Bob Evans Most Popular Menu Items Ranked Worst To Best

What do you think of when you hear the name "Bob Evans?" Well, unless you are one of the 117 Americans who goes by this name (info courtesy of HowManyOfMe.com) or their no-doubt numerous friends and family members, you may think of a brand of frozen sausage or mashed potatoes. If you're in the South, Mid-Atlantic, or Midwest, however, you may also think of Bob Evans, the restaurant. Although this chain has been struggling in recent years, over 400 Bob Evans locations are still open for business throughout the aforementioned regions.

While Bob Evans may be synonymous with sausage, they offer a wide range of other menu options. So which items are their bestsellers? Fast Food Nutrition has compiled a list of their top items. While these may vary from week to week, with some items rising up to the top of the charts while others sink to a lower position, as of the time of writing, the list below reflects Bob Evans' 15 most popular menu items. The list below, however, is arranged not in order of how well these items sell, but by how we feel about them. You may or may not agree, but then, that's the fun thing about food –- it's just about the most subjective subject there is, and all of these items are popular enough with Bob Evans fans that they're likely to remain on the menu no matter what we say.

One of Bob Evans' top-selling items is something off the beverage menu. This makes sense, since generally when you're eating, you'll want something to drink as well. While you might think the bestselling beverage would be plain coffee or maybe some type of soda, it turns out that the Sweet & Creamy Cappuccino is tops with Bob Evans patrons.

As to why it ranks 15 out of 15 with us, the problem is right there in the name. Not the creamy part -– we'll admit we're not sticklers for foamy milk and will happily take a good squirt of whipped cream on top of our cappuccinos (or just about anything, tbh). It's just that this drink is waayy too sweet. Super-sugary drinks like these really don't go well with any type of food, in our opinion. If you order this cappuccino to accompany your sausage and eggs, it's just going to taste weird. And if you have it alongside your pancakes, you're in for some serious sugar overload.

While Bob Evans offers both lunch and dinner, they are often considered to be a breakfast chain, so it stands to reason that this would be one meal they'd consistently get right. Still, not all breakfast items were created equal. We're of the opinion that omelets are something that are really only good for the first few bites, since after that there's just too much sameness in each forkful. Obviously not everyone agrees, though, as one of Bob Evans' bestselling breakfast dishes is their Western Omelet.

Even as far as omelets go, Bob Evans' Western one is pretty meh. It's kind of spongy in texture, and neither the cheddar cheese nor the "hickory-smoked ham" offer much flavor. If anything, the omelet tastes primarily of bell peppers, a vegetable often used (and over-used, as in this case) as cheap filler. As the omelet doesn't even look good in its online menu photo, we're baffled as to how it got to be a bestseller in the first place.

If you're not in the South or the Midwest, you may not be familiar with sausage gravy. This is a type of white gravy studded with chunks of, you guessed it, sausage, and typically served atop a biscuit. Of course, if you're not in those regions of the country, you're probably not all that familiar with Bob Evans restaurants, either. As Bob Evans country does overlap with sausage gravy territory, though, it comes as no surprise to find Sausage Gravy & Biscuits among its bestsellers.

If you like sausage gravy, you like it, and Bob Evans' version is at least passable. If you're not a fan of biscuits growing soggy in a bath of thick, gluey gravy, though, you may want to pass on this regional specialty. Even in its photo, this dish is a real appetite-killer. (We won't say what it reminds us of, but various scatological references come to mind). Some foods remain local favorites for a good reason, after all.

Another one of Bob Evans' bestsellers is something that we find indescribably boring: Banana Nut Bread. It's just your plain old typical banana bread, nothing special. Ok, to give it a little credit, it does contain nuts, which at least provide a little extra flavor and texture to break up all that banana. Banana bread is something you bake at home to re-purpose fruit that's about to go bad, but doesn't seem like something you'd really want to order in a restaurant. Plus, didn't we get enough of this stuff in 2020?

Bob Evans features banana bread as part of their "Bakery & Desserts" menu section, but still, we struggle to imagine exactly where it fits into a meal. Is this something you'd have for breakfast? It could be a dessert, but kind of a disappointing one. Banana bread really doesn't stack up too well against pies, cookies, or even Bob Evans' Cinna-Biscuits, as these, at least, come with a creamy icing dip. While this banana bread isn't bad as banana breads go, it's just kind of blah.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Bob Evans' Home Fries, it's just that there's nothing particularly great about them, either. They're just potatoes, that's all. Even the menu fails to make them sound all that exciting, describing them as "Hearty chunks of red-skinned potatoes, lightly seasoned." Whoopee.

