Clear Springs Restaurant

Wonderful as always. Amazing service, great food, and the best onion rings anywhere. The staff is always wonderful. The portions are huge. The price is just right.

Clear Springs serves the best fried catfish and onion rings in East Texas!

Update: My husband, one of our grandsons and I are eating at Clear Springs, in Nacogdoches, again today. My husband and grandson ordered lunch special combo plates: gumbo and fried catfish for hubby and fried shrimp and fried catfish for Grandson Zander. I ordered a charbroiled chicken breast with pinto beans, hush puppies and onion rings. The charbroiled chicken breast takes a long time to cook, but it is delicious! As always, the fried catfish and onion rings are some of the best we have ever eaten! 😋 The restrooms are clean and stocked. The large, free parking lot is clean and well-maintained. Recommend!

Update: My husband, four of our grandchildren, and I ate at Clear Springs again, this evening. Stand-out dishes were fried pork rinds, grilled pork chop (takes 20 minutes but is worth the wait), fried catfish, pinto beans and hushpuppies. The only disappointing dish was the dry coleslaw which had very little flavor. (I exchanged it for pinto beans.) Our waitress was friendly and efficient. The entire restaurant and parking lot was clean and well-lit. Our grandchildren missed the pretty fish, from the dining room aquarium, so much that they stared at the tank trying to spot a fish.

Very good catfish and the portions are HUGE.
Great crispy batter on the clean tasting fish that had just the right amount of spicy.
Sides were ok, the slaw was good just not my preference, beans were tasty but a little cold.

Started with the onion rings and they were great! Just don’t order the large unless everyone at your table is very hungry!

Service and the sweet iced tea were on point as well!

We eat here every time we come into Nac which has been at least six times each year over the past three. We have NEVER had a bad experience or meal. Also, the fried mushroom are AMAZING!

I’ve been going to clear springs for over 30 years. I even worked there in the mid-90’s. It’s always been a favorite and a must go to when visiting Nac. I was so disappointed this time and embarrassed that I recommended it to my dad.

We arrived around 4, so not very busy yet. We were greeted and sat by a lovely lady who took our drink order to help out our server.

Between us, we’re ordered 3 beers. She brought all the waters and sodas then handed us off to our sever. After about 15 minutes, we flagged him down to inquire about our beers. He thought we were ordering them and we had to explain that there should be 3 at the bar waiting for us. About 5 minutes later he arrived with 3 beers and 2 mugs. It took several more minutes to get that 3rd mug.

We ordered fried pickles and onion rings. They were delicious. The onion rings came with ranch, the pickles came with nothing. We asked for another ranch. It never arrived, but we were charged for it.

After another 10-15 he finally came back to see if we were ready to order. This was after our appetizers were completely finished. We finally ordered our food.

The food arrived and we had to move all appetizer plates to the end of our table. Our server never took them away to make room for our main dishes. The food was not nearly as good as it usually is. The catfish was overcooked. The fries did not seem fresh. The salads looked like they were just thrown on a plate out of a bag. And the entire meal we never saw our server. We had to flag him down again to get refills and that took another 5 minutes. We were there for 2 hours and literally got one refill that we had to ask for.

Overall, the service was terrible, the food was lacking, and we were charged for ranch we never got. I love Clear Springs and I hope this was a one off due to too much St. paddy’s day shenanigans.

I absolutely love my experience every time I go to Clear Springs. It is one of the better restaurants in Nacogdoches. I am personally not bothered by restaurants overrun with college students, but if you’re an adult wanting a “calmer” environment, this restaurant is a great place to go. Every time I walk in, I’m surrounded by positive energy and smiling faces.

The servers are so friendly and personable. When I went in last weekend, I had a sweet waitress with freckles and long red hair (I cannot remember her name for the life of me). She is a college student, like many of the servers, but they treated me and the other customers with the upmost respect. They all seem to Be friendly with each other and with their customers. I also witnessed another server handle an angry customer, I am not sure what happened, but the server handled it with grace and respect.

The food is usually the least of my concerns, but I absolutely must rave about the onion rings. I get them every time I go in! I also typically don’t like ranch, but I was told that their ranch is made in house and it is actually really good!

The only complaint I have is that there is no public Wi-Fi. Nacogdoches is spotty with cell signal, so it would be really nice if the restaurants would make a point to have Wi-Fi accessible to customers.

The food was very good, and there were generous helpings, but when I went to use the restroom facilities, I was aghast at the smelly, dirty, and tiny facility…all the graffiti on the door could be a statement of low standards of upkeep.

I once heard that a bathroom often reflects the kitchen in cleanliness and usefulness.

Ordered Stingers for starter, Old fashioned burger and fried shrimp taco. Stinger was amazing. Fried stuffed jalapeños with shrimp and fish and it wasn't too spicy for me but I could taste the spiciness in it. Old fashioned burger had a decent sized patty and it was juicy. Fries were not bad.. it was crispy and warm with decent size. Shrimp taco was good too. Rice and bean wasn't impressive. Normal..? Shrimp taco tasted really good and well seasoned and mixed with other ingredients. Over all, I liked it!

We’re from out of town and went here off of a friend’s recommendation. We got the onion rings and the outlaw burger. Both were fantastic. I’m going to be dreaming about those onion rings for a while. Be sure to get them with the Cajun ranch!

I came here with friends while on a road trip. The staff is friendly and the restaurant is large and very well set up for social distancing.

As a vegetarian there wasn't much on the menu for me to choose from. I had sides of mashed potatoes, broccoli and corn which were okay.

My friends had chicken fried steak which was also okay. Not sure I'd return here but it was about the only place that was open for dine in during the lockdown on July 4 weekend.