This Popular Cracker Barrel Entree Easily Takes The Crown For Best

When you want Southern-style comfort food, you go to Cracker Barrel. It's just what you do. When some people think of the restaurant and old country store, the breakfast version of comfort food is the first thing that comes to mind. Visions of bacon, eggs, syrup-soaked pancakes, and biscuits and gravy dance in their heads. For others, it's all about dinner. Cracker Barrel is cookin' up a range of down-home options from meatloaf, sandwiches, and steak, to seafood platters, pot roast, and chicken and dumplings.

There's no shortage of supper entrees to choose from, but one sticks out from the crowd: In a recent Tasting Table taste test of eight Cracker Barrel entrees, we crowned the Smokehouse Grilled Chicken the best. The star of the meal is two grilled chicken breasts that are crisp on the outside with a caramelized crust, juicy on the inside, and seasoned in a smoky Southern-style spice blend that makes the meal. What's more impressive is that the chicken still managed to shine even when served up alongside two mediocre side dishes. It was accompanied by a clump of mashed potatoes with hardly any flavor and a pile of mushy green beans.

In the same taste test, Cracker Barrel's Hashbrown Casserole Shepherd's Pie came in last place. It suffered from a skimpy amount of beef and veggies, a lack of flavor, and an overwhelming amount of potatoes between the layer of mashed at the bottom and hash browns on top. It simply didn't gel well. Other entrees fared much better, including the Herb Roasted Chicken, Saucy Chicken Sandwich, and Fried Catfish. Even among these, the Smokehouse Grilled Chicken still came out on top.

We aren't the only ones who liked what we saw and tasted. In a review of Cracker Barrel's $6 take-home meal options, including the Smokehouse Grilled Chicken, the YouTube reviewer found the chicken "delicious" and cut-with-a-fork tender. Another YouTuber liked it so much she spun up a copycat recipe using a spice blend of seasoning salt and smoked paprika before pan-frying the chicken.

Of course, others didn't find it quite as appealing. One YouTuber called it "dry," "bland," and "one of the most disappointing things I've ever gotten at Cracker Barrel." Another wasn't quite as put off by it, yet still wasn't overly impressed. "It was good, but I prefer the Grilled Chicken Tenders," they wrote on Instagram. We really can't blame them. Cracker Barrel does happen to have really tasty tenders — both grilled and fried.