Home fries are all well and good in their proper place, which is alongside a plate of bacon and eggs, and you can certainly get them this way at Bob Evans. They seem to be a standard side option with most of the combo meals on the breakfast menu. But while Fast Food Nutrition does not explain their methodology for collecting data on Bob Evans' bestsellers, it would seem that in order for the home fries to be bestsellers in their own right, people must be ordering them as a standalone item. That's something we just can't fathom, as the amount that comes alongside a combo meal seems sufficient for soaking up any tasty breakfast residue, while the potatoes are just too plain to stand on their own.

Chicken noodle soup is, without a doubt, right up there in the pantheon of classic comfort foods, but we tend to think of it as something to be eaten when we're sick -– and yes, it seems that chicken soup (with or without noodles) really does have some medicinal properties. Whether it's made by a loving grandma or, more likely, comes from a red-and-white can, chicken noodle soup is something we typically eat at home, quite often while huddling under the bed covers.

Does Bob Evans attract a lot of patrons who are coming down with colds? This is the only reason we can think of for why their Chicken-N-Noodles Soup would be so popular. There is nothing particularly terrible about it, but nothing that excites the taste buds, either. Basic, boring, bland, and a trifle too overloaded with vegetables is our verdict. It's really not significantly tastier than any of the canned chicken noodle soups we've tried, so it's not something we'd bother ordering again.

The Cheddar Baked Potato Soup is certainly one of the more photogenic items on Bob Evans' menu. The photo makes it look downright delicious, especially with its sprinkling of crispy bacon buts and snipped scallions. Sadly, a garnish alone cannot carry an entire bowl of soup. While we didn't dislike this soup, it didn't quite measure up to the promise of its picture.

We'd describe this cheesy potato soup as semi-flavorful, but whenever you have a soup where the bulk of it seems to be made up of potatoes, you really need something strong to balance out all that potato-y blandness. Where Bob Evans erred, in our opinion, was by using a cheddar cheese that's not quite sharp enough. The soup itself could have used a pinch more salt as well, although this was easily corrected at the table. (Some pepper helped, too). A more generous sprinkling of bacon and scallions would also have improved matters too, since the sparse amount they used seemed as if it was meant more for decorative purposes than anything else.

If you tend to eat out at family restaurant chains like Bob Evans on a regular basis, perhaps due to having a job that keeps you always on the road but without the expense account that allows you to dine at high-end steakhouses, then it's only natural that you'd like to see some healthy options on the menu. If we had to eat at Bob Evans several times a week, then we, too, would probably resort to ordering something dull but healthy like plain old grilled chicken breasts. As it is, though, we don't eat there too often, so we'll likely give this one a miss in the future.

There is nothing particularly wrong with Bob Evans' Grilled-to-Perfection Chicken, other than that these breasts aren't really all that perfect, as they tend to be on the dry side. We will say, though, that dry chicken is far preferable to chicken that hasn't been cooked quite enough, so at least there's that.

Soups are surprisingly popular at Bob Evans, as all three of the ones they offer rank among their bestsellers. The best of the bunch is their Hearty Beef Vegetable Soup. While it's not the most wonderful soup we've ever had, it's actually quite a bit more flavorful than either the chicken noddle or the cheddar potato soups.

So what makes this soup such a (relative) standout that we've ranked it at least two steps up the ladder from Bob Evans' other soups? For one thing, the tomato-based broth has a bit more flavor to it than the chicken broth or the creamy potato base. For another, beef chunks inherently pack more of a taste punch than chicken. While this soup, like the chicken noodle one, is over-filled with vegetables and light on the meat (typical restaurant cost-cutting, we know), we like the fact that it's got both corn and tomato chunks, while the chicken soup seems to rely on blander veggies.

Bob Evans' breakfast menu has a lot to offer if you like a good hearty meat and potatoes (and eggs) meal. While they do have a few breakfast meals featuring French toast or pancakes ("hotcakes," as they call them), it's fairly obvious that these aren't the specialties of the house. Instead, Bob Evans is all about those morning meats. If you can't decide between sausage, bacon, and ham, though, one popular entrée offers all three: the well-named Everything Breakfast.

Okay, so the Everything Breakfast doesn't really offer everything on the breakfast menu -– no hotcakes, for one thing. (No French toast, either). You do get the aforementioned sausage, bacon, and ham along with scrambled eggs with cheese and tomatoes sitting on a pile of hash browns and topped off with hollandaise. Also a biscuit. Nice, but we're not huge fans of having the food on our plate all stirred into one big mish-mash before we even get it. If we wanted to go Whole Hog, we'd go for the Bob Evans breakfast of the same name instead, as the items in that dish aren't all mixed together. This lets you decide on a bite-by-bite basis what you want to put in your mouth. The fact that nearly every forkful of the Everything Breakfast is identical to the one before knocks a few points off our rating.

