These chain restaurants still serve the kind of hearty comfort food that truly fills you up.
Comfort food means different things to different people. However, it is a term generally used to describe food that may not be good for the waistline but is better for the soul. I typically associate it with food from my youth, including hearty dishes my mother used to make, the ones I would order at our regular diner, or the things I now crave when I need a little pick-me-up. Where can you get delicious comfort food if your mom or grandmother’s kitchen isn’t available? Here are the 6 best chain restaurants serving real stick-to-your-ribs comfort food.
Village Inn
Village Inn
The Village Inn is so much more than a diner, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner that keeps diners coming back for seconds. The pot roast is “the greatest melt in your mouth roast and the Texas toast I always get it with corn and mashed potatoes. Take my word for it you will not regret it. Love it!” a diner wrote on Facebook. “Best pot roast ever, with the mashed potatoes & corn,” another adds.
Perkins Restaurant & Bakery
Perkins Restaurants
Perkins Restaurant & Bakery is known for serving everything from large breakfast plates with pancakes, meat, and eggs to pot roast, meatloaf, steaks, and seasonal pies. The chain’s homemade meatloaf is legendary, as is the seasonal pot roast dinner.
Marie Callender’s
Marie Callender’s/Facebook
Marie Callender’s traditional, oven-baked comfort food is so popular that it is available in the freezer section of your local grocery store. Pot pies, roasted turkey dinner, and Marie’s Meatloaf are some of the trademark meals that people have been eating for decades. “Slow-baked with 100% ground Angus beef, onions, green peppers, carrots and special seasonings and topped with mushroom cabernet gravy. Served with mashed potatoes and fresh seasonal vegetables,” reads the menu about the meatloaf.
Black Bear Diner
Black Bear Diner
From heaping servings of pancakes for breakfast to mom’s pot roast for dinner, comfort cooking is always on the menu at Black Bear Diner. Customers maintain they have “huge portions.” Another adds: “They give you a ton of food, they make it part of their mission, as written on the paper menu, to make sure you don’t leave hungry.” Chef Andrew Owens, a private chef in California, previously dished to ETNT that the chain’s traditional slow-cooked pot roast rivals homemade. “Black Bear Diner is well known for its low and slow cooked pot roast with its fall apart beef and seasonally rotating vegetables served in a perfectly made gravy made from the beef jus of the pot roast,” he said.
Texas Roadhouse
If you are craving a comforting steak meal with all the fixings, head to Texas Roadhouse, where massive portion sizes of delicious pieces of meat with buttery sides are on the menu. Diners also love filling up on the baskets of free rolls. “I read an article that said a family take out meal of chicken strips at Texas roadhouse is $40 and you get chicken strips, salad, and I think two sides and rolls. The article said it can make several meals,” a person says.
Cracker Barrel
Cracker Barrel
Cracker Barrel offers heaping portions of comfort food at budget-friendly prices. Customers also appreciate the restaurant’s old-country feel and the country store. “I had three meals out of my Cracker Barrel sampler meal. That is so much food and it was only 15 dollars for the meal. And they have the 5 dollar take home meals too,” a Redditor says.
Leah Groth
Leah Groth is an experienced shopping editor and journalist for Best Life and Eat This, Not That! bringing readers the best new finds, trends, and deals each week. Read more about Leah
