The Chain Restaurant With The Single Worst Fresh Biscuit
Whether it's being enjoyed with hot butter and jam, drenched in sausage gravy, or crumbled into a bowl of hot soup, a fresh, fluffy biscuit can hit the spot as a small part of a larger meal. We ranked nine different biscuits from popular chain restaurants and our pick for the worst comes from an eatery with more than 650 U.S. locations.
Cracker Barrel is known for its family atmosphere and generous portions of its traditional homestyle meals like meatloaf and chicken and dumplings. But the down-home eatery's biscuit ranks last on our list — a ranking that even surprised us.
As a place with a strong reputation for homestyle meals, Cracker Barrel advertises daily freshly made, from-scratch biscuits on its menu. While it offers a bargain on biscuits — customers get four for the same price as a single biscuit at other chains — the biscuits we tasted were overcooked and very dry. While we'll give the restaurant credit for its top-shelf variety of jams and preserves, the biscuit alone left us wanting something better. It's a far cry from Popeye's — our number one pick — which was buttery, fluffy, and enjoyable without any additional condiments.
Store-bought is better
While our dine-in experience with Cracker Barrel's famous biscuit left a dry taste in our mouths, we can't say the same for the eatery's store-bought mix. Cracker Barrel's boxed mix was tops in our ranking of store-bought biscuit mixes. We loved that it only required milk as a mix-in to make the dough, and the baked biscuits came out of the oven golden brown with a firm texture that hit the perfect balance between crumbly and firm.
The biscuits may not be our favorite part of a dine-in experience at Cracker Barrel, but one thing we recommend checking out is its festive fall menu. While pumpkin spice usually takes center stage when the weather begins to cool, Cracker Barrel makes apples the star of its fall offerings. Hungry customers can enjoy apple-inspired breakfasts, decadent baked desserts, or as a part of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.