Quaker Steak & Lube

It was a good day for a ride on the motorcycle. Sunshine, a light breeze and friends, beer and a good burger on my mind.

Quaker Steak held a fundraiser this past Sunday (April 21st) to raise money for the explosion in West, TX. Several friends were going there and I wanted to join in on the fun. Live music, bikini bike wash, merchandise for sale and of course some pretty good food.

I'd heard of Quaker Steak, but had never been. Their big thing is their wings and over thirty different sauces to choose from going from mild to sign a waiver hot sauces. They even rate them by the Scoville Heat Units (SHU). I got a great mushroom swiss burger with fries and got the third hottest sauce they had (30,000 SHU) to dip my fries in. The hottest two require a signed waiver form. As for the burger, it was recommended and really tasty and cooked medium, just the way I ordered it. The fries were extra crispy, no soggy crap here. As for the sauce? To me not that hot, but so full of flavor, really, really good. I probably should have gone for the Atomic sauce..... next time.

The place itself is decorated for the NASCAR and INDY racing types with cars, car parts and a motorcycle hanging from the ceiling. TVs everywhere, including in the floor as you walk in. The staff was decent, but because it was so busy on Sunday, it was hard to pin down our waitress, but she knew our drink orders pretty quickly. Nothing like the Summer Shandy.

With all sorts of salads, wraps, cheesesteaks, flatbreads and of course wings and burgers, there are quite a few options to choose from. Enjoy.

Jalapeño ranch was good.
In love with the indoor/outdoor patio.
Sarah our server was nice but the food takes a quite a while to come out. The each is watery ranch. Second time fail.

Reading over the reviews for this place, I see a lot of variability. Some have had bad service, some haven't thought a lot of the food, some think the theme is too campy or cheesy. Well, for this reviewer, Quaker Steak & Lube scored a hat trick. I didn't find the decor overdone (exception: the plastic chairs, they gotta go), and I loved the car on the lift with the tables underneath; please note that there is a large sheet of plexiglass underneath, so you're not going to get any oil or grease on your food (well, aside from any grease that may have come from the kitchen). Many TVs were in evidence, and the NASCAR/motorsports theme was not overdone IMO (this, from a not-very-big NASCAR fan but fan of motorsports overall). The lighting is subdued but not dark. Overall, a very nice "mood" was set.

But, for me, it's mostly about the food, so here's the rundown:

4-Wheeler - A nice appetizer sampler featuring huge, crunchy onion rings, soft pretzels, mozzarella sticks and fried pickle spears servied with marinara, ranch and beer cheese dip. Honestly, I prefer the "chip" format on pickles, but these were pretty good, as were the other items. The onion rings featured big rings of (gasp!) onion tucked inside of that batter, not a guarantee these days.

6 traditional wings "hot" - Not wanting to blow away my taste buds, I chose the "hot" sauce, and it did indeed lend a nice heat along with good flavor. The mini egg crate serving container was a cool touch, and makes for a built-in doggy bag. The wings themselves were fairly meaty and not tough or overcooked.

Lubeburger - A 1/2 lb burger cooked to order, topped with sautéed mushrooms, crispy bacon, The Lube's® hot sauce, melted American cheese with bleu cheese dip. Yeah, it was a mess, but wow, it was delicious. Cooked to a perfect medium and seasoned nicely, it wanted for nothing (except being eaten!)

As for the service, we really didn't have any missteps. We visited on a Saturday evening, so a bit of elongated service time is to be expected, as the place was packed. My wings were a little slow to come out, but the appetizer platter kept us going.

Overall, I really enjoyed our visit, and would happily go again.

To set the scene, I live a few blocks away from this place and have been several times due to it being so close. As a result, I have tried a lot of the menu, met a lot of the staff, and seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Here's the low down on Quaker Steak and Lube.

To someone that has never heard of it, I would compare it to a Buffalo Wild Wings. A family friendly American restaurant that focuses on wings, but has a full menu and stocked bar. However, the biggest difference in my opinion when comparing the two restaurants, is the menu outside of wings. To keep it simple, Quaker Steak has good food outside of wings, and I'm not the biggest fan of Buffalo Wild Wing's food outside of wings.

