"Cracker Barrel" news and stories

When it comes to picking a favorite casual-dining restaurant, customers look to experience, convenience and food quality. But what restaurants make the grade?

According to a survey done by Boulder, Colo.-based Market Force, customers put The Cheesecake Factory on top, Nation's Restaurant News reported.

The Cheesecake Factory earned 6 percent of the favorite-restaurant vote, but when weighted for number of locations per chain, the tally rose to 13 percent, making it the clear winner. Market Force surveyed 5,000 people between 18 and 72 years old, 76 percent of which were women, NRN reported.

Years after the nation's last Kenny Rogers' Roasters served its final bird, country music stars are again making a play for their fans' food dollars.

Perhaps because so many of them hail from the South, where good cooking is considered sacred, country celebs have long been inordinately fond of the eponymous restaurant ventures. Once as critical to an Opry member's cred as a Nudie suit, signature restaurants have lately been on the wane, with once-proud institutions such as Twitty Burger and Minnie Pearl Fried Chicken going the way of the cassette tape. But a series of openings set for this fall suggests country musicians may still harbor culinary ambitions.

White-hatted crooner Alan Jackson doesn't have an endeavor of his own, but showed up this week at a Nashville area Cracker Barrel to introduce a new line of spices, clothing and home goods, including an Alan Jackson rocking chair. According to Jackson's spokeswoman Nicole Dona, the singer likes to take his daughters to the homestyle chain.

"The family will still stop now and then when they are on their way back from the lake," she writes in a e-mail to Slashfood. "He loves the breakfast and also the meatloaf sandwich."

A jury has convicted a mother and her son in a case involving a mouse found in a bowl of soup at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store in Newport News, Va. 

Carla Patterson and her two sons were eating at the Cracker Barrel in Newport News when Mrs. Patterson says she found a dead mouse in her bowl of vegetable soup. An extensive investigation, including laboratory tests, revealed that the mouse was placed in the soup after it was brought to the table.

The Pattersons were convicted of conspiracy to commit extortion. It seems after the incident they demanded $500,000 from Cracker Barrel in exchange for photographs of the mouse, which Ricky Patterson took with his cell phone during the meal, and for a public confession that Ricky Patterson planted the mouse in the soup as a practical joke.