My family of 4 ate dinner at Hooters for the first time. Our $93 meal was a surprisingly good value.

It's a tough time to be a chain restaurant , especially if you're serving fast food.

Fast-food chains are scrambling as they lose the value wars to sit-down spots and worry about retaining current consumers and appealing to future ones . At the same time, rising fast-food prices seem to only be making sit-down chains look like a way better value.

Although I was never a big fan of sit-down restaurant chains, I recently began taking my family of four out to eat at them more often in search of good food and great value.

We've loved our meals at places like Bahama BreezeMorton's and next up on our list was Hooters.

Here's how our first-ever visit to Hooters went.

Hooters got its start in Florida in 1983.

first Hooters opened in Clearwater, Florida, in 1983, after a group of businessmen with no restaurant experience had the idea to create a "place they couldn't get kicked out of."

The chain has hundreds of restaurants in over a dozen countries, though it closed dozens of "underperforming" locations in the US in June.

Hooters is known for its chicken wings, cold beers, and its "Hooters Girls" — servers who wear tiny orange shorts and Hooters tanks while they wait on customers.

My husband and I weren't sure how our teenage son and daughter would react to having dinner here, but since they'd asked us a few times what Hooters was like, we figured we'd give it a go.

We started our meal with a round of drinks.

Before we ordered appetizers and entreés, we started our dinner with a round of drinks.

My husband ordered a 25-ounce "Big Daddy" pour of beer ($7.50), and since this meal was before I stopped drinking alcohol , I chose the same size pour of hard cider ($9).

Because they were such large pours, we didn't need to order seconds and found that they lasted throughout our meal. My kids each ordered a $3 soda.

Next, we ordered mozzarella sticks.

As an appetizer, we split an order of Hooters' mozzarella sticks.

We paid $9 for six sticks and a side of marinara dipping sauce. The sauce was a bit thicker and chunkier than I prefer, but the mozzarella sticks were golden brown and perfectly cooked.

The cheese pull on each stick was on point, too.

My husband didn't love Hooters' traditional, breaded wing style.

Hooters has wings in a variety of styles, from a traditional breaded type to "naked," which have no breaded coating.

Because the traditional style was Hooters' original variety, my husband opted for a $12 order of six of those tossed in hot sauce.

Although the meat inside each wing was moist and delicious, he wasn't a fan of the breaded coating, as he felt it soaked up too much of the sauce.

He also found Hooters' hot sauce to be lacking in heat, so he got a side of the 3 Mile Island Buffalo sauce, which was much spicier.

My boneless wings were so good that I daydream about going back to get more.

To say I loved my $13 order of 10 boneless wings is an understatement.

Everything about the dish, from the crisp breaded coating to the moist chicken inside, was perfect. I chose to have them tossed in the Samurai Teriyaki sauce, which was flavorful and delicious.

The wings were even more delicious dipped in my side of blue cheese.

Both of my kids ordered burgers.

My daughter's $10 burger had two thick patties, and my son upgraded his to have an additional patty for $2 more.

Both burgers came with fries. My kids had no complaints about their meals, and both said the burgers delivered in terms of flavor and doneness.

Hooters is one of the few chain restaurants that serves curly fries.

A side of curly fries was normally $5, but we got them for a bit less because our server charged them as a side upgrade for my son's meal.

It's rare to find curly fries at any restaurant, so it was fun to nosh on them while taking a break from the spice and flavor of our wings.

We closed out our meal with miniature desserts.

My husband and I were full, but when the server brought over a tray of desserts in tiny cups, my kids were quick to ask for cookies-and-cream mini cakes, which were $3 each.

I really loved the portion sizes since we often don't have much room left for dessert at the end of our meal. This gave us the chance to taste what Hooters had to offer dessert-wise without getting overly full.

Our meal cost nearly $100, but we would definitely return to Hooters.

I'd say our first trip to Hooters was pretty successful.

My daughter acted scandalized by the servers' outfits while my son seemed unfazed by all of the sexy fanfare — but our food was really, really good.

Although $93 seemed a bit high for a meal from such a casual chain, I felt the price was worth it. The portion sizes were large, and everyone enjoyed their meals a great deal.

The only thing we'd change if we went back is we'd order naked wings instead of breaded ones.