My Cracker Barrel Visit Left Me Wanting a New Menu

I visited this Cracker Barrel on a Monday mid-afternoon. It’s located near major freeways and Washington Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia.

Cracker Barrel had renovated some of its restaurants using a brighter, less-cluttered look. This location never changed and looked the same as the other times I visited.

The host seated me right as I walked in. I got this table, which had a checkerboard on the tabletop and a set of wooden checkers in a wall-mounted holder.

One of Cracker Barrel’s newest menu items is the Campfire Breakfast Skillet, which includes eggs, sausage, vegetables, cheese, and a couple of biscuits on the side.

A few minutes after I was seated, a Cracker Barrel employee showed up to take my order. The server was friendly, stopping by frequently to ask: “How’s everything going, dumpling?”

I also ordered a soup-and-salad combo after seeing this card at my table. Masino has talked about offering more budget-friendly menu options at Cracker Barrel, so I wanted to try one.

A staple at Cracker Barrel restaurants, the goal of the game is to remove as many pegs as possible from the board by jumping them over each other. The chain’s website calls it “a great way to test your IQ.”

A summer menu item, the watermelon lemonade was just what I wanted on a warm Northern Virginia afternoon.

The House Salad included lettuce, tomatoes, croutons, bacon bits, cheese, ranch dressing, and crackers on the side. It was unremarkable.

This Cracker Barrel restaurant advertised “Campfire soup,” though my server said that they didn’t have any when I visited. Instead, I chose the chicken noodle soup.

I appreciated the rough-cut noodles. It made a simple dish feel more homemade — something that felt in line with Cracker Barrel’s image.

I tried Cracker Barrel’s Campfire Meal with Beef on my visit last year. It tasted the most like home cooking out of anything I’ve ever had at Cracker Barrel.

This breakfast skillet was a little less impressive. The smoked sausage was tasty, but the egg, potatoes, and peppers didn’t taste like much of anything, and each ingredient was kept separate from the others.

Overall, it was okay, but it didn’t feel like a cohesive meal.

I was eager to try these biscuits, both because I make them regularly at home and because of my past experiences with Cracker Barrel biscuits.

On my previous visits, Cracker Barrel’s biscuits weren’t very fresh. They were a little sour, lukewarm, and reminded me more of the ones you can buy in a tube at the grocery store than anything homemade.

This time, they were a little better: Warmer and seemingly fresher. But the sour taste was still there.

For a chain specializing in Southern comfort food, good biscuits are a must-have.

As my server cleared away my dishes, I ordered a Double Chocolate Fudge Coca-Cola Cake — well, technically, the All-American version, since it came with red, white, and blue sprinkles.

Pouring Coke into cake batter might sound over the top, but it worked. The warm, gooey cake contrasted with the cold vanilla ice cream.

After finishing the cake, I headed up to the register to pay for my check.

Yes, many patrons say that they love Cracker Barrel for the funny photos or the antique farm tools mounted on the wall. Others, though, have told me that the chain’s food quality has slipped in recent years, prompting them to go elsewhere for a meal out.

The need for a broader overhaul of the menu has been evident on my past two visits, and it was again this time. While the Coca-Cola cake and the soup were nice, everything else was average to disappointing.

As I walked back to my car, I wondered the same thing that I had after my previous visits: What can I eat at Cracker Barrel that’s better than at any other restaurant? The answer still isn’t clear to me.

Restaurants often have to balance pleasing long-time guests with attracting new ones, Georgetown’s Zajack told me.

Cracker Barrel has plenty of old-world charm, but has yet to find a strategy for winning over a new generation of customers.

“Nostalgia only takes you so far, you have to find a way to harness it while moving forward with new taste preferences and offerings,” she said.