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Review by Terri Peters
- I tried the same meal at Cracker Barrel and Waffle House to see which chain had the best breakfast.
- I liked my meal at Cracker Barrel but thought some dishes were overpriced.
- I thought Waffle House was the clear winner in taste and value.
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Waffle House has been one of my family's favorite breakfast spots for a long time. But after recently trying and falling in love with Cracker Barrel's family meal deals, I've been curious which chain is actually our top pick.
Both popular breakfast chains have been in the news lately — Waffle House (slightly) raised its notoriously low base pay, and Cracker Barrel recently reported a dip in revenue. With Waffle House's new investments and Cracker Barrel's decrease in earnings, I was curious to see how the two stacked up in the long line of breakfast chains.
To find out, I ordered the same meal — biscuits and gravy, hash-brown bowls, and steak and eggs — at each chain and compared them.
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Cracker Barrel, which released several new menu items, has recently seen a dip in revenue.
The first Cracker Barrel opened in Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1969. The restaurant chain serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner and is known for its Southern, country-style menu and gift shop. Today, the chain operates more than 660 locations across 45 states.
Cracker Barrel, which reported a nearly 2% decrease in total revenue from this time last year in its fiscal third quarter, has focused on adding new items to its menu, such as cinnamon-bread French toast, green-chile cornbread, and shepherd's pie topped with a hash-brown-casserole crust
On a call with investors in May, Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Masino said the chain was "not as relevant" as it once was, which could explain the company's efforts to attract new customers with menu additions.
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Cracker Barrel's menu was a bit overwhelming.
My husband and I visited Cracker Barrel on a Saturday evening around 6 p.m. to take advantage of its all-day breakfast menu.
Though the restaurant didn't seem too busy, we waited about 20 minutes after being seated for a server to visit our table and take our drink order. This wait gave us lots of time to review the menu, which I appreciated since it was pretty long.
As we looked over breakfast and dinner options, desserts, and side dishes, we agreed that the Cracker Barrel menu was too busy.
We ordered the biscuits and gravy with sausage, the bacon-and-egg hash-brown casserole, and the New York strip steak and eggs, which cost about $41.
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The biscuits and gravy with sausage tasted a bit too smoky for me.
Cracker Barrel's biscuits and gravy cost $7.70 as part of the restaurant's discounted sunrise-specials menu.
The simple meal came with three buttermilk biscuits, a bowl of sawmill gravy (a type of sausage gravy), and two sausage patties. When it arrived at our table, I thought it looked like something out of a Southern-style photo shoot.
Though the sausage patties were well-seasoned and had the perfect amount of salt, the gravy had an overpowering smoky flavor that I wasn't a fan of.
That being said, the flaky, buttery biscuits were delicious and the true star of our meal.
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The hash-brown casserole in Cracker Barrel's breakfast bowl felt overcomplicated.
The bacon-and-egg hash-brown casserole, served in a blue bowl and topped with crispy onions, looked visually appealing.
The meal contained a piece of Cracker Barrel's famous hash-brown casserole, made with shredded potatoes, cheese, and chopped onions. But I thought the creamy, cheesy potatoes slightly overpowered the $12.50 breakfast bowl.
The cheese-topped scrambled eggs and crispy, salty bacon on top were really good, but the dense hash-brown casserole felt too heavy to me — especially since this is a breakfast food meant to be consumed before starting your day.
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The New York strip steak and eggs were pretty flavorful.
The New York strip and eggs at Cracker Barrel came with a piece of hash-brown casserole and scrambled eggs. I added colby-jack cheese to my eggs, which brought the dish (normally $19.50) to about $21. When I ordered, I requested a steak cooked to a medium temperature.
Cracker Barrel's steak was crispy and caramelized. It was perfectly seasoned with salt and very good, though I thought it was cooked to a well-done temperature instead of my requested medium.
The other elements of this dish were very tasty. The eggs were light and fluffy, and the hash-brown casserole was cheesy and dense, pairing well with the entrée.
Still, for $21, the meal didn't feel like a great value, especially since it didn't come with any extras, such as toast.
