Chickie’s & Pete’s

I have read the bad reviews on chickie and petes since it opened and I really was hoping it was wrong, but not it wasn’t.
My friend and I ordered the crab fry combo and we were presented with just crab fries. the food runner debated with us until she checked our waitress, she then just took the fries to another table. We got out fries and they were great, minus the weird syrup for the sweet potato fries. Our server seemed distracted and kept bringing us sodas and waters every 3 seconds I think its impossible to consume that would liquid in that short amount of time. we paid our tab with cash and she never brought back change, I guess she assumed that was her tip without verifying kind of presumptuous.
over all the food was good, the service was below standard, seems like a bunch of people who would careless about their job or what they are doing.

Gave this establishment two opportunities after an experience not very pleasurable. This restaurant drives traffic from the Lehigh Valley Phantoms for which we attend. Staff moral, training and procedures are suspect. This is also a franchise and not corporate owned. In addition, both times the food came out under-​cooked and the management was not overly concerned with customer satisfaction. There are 50 people behind you waiting to sit down and swallow the issues this place has. The area would do well with some competition in this market. Red Robin? Will buy the crab fries from the «cash» stand in the arena, but do not plan on eating here again. Crust is a nice choice or better yet, save your $ and eat at home. Love the area and hope it attracts a better choice as an anchor restaurant to the PPL center.

We have been fans of Chickie’s and Pete’s since back in the day when there was only the original location. My daughter chooses C & P every year for her birthday dinner, and since she is in school nearby, we were delighted to be able to continue that tradition so far from home. Unfortunately, all of the food we had was not up to standard. We were disappointed in the hot shrimp… portion shrunk unbelievably. The bread they served was stale. We asked for fresh bread and they brought out even staler bread. Our server was nice, but we had to wait a lot for drinks, etc. which was surprising since the place was the least crowded I’ve ever seen any C & P before. In short, we will not be back to this location. Hopefully they get it together.

We recently went to this restaurant and I asked for a cup of hot water — freezing COLD outside and I was told that they have NO way of making hot water. So I said, may I have a hot tea and I was told they have NO TEA OR COFFEE OR DESSERT! Now if a huge restaurant cannot figure out a way to heat up a cup of hot water, well, then that’s a problem! The food was just ok– they put everything in baskets on paper which is annoying but not the end of the world. I do think not serving tea and coffee is insane for a restaurant!!!

Lobster pizza horrible with only a few pieces of lobster. Cold fries. Charged for blue cheese for wings when it was supposed to come with. Got ranch instead ?? Really? Ordered straight drunks. Not even a full shot pour. Just terrible.
Second time here. Gave it a second chance. What a waste of money. Simply horrible

Absolutely awful won’t go back. Went on a night when there was nothing going on at the arena and the place was empty. I ordered clams that were breaded when they arrived they were not properly cooked and had ice cubes all over them. When I inquired as to why there were ice cubes on my clams (before discovering they weren’t cooked) they told me that the chef must have messed up cause they usually put ice cubes on the skillet to accentuate the sizzling noise. I then checked them and like I said they weren’t even cooked still practically raw. The person I was dining with ordered a burger and it was the wrong burger so they offered to fix it for her and then totally forgot that she had asked for the fixed burger and tried to charge us for a second burger.

We come here before most Phantoms games due to the convenient location. The service when you sit at the bar is good, the staff is friendly and quick. Table service is usually slow and our orders have been accurate on more than one occasion. They do not offer any food specials during games and the food is overpriced for what you get. Food often comes out cold and is bland. However, it is convenient to pop in between periods during the games, and getting crab fries to go is pretty quick. They do have a lot of tvs and play all of the football games, but their seats aren’t set up so that everyone can easily watch.
Overall — it’s an ok place, especially convenient for hockey games.

We ended up here with the family one night for dinner and watched the Eagles. It’s a really nice sized, sports bar and grill. Lots of Tvs everywhere, and from the sound of it, the crowd was filled with great fans cheering for the teams.
We all shared an order of the crab fries and cheese dip which were great. I ordered the lobster tails which were a great size and much more than i had expected. My wife got a hearty lobster roll and our friends shared the white pie that should have easily fed the entire family. We all enjoyed our meals and the atmosphere.

