chapotraphouse

my own experience was as a place we only went while on family road trips and they served some breakfast foods all day, looking at all the bizarre knickknacks and bullshit in the gift shop where you waited until they had a table ready. playing oversized checkers, and those "intelligence" tests with the triangle pegs at the table. totally a solid place to break up the monotony of sitting the backseat on a long, multi-day trip before screens. we're talking pre-game boy O.G, looking out the window and reading billboards or playing "the license plate game". brutal.

later in life, as an adult, i had some friends that lived on a farm in bumfuck near an otherwise sparse interstate exit. when they would host overnight parties and when the roads were good (not winter), the next morning play--when everybody was too hungover--was to hit the cracker barrel and then all part ways. caffeine, greasy, pancakey, sugar action that sits in your gut like warm, setting concrete for the drive home. sometimes they would have a whole breakfast situation dialed in at the farm, but sometimes they would just say, "fuck this, cracker barrel." because they had just hosted an awesome party the night before with incredible food, drink, weed, etc, and had mostly cleaned it up early. who wants to wreck the kitchen again making food for a bunch of hungover bozos you just hosted and let crash all over. it was a pretty good way to get everybody up an at em and out of their house lol.

cracker barrel wasn't good, but that has never stopped me from enjoying something.