I've eaten at Cracker Barrel several times, usually b/c it's someone else's idea. My dad and grandma LOVED going there, so I would get dragged along. The food was cholesterol-dense, southern fried goodness. The servers were polite to us. Some even seemed to love my dad when he popped up at their place with family members and friends. They would give us freebies. No complaints. But the first thing that caught my attention was the rocking chairs on the porch. It's nitpicky, but there's just something about rocking chairs on the porch of a store called Cracker Barrel that made me pause. And then you have to walk through the gift shop. There's nothing overtly wrong with the gift shop. It just gave me weird vibes and this is before its former employees revealed that they had a code word for Black customers; the code word was "Canadians." (Now why would you need a code word to talk about Black customers? What were those conversations about? I'll let you marinate on that.) Or the legal depositions that revealed they kept black employees in the back in non-public roles, or that sometimes they refused to serve "Canadians" in the deep-fried southern branches of the store. My family did not know this, and most customers didn't care. There was little to no outrage when this info was revealed. Discrimination, firing LGBT employees for their lifestyle, denying service to black ppl just fit the vibe of the place. It felt like THAT Americana. But there is an outrage of CB turning its brand into the bland, block-like structure that Chipotle and many other restaurants are running toward. CB is just doing what every other unimaginative chain restaurant is doing: turning toward joyless minimalism and cube-like conformity.
A decade ago, I was on the road in Tennessee after a long day of driving a U-Haul truck through a blizzard with David. We were starving and searching for dinner. David looked online and said, "There's a Cracker Barrel at the top of this mountain. I've never been." I grimaced. Are there any other places to eat? Nope, just Cracker Barrel. To David, a lifelong New Yorker, eating at a joint called Cracker Barrel seemed appropriate to the heartlands, like learning how to shoot clay pigeons or denying women their bodily autonomy. Not wanting to 'yuck' someone else's 'Americana kitsch yum,' I went along with him. Btw, David had a huge, curly Jewfro and dark-rimmed socialist glasses.
So we walked into this rural Tennessee Cracker Barrel, looking like Al Sharpton and Woodie Allen got lost on the way to a pansexual, flag-burning, Upper West Side fundraiser for a chain of drive-thru abortion clinics. In other words, peak Canadians!! Uber-Canadians!! And to us they looked like... everyday folks. A few were a bit ornery and shocked to see us appearing in their Barrel of Crackers on a late, snowy night. If this were a saloon in an old Western movie, the piano player might have stopped playing for a moment as the locals looked at us...and then the music would have started again. Otherwise, things were cool.
David looked at the menu in southern fried awe and wonder. "What's chicken-fried steak?" I mumbled, "It's a thing....you should try it," which became my answer for any food question he had. "Try it...it'll be an experience." A swishing male waiter came up to us and, in a THEE highest-pitched girlish voice, asked if we wanted any sweet tea, and he might have used the word 'hon' in the sentence. I declined but encouraged David to wreck his blood sugar level...for the experience. When the waiter left, David asked me 'What's wrong?' Hmmm...Cracker Barrel has changed. That guy would not have been hired years ago. Maybe it's progress. The waiter floated around like a butterfly, tending to tight-lipped hubbies and their wives who were enchanted by the waiter, aka their new gay best friend. I've written about this before, but it was a whole experience. I enjoyed watching this dynamic play out.
When he wasn't serving or 'serving,' the waiter would sit at a wooden table and snap peas with a few of the other chatty teenage girls. Yes, they were literally gossiping and snapping peas in the dining area, which felt so comforting. It reminded me of snapping peas with family members at the dining room table. It reminded me of being in Cleveland, Ohio, and finding one of the best Korean restaurants EVER...and seeing the immigrant family chopping veggies at the table next to us as we ate rice cakes. Warm, fuzzy feelings of family. The Cracker Barrel servers talked about the parties they were going to attend, so they were in high school. Their voices would drop down to a whisper when a name was mentioned...because maybe some patrons might figure out that their sons and daughters were the focus of the gossip.
The silent discomfort of the men, who uniformly refused to look their waiter in the eye, intrigued me. It was the exact opposite of their jovial wives, who felt like 'finally a man is serving me!! And my husband is quiet. Good!"
The scene crackled with subtext and undertones. That Cracker Barrel experience was worth as much as all of the other ones. I wonder what those people at that Tennessee Cracker Barrel are doing today.