I take it on good faith that any Chickie and Pete must be better than the one in Dorney Park, because that is my only experience. One of the few places to sit down and have a beer in air conditioned comfort. that is all this place has going for it. Noisy, crowded, poor service, poor food and grossly overpriced. Whatever one grades a restaurant on, this fails except for the cold beer, a place to sit and get out of the sun and heat. 2 beers, 2 sandwiches and one order of crab fries (there is no crab or crab taste — just ordinary fries) $ 53.90! I suppose the inflated price is due to Dorney Park getting their cut. Bread on sandwiches was inedible to add the final touch.

Mice in the kitchen… I don’t think I have to say anything else.
Roast beef sandwiches are dry. Beer is always tapped whenever I go in and it takes 20 minutes to fix it if the manager even feels like doing it.
Prego penguin is always a rude bitch and too lazy to do her job so she sends other people to do it. I don’t know how she even has a job when the drinks she actually makes taste like shit.

Who runs out of Crab fries in the second period of the Phantoms game? This place!
4^th time here and never once a positive experience.
I wish the real owners of Chickies and Petes operated this location.

Food: we ordered the crab fries with cheese sauce, buffalo chicken cheesesteaks and some pork sandwich with broccoli rabe. The cheesesteaks were average. They’re simple… just chicken, cheese and hot sauce. The pork sandwich looked good, but my buddy wasn’t a fan of the bread. No problems, but nothing to get excited about.
Service: polite, attentive, casual.
Atmosphere: casual sports bar with lots of TVs. Great setting to watch some games.
Misc: they were out of several beers and the serving of crab fries cost $ 8, but should have been more like $ 4 or $ 5 given its size. Also, when we asked for the drink menu, we were handed a piece of paper that someone wrote the different beers on. Management needs to get their act together. If I’m ever in Allentown again, I probably try a different option.

Not worth your time. No where in a Manhattan recipe is an orange or cherry juice from the basin. The food was well deep fried goodness but it’s pretty hard to mess that up.

This place is an absolute joke. I asked if they had any sangria and our waiter said yeah of course! They bring back my glass of sangria in a tall glass with a straw. First time I ever seen that. but the sangria was awful! Couldn’t even drink it. After a few times coming to the table, the waiter was concerned about why I didn’t drink my sangria and I told him straight out that it was horrible. He then told me, «well… the bartender kind of messed with my head. It’s actually Merlot with fruit in it». The best part is that he waited all that time to tell me. He just gave me wine with fruit in it and didn’t care! We made him take it off the bill.
Then we order the white clams for an appetizer. the clams were super small. They were so-​so in flavor, but we wanted to use the leftover juice for dipping sauce. When we got a basket of bread, I ripped a piece apart and found this huge piece of blonde hair at the bottom. I lost my appetite at this point.
I also had a little less than half a glass of water left and the waiter asked if I wanted him to take it away. Why would you ask to take my drink when it’s almost half full??? Nothing made sense in this place and it didn’t help that my father and I had just come from a wake. It was just a bad experience overall and I wish the Unilocal app was working on my phone so I could have seen the other bad reviews before coming here.

I am a huge fan of Chickie’s & Pete’s franchise right from the very beginning when it used to have only 2 or 3 locations in Philadelphia. A great crab house and sports bar. The franchise is known for its blue point crabs and crab fries. This franchise has grown whereby it has 4 locations at the Philadelphia International Airport plus restaurants in the Philadelphia area plus a couple of restaurants outside of Philadelphia. One such location is the Allentown location on Hamilton Street.
Parking was a challenge for me but that was my fault. I could have parked in the shopping area’s parking lot (Entrance is Behind the Restaurant) and Chickie’s & Pete’s would have validated it for free. I didn’t know about this until I parked on the street and entered the restaurant.
The staff was courteous however was clearly not familiar with the full menu. They had to check back on answers to my questions. This location either did not serve Blue Point Crabs or ran out of them. The server told me that they only had Dungeness and Alaskan Crabs. Yet, they had a sign outside the restaurant showing pictures of Blue Point Crabs. I overlooked that and ordered the Dungeness Crab along with a bowl of Hot Shrimp.
Both items were prepared in the famous C&P’s crab sauce and they were delicious. Service was fast as it always is in any of the franchise restaurants. The knowledge of the servers was not so great. Maybe due to the location and this restaurant is only 8 months old. I am giving it 3 stars and I will visit again because I know Chickie’s & Pete’s is an institution and will fix this learning curve and return back to stardom.

