Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant cooks up home-style meals

Friday, Dorothy and I returned to an old favorite restaurant in the Anaheim area. Actually, Knott’s Berry Farm’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant is physically located in Buena Park. Every now and then, I like returning to the home-style meals from my childhood. As the Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant specializes in old fashioned foods, it fits the bill. We paid for this desire though as we got in line around 5:45 PM then waited roughly an hour to get seated.

This particular dining experience was a really mixed blessing. I doubt Mrs. Knott would have approved of some of the changes. How can anyone claiming to provide home cooked food take pride in offering iced tea that is a concentrate from a tube instead of fresh brewed? I tried it because our server, Diane, thought it was good. I sent it back and stuck with water instead. Because I drink it without sweeteners or lemon, I have nothing to mask the flavor of the “brewed” concentrate and fountain teas.

View slideshow: Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant serves up home style cooking

Some of the other dishes were similarly disappointing. On the other hand, the main ones were worth coming for. The buttermilk biscuits were in the so-so category as they tasted all right. However, they failed to live up to Dorothy’s expectation of a homemade biscuit.

While at first look the dinner salads, which were small bowls of chopped iceberg lettuce, could have come from my mother’s kitchen , in fairness, the slivers of celery and carrots plus the cherry tomato were an enhancement to Mom’s salads. The salad dressings we ordered were Thousand Island for me and French (the house dressing) for Dorothy. The salads were fresh and the vegetables were crisp.

Another trip down Memory Lane involved the Cherry Rhubarb side dishes instead of the Chicken Noodle Soup. Knott’s Berry Farm’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant served us each a small bowl of the Cherry Rhubarb appetizer, which used sugar and cherries to make a normally bitter vegetable sweet. If you’ve never had rhubarb, it has a texture similar to cooked celery. We enjoyed this dish.

The Chicken Dinner Restaurant’s cabbage with bacon bits had good flavor though Dorothy found despite the bacon, it needed salt. I had the corn instead. It tasted like frozen corn that was cooked then sat in too much water so lacked flavor and sweetness.

On Dorothy’s Famous Chicken Dinner, $15.90, the mashed potatoes had very thin, white gravy. The potatoes and gravy both needed salt too. Where Knott’s Berry Farm’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant excelled was the chicken, itself, which was excellent. The chicken skin was nice and crispy with a thin layer of batter. The meat of the chicken was moist, tender and thoroughly cooked.

Another place they excelled was with my main course. I had with the Half Rack of Ribs, $15.90, with boiled red potatoes. The ribs, slathered in sauce, were delicious, cooked thoroughly until tender. Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant uses its own thick barbeque sauce, which was thick, tangy and sweet.

Each meal also included a dessert. We chose the Boysenberry pie. I enjoyed the sweet Boysenberry filling. Although I chose not to eat the crust, Knott’s Berry Farm’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant’s crust is for those who really like crust as the top was thick.

I’m not sure how many dining rooms they have but recall seeing at least four. We were seated in the back dining room, which had several large groups. The tables had the following numbers of patrons, 9, 11, 22, 4 and two tables of 2 including ours. The décor was very reminiscent of early 20th Century rural America.

On the whole, we enjoyed our visit to Knott’s Berry Farm’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant. The little things keep it from being a favorite restaurant, such as the side dishes being bland and the iced tea being a concentrate instead of fresh brewed. We love how they carry out their theme of being an old time restaurant though. Most of all, we love their home-style chicken and, now, their rack of ribs.

Additional information
Knott's Berry Farm
8039 Beach Boulevard
Buena Park CA, 90620

Knott's Berry Farm website

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