To expand on this I'll break my review into groups:

Food:

As I stated before Quaker Steak focuses on wings but had a complete menu with everything from burgers to pasta to ribs. Everything I have tried so far has been pretty good. I wouldn't classify it as the best food I have ever ate, but I can easily give it 4 / 5 stars. Some standouts in my opinion are the traditional wings (Lots of sauce choices) and the macaroni and cheese.

Service:

Overall the service is pretty good. What you have to keep in mind is that this place just opened two months ago. They are going through some growing pains, but I have seen things improve quite a bit since it opened. Overall the best server I have had is Rami. I have sat in his section a few times and he has always been great.

Restaurant Interior:

The place is setup to mimic a garage and I think that the decorations are a fun touch and your kids will love them. As with other Buffalo Wild Wing type restaurants, there are plenty of TV's and it makes it a great place to watch a game. They even have an awesome patio with garage style doors that they open when its nice outside. The only downside, in my opinion, are the chairs. If you're sitting anywhere besides on a bar stool, you're getting a plastic lawn chair. Outside of the chairs though, I think the interior is solid.

Costs:

The costs are pretty average across the board. They also have some specials that they offer on certain nights of the week that are nice. There are two downsides I've seen though. The first is the price of their cocktails. If you're drinking something besides beer, be prepared to open your wallet. They definitely pour a stiff drink, but you are paying for it. The second is the cost of their wings. If you're only getting a few, you don't have much to worry about. But the larger wing sizes add up fast. To make matters worse, you have to pay to get more then one flavor. So even if you order a bucket of wings, you are expected to only get one sauce, or pay extra.

Specials / Wild Card:

So far I have been there for two of the specials, Sunday Brunch and All You Can Eat Wings. First I'll go over the brunch. They serve it every Sunday from 10:30am to 3pm. I have to say that I was surprised by the brunch. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was awesome. The brunch includes an omelet station, made to order waffles, biscuits and gravy, any type of wing with any type of sauce, carving station, salad bar, and much more. I would highly suggest this to someone looking for an easy, good brunch or anybody that wants to watch some football on Sunday, but has to keep the girl happy.

The second special is the All You Can Eat Wings every Tuesday. They offer any type of wings (Traditional, breaded boneless, and grilled boneless) with any type of sauce. After your first order, you only get six at a time, but they come out really fast. The best part about this is that you can try all of their sauces. And if you don't like something, don't eat it, and try something else. To go along with the wings, they also include a nacho bar. Originally, I didn't think I would touch the nacho bar, but it was pretty nuts. The nacho bar includes 30+ toppings with everything from queso to pulled pork to different salsas and everything in between.

Overall:

All in all I really like this place. There are a few downsides, but what place doesn't have some? To take it a step further, I have already seen them work on a few things and I think this place is only going to get better.

Well that was awful. So started off okay, ordered onion rings, very good. Sauce okay the boy liked it. Ordered main entree-the boy ordered the breaded boneless wing special, me trying to be good the boneless chicken wrap- meals come out, mine is not correct! Ask what's up, the
Server put in the wrong entree, so then he asked the actual order, placed it and almost 20 minutes later a boneless chicken wrap and side of Mac n cheese to come out.....then wait 20 minutes for the bill. Bill comes not removed, no offer to do so, nothing? Food is not good enough to wait and service is lackluster at best.

So, after my bad review, the manager of the restaurant contacted me, apologizing for the bad experience and asking me to give them another chance - with a $25 gift card from them.
I accepted and today we tried them again.

The experience was slightly different. First off, after the excellent waitress last time, our waiter today was a little of a let-down, but he wasn't bad - just not excellent.

I wasn't going to try the boneless wings again - they still didn't look too great to me, so I made different choices.

I tried a combo, which for me included chips with beer cheese, 6 bone-in wings and a side-car of a half rack of ribs and cole slaw.