Unfortunately there is no option to rate this restaurant 0 stars. This was the worst dining experience I have ever had. The service was putrid. The lack of respect for the patrons was more than apparent from both the manager and the serving staff. I was misinformed about the meals on the menu after asking for a recommendation from my server. Then after reordering a second time that meal also came back incorrectly. The second time I clearly ordered a crab cake sandwich and it came back as the crab cake meal. This is after 45 minutes of sitting down. Now after laughing at second mistake for 10 minutes while the server was no where to be found i told him he got it wrong. He proceeded to tell me no he did not, until I reminded him of the exchange about what the components of the «crab cake sandwich consisted of». Not sure why he would try to be right here. As a compromise, I told him he could either remake the entire meal as a sandwich and throw this meal away or I would eat it and just charge me for the sandwich. He agreed and off I went to eat my crab cakes which at this point i did not even want anymore.
In the mean time many ridiculous amateur and unprofessional events were occurring. I to send the bus boy to find the server, drink orders were not filled promptly while glasses sat empty. The staff was attending to friends and off duty staff with VIP service wheel I waited.
Then came the moment of the bill. Surprise, it was wrong and I was charged for the entire crab cake meal. The manager finally made and appearance after all of this. Normally a manager will stop by after the first mistake to check on things. Not this one. She was a helicopter manager and was easy to recognize in a red shirt but through all of this and being next to my table never stopped by until the end. She was rude and refused to make the adjustment citing that since I consumed the meal, I will be charged for it. After a very long discussion and her rolling her eyes at me, which was ridiculous in the first place, I told her that no manager in a restaurant has ever treated me this poorly in my 40 years on this earth. And that she was arguing with me over a $ 5 comp that her server promised. Long story longer she did nothing to rectify the situation and walked away telling us the bill needed to be paid in full. I told her it is not about the money. I can afford it. It’s about respect and standing behind your product. She did neither and for that I will never eat at this restaurant ever again.
And if you happen to eat here (which I obviously encourage you not to), be on the look out for the manager. Her name is Fiona Hennessy. I asked for a business card from her and was refused. I’m not even sure it this is her real name but it’s the name I was told. I promised them I would be contacting corporate and if I can save anyone else from this experience, that really makes me happy!

I’ve been to this restaurant on three occasions. I would like to say it’s good but I think it’s less than average. Unfortunately, that will not be good enough for it to survive on Hamilton Street in Allentown. Today I went there for lunch. I had a chicken cheese steak for about $ 10, add a drink and I was at $ 14 + tip. If I wanted to add french fries it would be an additional $ 7 (yes seven dollars!!!) making it a $ 22 plus + tip lunch. That is way too much money for what they are selling. Sandwich was just OK. Organization here also appears lacking. Once came before a PPL Center event and could not get a table even though empty tables everywhere. If you are a big Chickie & Pete’s fan or just come for drinks, you’ll be happy here. The restaurant itself is beautiful.

my boyfriend and i had a great experience a few weekends ago. we were visiting from out of town, and wanted a late night spot near our hotel. having never been to a chickie & pete’s before, we thought we would give it a shot. we had an excellent time.
the space instead the restaurant is ample, and the bar seats at least thirty people, so we were able to spread out and have a little room to ourselves.
what was really nice (being the bargain hunters that we are…) is that they were in the midst of changing their beer list, and selling the beers that would no longer be on the list at a discount– um, bonus!
we had already eaten dinner, but after a few drinks were ready for some noshing. we ordered the crabby fries for which they are famous, and in addition to the white cheddar sauce it comes with, also got a side of ranch, and their house dressing (billed as creamy garlic and herb in flavor). the fries themselves were absolutely incredible: hot, crisp, and generously seasoned with old bay, they were absolutely addictive. the cheddar sauce was excellent, the ranch was good (probably not homemade, it tasted like average bottled), and the house sauce was disappointing. it had a weird sweetness. i can only describe it as the salad dressing equivalent to the miracle whip of mayo.
overall, our experience was great, and the service was attentive and friendly without being overbearing. we would certainly return, when we’re in the area again.

Wanted to try a Chickie & Pete’s cheesesteak. So we stopped and waited and waited and waited for an empty table (even though there were plenty tables available?) After we were seated, again we waited and waited and waited…
Finally our orders had been taken. It would have been nice if the waitress would have told us that an order of crab fries could feed 2 or 3 people!
All in all the steak sandwich was good, not the greatest, but good. The crab fries were ok but way too salty and seasoned for my taste (and where does the crab part of the fries come in… Probably when we left, because I was CRABBY!)

I obtained food poisoning from this place monday. I ate the lobster roll and became extremely ill (diarrhea and fever) the following day. I did not eat anything else in between with the exception of liccorice and coffee. Be careful.