Traveling with my husband in his truck has landed me back to eating in truck stop restaurants. I have traveled with him before and during my past travels have had great eating experiences along with some very tragic ones as well. Last night we set down for dinner in Fairview, Tennessee at the Country Market, which is located inside the Flying J truck stop. Let me say that this time was one of those times I would rather have starved than eat there.
When we arrived we got our seat in the smoking section. I noticed that we were only one out of eight tables occupied. So there were not very many people dining when we arrived. They had only one waitress named Karin working the whole restaurant. I didn’t think that would be a problem since there were only eight tables to take care of. How wrong I would be on that point.
After sitting there for about ten minutes Karin arrived to see what we wanted to drink. We told her we both wanted coffee and she went off to get it. When she brought our coffee, we both had to ask her for a menu. She said no problem and went off to get our menus. Not sure where she had to go to get those menus but we seen the menus finally fifteen minutes after she walked off.
Karin came back rather quickly though to see if we were ready to order. I ordered a dish that had a half pound of steak and a half pound of salmon along with a loaded bake potato and garlic toast. My husband, Ken ordered the Country breakfast dish. Along with our main dinner we had ordered we also asked for a half nacho plate for an appetizer that they had featured.
Around thirty minutes after we had ordered our appetizer finally arrived looking a little ragged. I was not sure how this was going to taste since it did not look very appealing. I was amazed when I tried it and found that it tasted much better than it looked. Our waitress Karin did apologize for how long it took to get our appetizer then she disappeared back into the back area.
We had ordered coffee to drink and during this time Karin did not come around at all to refill our cups. I will tell everyone who is not a truck driver that for truck drivers this is a big no-no. A good waitress in a truck stop will do her best to keep a trucker’s coffee cup full. So of course Ken is already getting up set with this girl. Her big oops came a little later when she finally did come around to refill coffee cups. She came over and refilled my coffee cup but walked off without ever touching his empty cup. He got her attention when she was once again running off to the back area, she came by our table again and this time filled his coffee cup. Her facial expression showed she was irritated at him for disturbing her.
Karin’s shift was over before our food ever arrived. Another waitress named Sammy took over serving our food to us. When our food was finally brought out on hour and thirty minutes after we ordered it, Sammy came by our table and basically dropped the plates on the table in front of us and walked off.
My steak was burned to a crisp and the salmon that was advertised as having a garlic butter sauce over it was dry with no hint of butter or garlic on it. Ken’s meal was not doing much better than mine. His eggs were runny and under cooked, the gravy was cold and his sausage was burned to were it was too hard to chew.
The meal came to a total of $25 and was not worth $1 in my opinion. This restaurant lacked in service, quality of food and the atmosphere was on of people who acted like they had better things to do than to wait on the customers. I would not recommend any truck driver or person who is traveling to eat at the Country Market inside the Flying J truck stop in Fairview, Tennessee.
