H/A wanted to go to Chickie’s & Pete’s to try the lobster cheesesteak. If you ask me to go here, I will. Not because I want to be in a giant warehouse full of drunken strangers with loud ass tv’s and terrible music. But I like the food here. It’s as simple as that. We were at the south philly one again. Man, is this place crowded on a weekend night. It’s maddening how crowded this place is. And even more crazy because of how humongous it is, and it’s still beyond packed! We had to wait about half an hour for a table. And even after we sat, we waited much longer to actually get waited on. Our waitress sucked. And she had a sucky ass sourpuss look on her face the whole time. Miserable much?
At least their food makes up for the waitress suckery. The infamous crab fries. Their fries are crunchy and not soggy or greasy at all. And their cheese sauce (who the hell knows what’s actually in this) is lovely and mild. It’s a nice contrast to the savory crab dusting.
R and her chowder. She always orders this, and she always barely eats any of it. But that’s fine, because H/A and I got to eat all the mussels and clams she ignored. It’s good soup folks, it’s good soup.
R and I got the king crab legs. That’s what you do when you come here.

There’s no dainty way to try to eat these. Don’t even try to not get dirty. Just go in full force with your hands and get to cracking. You’ll get the delicious red mess all over yourself. It will fly hither to and fro. But who cares, because you’re rewarded with zesty big pieces of succulent crab flesh. It’s worth the work.

And you’ll remember it for days because your hands will stink of crab. Their menu calls them “gloriously messy” and they are indeed.

So H/A came for the lobster cheesesteak, and that’s what he had. This is a cheesesteak, with lobster meat and the cheese sauce on top. Before it came out, we were debating amongst ourselves on how to dress this thing. What condiments do you use on a cheesesteak with lobster on it? Ketchup? Butter? Then R suggested cocktail sauce. Ooh, I liked the sound of that. But they didn’t bring any out, and we didn’t ask for any. So what is a lobster cheesesteak like? Well, it tastes just like a cheesesteak. And it’s a good cheesesteak. Even though you can clearly see the lobster, you can’t taste it at all. The taste of the lobster is clearly overshadowed by the meat. So while it’s a delicious cheesesteak, what’s the point of having lobster on it when you can’t taste the lobster? So you’re just paying for something that you can’t even notice. I say just get a regular cheesesteak here instead.

While I avoid casual chain restaurants like the plague, sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do. When stuck at an airport, your choices are limited. It’s typically a case of “least of all evils”. At DTW, I was given the illustrious choices of tgi friday’s, ruby tuesday, mcdonald’s, champps (where they allow smoking!?!??), cheeburger cheeburger, and a few other sandwich type shops, most of which were starting to close by the time I showed up. While I like cheeburger, cheeburger, the one at the airport was like a stripped down version, and it scared me off a bit. And the sandwich shops, those are always the pre-made ones, where the sandwiches have been sitting there for who knows how long! So really, what was I supposed to do? At that point, it was just a toss up between tgi and ruby, and for whatever reason, tgi mcscratchy’s won out.

I started out with a house salad and a virgin strawberry daiquiri. The salad wasn’t half bad. I haven’t been to a tgi friday’s for at least ten years, and I didn’t remember anything from it. The salad is nothing special, but I did like their vinaigrette dressing. This little fruit slushy was pretty darn tasty and refreshing too.

This is an airport restaurant, so it’s a stripped down version of a regular tgi’s with a limited menu. I got the dragonfire chicken, which is a grilled chicken breast glazed with a kung pao sauce and topped with pineapple pico de gallo,served over stir–fried brown rice, along side mandarin oranges and broccoli. Really, this was pretty good! The chicken was quite good, although the sauce was a bit too much on the gingery side for my liking. I didn’t bite into any ginger hunks, thank goodness, but the ginger flavor was a bit too strong. The sauce and the pico added just enough spice. The rice was pretty good, even though it was on the overcooked and mushy side. The mandarin oranges were from a can, so they couldn’t really go wrong there, and the broccoli was great! They were steamed just right, and not mushy at all. They still had some firmness. All in all, this sure beat a big mac!

The chicken pesto romaine sandwich with red onions, tomatoes, and lemon pesto, served with crispy chips. Perhaps a bit too much pesto, but still a good sandwich.
The chinois chicken salad, with romaine, veggies, fried puffy noodly stuff, and a sweet mustard-ginger vinaigrette. I’m a big fan of this salad. The dressing is rather strong though, so it might be something that’s better left on the side or left to the diner to dress themselves. It’s a pick up your food and sit down kind of place so it’s definitely casual. There was plenty of sitting space and the place was clean, bright, and inviting. It’s definitely a safe spot to dine if you’re ever in the area.