sorry but the food is low-grade made with cheap ingredients. Nothing wrong with down-home cooking, but the stuff sucks.

No, the Cracker Barrel version of those foods makes me sad. Ive had grits so good, or biscuits and gravy so good it practically brought tears to my eyes. Not at Cracker Barrel.

I was pleasantly surprised the first time I went to CB and used to frequent them
after, back in the late '80s and '90s - I used to provide the music for a Christmas
Sunday service, and for treat I'd take the musicians to a CB for lunch, and they
were grateful. During this millennium I have been never anything other than
dis thinged (gusted, appointed, that sort of thinged). And the noise level!.

Well, alright, then. Everybody has made their position on Cracker Barrel abundantly clear.

I fear that the point of my post (which attempted used CB as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek example, though I do maintain it as a guilty pleasure) might have been lost. Incidentally, GadgetFreak's most recent post illustrates that point well: haute cuisine can be forgettable or, at the very least, non-habit forming under many circumstances, but once you've had the very best indigenous ::insert ethnic/national/regional title here:: food, it can be difficult to appreciate or even stomach the inauthentic "Americanized"--or westernized, or commercialized, or whatever-ized--version of the same.

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I agree with the general view. Now if could stop thinking of those shrimp and grits and how damn good they were ;)

Are you sure sad is the right word?

I mean, I've had nasty/bad/different-to-the-point-of-being-just-wrong versions of food I like, but can you honestly admit to being sad if a chain restaurant delivers below your expectations?

It's a chain, ferfooksake! :p

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You might be overthinking it a bit ;)

In my effort to decipher your melodrama, I might be over thinking.

I would agree with this. :)

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Melodrama over Cracker Barrel? You might check my posts for things like extra spaces that you can maybe read something into. Or play them backwards and see if they say "I buried Paul".

As an epilogue, I should let you know that I read the Cracker Barrel exchange out loud to my girlfriend last night, and we both lost it laughing for about five minutes...^

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Good. I try comedy occasionally but I really try to avoid melodrama! ;)

I routinely find myself sad at Cracker Barrel. But it's because I can't beat the tee game on the table :(