When you order steak and eggs at a breakfast chain, you pretty much know you're not in for a premium steakhouse experience. The steak is going to be sirloin, not filet mignon, and it will be cooked by hustling line cooks, not cordon bleu chefs. That being said, though, even a so-so steak is still pretty good, and it's even better when accompanied by some top-notch eggs –- and you can't beat a breakfast chain for cooking eggs just right.

Bob Evans' Sirloin Steak & Farm-Fresh Eggs is pretty typical for a breakfast chain dish of this type, which means it's really quite decent. Okay, so the steak is on the small side and perhaps a wee bit tough, but it also costs a small fraction of what you'd pay for a steak dinner at a higher-end restaurant. Plus, it's not like you're going to be eating wagyu beef with your eggs anyway, that's probably breaking some kind of steak commandment. This sturdy little sirloin makes a perfect egg accompaniment, and we like it even better with a forkful of hash browns to soak up the yolk. If you prefer, though, you can get it with home fries, which also make a great side. The steak and eggs even comes with a biscuit on the side, and Bob Evans does make a darn good biscuit.

If you order one of Bob Evans' beef, seafood, or poultry entrees, most –- but not all –- of them come with a few dinner rolls. Most of their smaller-sized Dinner Bell Plates, however, do not, nor do the sandwiches, soups, and most of the salads. It comes as no surprise, then, to find out that a la carte dinner rolls appear on the list of Bob Evans' bestselling items. Even if you do get them along with an entrée, you may well find yourself craving more, since these rolls are just that good.

Bob Evans' rolls and other bakery items are said to be "freshly baked in our Farmhouse Kitchen," but we're not about to launch an all-out investigation to find out whether or not this is true. As these rolls are, or have been, available in frozen form, we wouldn't be shocked to find out that individual restaurants bake them up fresh-from-frozen. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but frankly, we don't care. These yeast rolls are warm, soft, pillowy, slightly sweet, and entirely delicious, and we only wish Bob Evans offered an all-you-can-eat option like Olive Garden does with its breadsticks.

Another Bob Evans bakery item that is super popular with restaurant patrons is its Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, something that can be ordered by the single slice or by the entire pie. (We're assuming the latter option is intended for take-home purposes). Apart from their chocolate chunk cookies, this pie is the closest thing Bob Evans offers to a chocolate dessert.

While this pie isn't super-chocolatey, at least not in a rich, intense way, it's still satisfyingly dessert-like in a way that banana bread will never match. It's got a chocolate crumb crust and a sweet peanut butter fluff filling, finished off with a light chocolate whipped topping and a sprinkling of chopped Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. If the kitchen staff are feeling fancy, it may even be plated with a drizzle of chocolate syrup. (Obviously this doesn't apply if you order a whole pie). Overall, Bob Evans' Chocolate Peanut Putter Pie pretty much tastes like a creamy, fluffy Reese's, and there's nothing wrong with that.

According to Fast Food Nutrition, the #1 bestselling item at Bob Evans at the time of writing is the Cranberry Pecan Chicken Salad, and we're not going to argue that it deserves a place among the best that Bob Evans has to offer. It's light, fresh, tasty, and ... okay, maybe not quite as nutritious as we'd like to imagine. The Bob Evans menu does say that, depending on your choice of chicken (grilled or fried) and dressings, it can run anywhere from 1110 to 1710 calories, although this calorie count may include the two dinner rolls that accompany it.

So this salad is not exactly a diet dish, but it's still one that we'd happily order again and again. Chicken + dried cranberries + blue cheese crumbles + pecans are a classic salad topping combo, and Bob Evans ups the ante by including bacon as well. They typically serve it with their "Colonial Dressing," something Fooducate shows to be a thickened, sweetened oil-and-vinegar-based dressing, but you can also get it with Italian, French, ranch (regular or "Wildfire"), or honey mustard. Our own favorite option, though, is to double down on the blue cheesiness by ordering it with blue cheese dressing.

If there's one thing you can absolutely rely on at a family restaurant like Bob Evans, it's classic comfort food done right. Bob Evans is the kind of place where you might go for a big Sunday dinner, complete with meat, two veg, and rolls and butter. If that's the kind of thing you have in mind, whether on a Sunday afternoon or a Tuesday evening, you couldn't do better than order Bob Evans' Fork-Tender Pot Roast.

Pot roast, unlike steak or chicken, is a pretty forgiving meat. The longer you cook it, the more fork-tender it gets, and Bob Evans says they roast theirs low (we presume) and slow for a full 9 hours. It comes with carrots, onions, and mashed potatoes, as well it should, and is topped off with beef gravy and a sprinkling of chopped scallions. And yes, the pot roast entrée comes with those delectable dinner rolls. If you really want to do it up right, though, you can order a three-course version of this meal that also includes soup or salad plus dessert. Now that's the kind of meal that will definitely leave you satisfied and most likely have you coming back for more (after you finish up the leftovers, that is).