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

• I take my family to chain restaurants in search of good value. This time, we went to Hooters.
• We loved our food — especially the boneless wings — and found the portion sizes to be generous.
• One of my teens wasn’t wild about the “Hooters Girls” outfits and the other was unphased.

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.