First off, the chips with beer cheese were really good. The cheese was gooey and you could actually taste the beer in it, and the chips were nice and crispy.
The ribs were pretty good as well, with a tangy sauce and tender meat, but it seemed more like a 1/4 rack than half. Finally, the wings, this time with the medium sauce, were definitely better than the boneless. They were not extremely big, but nice and crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside. The medium sauce was decent, more what I'd expect the mild to be like, but the taste was good.
The cole slaw was very good, nice and sweet, just like I like it.

My kids had the mac&cheese again, which tasted fine (though it seems like the portion wasn't as big as last time). My wife had the thunderbird chicken sandwich, which tasted good, but was nothing spectacular.

So, altogether, it definitely was a better food experience this time, so I revised my 2 stars to 3. It still won't be m favorite (the wings at Sauced and Pluckers are still better in my view), but if I'm in the area and want to watch a game with some appetizers and a beer, I wouldn't mind returning.

Thoroughly enjoyed my time here. The customer service was great and the food was delicious. Went on a Tuesday night when they had all you can eat shrimp, wings and nachos for 13.99. Received $2 off for liking them on Facebook. I will be going back soon, on a Tuesday. The all you can eat concept gives you an opportunity to try their many wing sauces and determine what you like and what you don't like.

The nacho bar was pretty cool. It has all sorts of toppings for your nachos along with brisket, chicken, pork and taco meat (ground beef).

For the shrimp and/or wings, you place your order with the server and they go to the back to get them. They have 22 sauces ranging from mild to insanely hot. i tried the supercharged, which is the third hottest. it was spicy, but if you like spicy food like i do, you can handle it. my issue was that it tasted too much like tobasco and i don't like tobasco.

The cajun is supposed to be spicy. I didn't find it to be spicy. I found it to have too much oregano or basil where that flavor over-powered the other ingredients. I was underwhelmed with this sauce.

I particularly favored the following sauces for the following reasons:

Hot- Classic buffalo style taste, but a tad spicier than most buffalo sauces,

Arizona Ranch-a perfect blend of ranch and buffalo. Not spicy, but very good in flavor

Golden Garlic-not spicy at all, but very big in flavor. Sort of creamy garlic. Very zesty and delicious. This was my favorite one. Note that the golden garlic is not the same as the premium garlic. they are two different sauces. go for golden, you won't be disappointed. I'd like to try a mixture of the golden garlic and the hot. I think they'd go together well in terms of flavor and spice.

Boom Boom- not spicy at all, but tasty in flavor. Garlic and red pepper.


I actually can't wait to go back. 13.99 is a great price for all you can eat shrimp/wings/nachos. and the food is very quality. i'm a fan of this place now.

This is my 5th time here and it's been great everytime, always great staff with good prices on certain nights, plenty of TVs so you can watch multiple games from almost any position, the wings have never been a let down like others have stated and the fries are always delicious, I've had the Baja wrap as well and it was also very good and fresh, overall I've been here 5 times and never had a bad experience

I've come here several times since they opened & I've been trying to figure out what is the charm and attraction to this place for some of my friends and I'm still confused. Overall Quaker is a clean, well managed and wing spot. They have a couple motorcycles hanging from the ceiling & a stock car out front ( cool for the kids ). And it seems that their tower of beer (100 ounces) is another popular item.

Now I was there during lunch and the lunch buffet is a bargain for $9.00. The buffet includes fried shrimp, fish, hot dogs, Mac & cheese, soups, hot wings ( sauces on the side ) and cookies. The buffet is from 11am-2pm.

Since I'm a hot wing fanatic, I have to admit the wings, even with the sauce, are average. They just don't have that special zing.

On the positive side they have plenty of HD TVs to watch your favorite sporting event. And they also have NTN trivia and interactive poker.

I'd say this is a place to have a quick beverage & snack during the games. Solid 3 stars..totally middle of the road experience for me.

First time here...it was ok. I had the parmesan pepper wings and the garlic wings. I thought they were a dry rub, but they were not. The parmesan was more peppery flavored while the garlic had a bite to it. I'm not much for spicy and I thought it was. Also had a bite of the burger and it was ok...nothing great.