforting to have it there right next to the hotels in an area we’re passing through.

I have seen so many commercials about Cracker Barrel, that I could not wait to try one out. On our trip to Phoenix we spotted this one off the 8 and decided to finally stop on in.
Very cute country setting, the general store is AWESOME. We were seated immediately. Environment is comfy and welcoming, even their high chairs are made specific to fit the décor. Love the attention to detail. They also have MASSES of employees. We were seated near the kitchen and watched people coming and going.
Menu is expansive and has all the usual «good olé cooking» from the south. Which means 90% of the food is fried. Their ice tea is fresh brewed and excellent. I prefer drinking unsweetened, unflavored tea and theirs was very tasty.
If we had come here to go shopping and just get some tea, the 5 stars would have been highlighted up above, but since we came here to eat and did, I had to adjust my review.
The easiest way to say this is that this is the fast food version of southern cooking. Nothing stood out, sauces tasted bottled, everything was fried and nothing was something I would make my way to come have again. The hushpuppies were blah, the corn bread muffins had no corn in them and very bland. Their biscuits however were excellent. The turnip greens were too mushy, watery and the flavor was horrible. The fried shrimp was decent, but I can get that driving through Popeye’s too.
Been there done that, not coming back.

This looks, smells, tastes like every Cracker Barrel. They serve the breakfast with grits and those sweet apples. I had the one where you can get ham or pork chops or steak. It was good along with three perfectly cooked over medium eggs and the biscuits and gravy it comes with. The cheesy hash browns are always fun.
Parking is easy and service is good. It took me three years of living here to go to this store. I’ll be back before another three years when I want country cooking.

I just noticed that the name of the establishment is Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. The word restaurant is not in the name. Shoulda been a clue! I ordered the country fried steak. The steak was excellent and the corn bread hot, moist, and absolutely delicious. It was all down hill from there. The steak fries were warm, and had an odd taste that neither copious amounts of salt nor ketchup could overcome. The side salad also had a bitter taste that was somewhat reminiscent of skunk. I ate the provided saltine crackers to get the taste out of my mouth and discovered that the saltine crackers were just «ine» crackers as they no salt. It was the first time I ever salted my crackers.
The service was adequate, but the servers were overburdened and not able to attend to detail in their service. The good news is my wife didn’t buy anything in the country store before we left. We won’t be back.

The Cracker Barrel has rectified itself.
I think I found out the problem… You don’t go to a greasy spoon country cooking place and order a freaking salad, as what I did last time I was here.
The tables turned and I ordered the country fried steak… And by golly, it was greasy, the gravy was creamy and thick with chunks of sausage, the steak was juicy inside that fried breaded goodness… ordered me some fried apples… darn things tasted like the innards of a hot apple pie and some deliciously whipped mashed potatoes…
Sorry dear Cracker Barrel for my last three stars… This time, you had me at Chicken Fried Steak and your country little store that makes me feel like it’s fall outside even when it’s like 110 degrees.

A great favorite but not in NV or CA :-(
Getting my fix of good ol’ southern cookin’!
Gotta love this place for the consistently good service and comport food quality.
Wide selection of menu items sure to tickle anyone’s fancy!
Nikki was our server and she was cheerful and attentive. I had the ½ pound burger on grilled sourdough and my favorite steak fries and Ron had the grilled chicken salad with buttermilk ranch dressing.
Okay… maybe not the most healthy of lunch selection for me, but heck when in Rome do as the Roman’s do!
Don’t forget to have the chocolate coke cake too!

My wife and her family stopped here a few weeks back and were pretty impressed with the food. My wife said that my son loved it too, so that in itself warranted a stop. I had been here before but its been a few years. We stopped today on the way back from San Diego. I was happy with the choice.
It was 2 in the afternoon but I was in the mood for some pancakes. Cracker Barrel is cool like that and they serve breakfast all day. I ordered Momma’s Pancake Breakfast. It came with 3 pancakes with your choice of maple syrup or fruit topping, 2 eggs and choice of bacon or sausage. I went with peaches and whipped cream as my topping for the pancakes and I decided to go with scrambled eggs and bacon. My wife got their chicken fried chicken along with mashed potatoes, corn and mac and cheese (my kid loves the mac and cheese) and biscuits for her bread selection. I had coffee to drink and my wife had a soda.
Food was pretty good. The pancakes had a grip of fruit and whipped cream on them and they definitely hit the spot for what I was craving. The eggs were good… presented more like an omelette log than the usual mental picture of scrambled eggs. The bacon was good. The coffee was hot and fresh too. My wife loved her meal. She gave me a bite of her chicken and it was crispy, hot and delicious. Being the nice wife that she is, she also gave me one of her biscuits. I buttered it up and threw some strawberry jelly on it. It was very tasty. My son enjoyed eating his little pieces of mac and cheese, corn and chicken that my wife cut up for him. He loved it so much that we fed him some mini waffles before our food arrived and he STILL ate a bunch. Must have been good, eh?
Service was friendly and attentive. Total for our meal including tip and everything was only around $ 30.00. Very reasonable for the sheer amount of food. We bought some candy in the Country Store for dessert and we were on our way. If you ever feel like some good, down home comfort food, this place definitely fits the bill. We will be back for sure!

On our way through Arizona, my friend wanted to stop at Cracker Barrel. It’s perhaps one of her most favorite restaurants. This is literally the closest Cracker Barrel to California, as we have none that I can think of in California.
This Cracker Barrel location has a large parking lot and seems to be quite busy, the wait was close to 20 minutes when we arrived there during lunch on a Saturday afternoon. Inside the store, you have lots goodies including their on site baked pies you can take home, unfortunately I didn’t get to try any of the pies here.
Once we sat down the server brought over our drinks, I decided on some of their coffee because I was driving the whole way. Their coffee was pretty decent and they provide unlimited refills which was nice.
I ended up ordering a sandwich platter, which was the Grilled chicken tenderloin sandwich (
) with a side of pinto beans. The sandwich was pretty decent, the bread was nothing special though. The chicken was super moist and grilled perfectly, great chicken. The pinto beans were on the okay side, I wasn’t able to finish them though, since I had quite a large breakfast.
My two friends also ordered some plates, one ordered the chicken dumplings with carrots and collard greens (
) and another ordered their awesome oatmeal (
). Both dishes were up to their standards and they enjoyed their food as well.
Our server was very attentive and the restaurant overall was pretty clean and well taken care of. I really had no complaints about this place, the food just wasn’t my full cup of tea, however my friend really loves this place and I can see why, lots of people seem to love it.