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Next, I headed to Waffle House, which recently raised its base pay for servers.
Waffle House opened its first diner-style restaurant in 1955 in Avondale Estates, Georgia. Today, all Waffle House locations are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and there are more than 1,900 locations in 25 states.
Waffle House recently raised its server wages to $3 an hour, a change CEO Joe Rogers III called the chain's "single largest additional investment in our workforce" in its 68-year history. Several Waffle House workers went on strike earlier this year to protest the low wages and the company's meal-credit policy.
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Waffle House kept things simple with its menu items.
My two teenagers and I visited Waffle House for a late-morning meal on a Monday around 11 a.m. We immediately grabbed a booth, and a server came to our table once we were seated.
The menu felt simple, with the straightforward breakfast options on one side and the lunch and dinner choices on the other.Getting seated and ordering felt cheerful and efficient, and I was more at ease at Waffle House. But I might have caught Cracker Barrel on an off day.
I got similar items to what I ordered at Cracker Barrel: the biscuit and gravy with a side of sausage, a bacon-egg-and-cheese hash-brown bowl, and the sirloin-and-eggs breakfast, which cost about $33.
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The biscuit and gravy at Waffle House was very tasty.
For comparison's sake, I ordered two separate dishes to taste test against Cracker Barrel's biscuits and gravy, which came with sausage. I got Waffle House's biscuit and gravy ($4), which included one grilled biscuit split in half and a side of two sausage patties ($4.50).
The sausage gravy had a savory, peppery flavor — with no smokiness and the perfect smooth texture. Though there was only one biscuit, it was flaky and buttery and complemented the sausage gravy perfectly.
The sausage patties were flavorful, with a nice amount of seasoning and salt. My perfect dish would combine Cracker Barrel's biscuits, which were a bit lighter, with Waffle House's gravy.
The sausage patties at both restaurants felt interchangeable — they were delicious but just standard-fare breakfast sausages.
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I loved the delicious simplicity of Waffle House's bacon-egg-and-cheese hash-brown bowl.
The Waffle House hash-brown bowls are among my favorite breakfast foods — I especially enjoy the cheesesteak-melt version. I'd never tried the bacon-egg-and-cheese hash-brown bowl, but I enjoyed it as much as the other varieties I've had at the chain.
The $11.30 bowl felt much lighter than the Cracker Barrel version, as the hash browns were primarily made of just shredded potatoes.
The bowl also featured cheese melted between the hot scrambled eggs and the layer of hash browns. The protein-packed bacon and eggs on top were the most filling parts of the dish.
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The meat seemed overcooked, but I liked the sirloin-and-eggs breakfast at Waffle House.
The sirloin-and-eggs meal wasn't on Waffle House's physical menu, but I saw it on the chain's website. When I asked about it, our server knew exactly what I meant.
I ordered the sirloin cooked to a medium temperature but found the finished steak to be overcooked.
Cracker Barrel's steak contained more fat than Waffle House's sirloin, which was salty and crisp on the outside and tender when cut. The $13.10 entrée, which came with hash browns, two pieces of toast, and scrambled eggs, felt like a great value for a steak breakfast.
The scrambled eggs were well-cooked, and the hash browns were just salty enough. This is a Waffle House dish I'd order again.
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I'd return for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, but Waffle House would be my first choice.
Of the two restaurants, Waffle House was the clear winner for me. Though the meal at Cracker Barrel was much more visually appetizing, I preferred the flavor of the food at Waffle House.
If I return to Cracker Barrel in the future, I'd order different breakfast items. The steak was a bright point in the meal, but I don't think I'd spend $21 on an entrée again. I couldn't help feeling like our $41 breakfast entrées were slightly overpriced.
Waffle House's meal cost about $8 less than the same entrées at Cracker Barrel and tasted much better overall. It hit all the right spots for a satisfying breakfast — heavy on protein with perfectly cooked and salted hash browns.
At just $33 for the same three items, it felt like a no-brainer to deem Waffle House the winner of my breakfast battle. I can't wait to return for another round of steak and eggs.
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