The Palm Restaurant is a nearly 100-year-old steakhouse chain that operates close to 20 restaurants in the US, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia. The closest location to me, however, is inside the Hard Rock Hotel at Universal Orlando.

I'd been to the restaurant before to enjoy a drink and a bite to eat at the bar — it's long been one of my favorite spots to take a break from the hustle and bustle of Universal — but I'd never eaten in the dining room before.

The chain Maggiano's Little Italy has been around since the early 1990s and has over 50 locations around the US, but I'd never visited it until recently.

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.

On a recent trip to Disney World, my family and I decided we'd try a new restaurant — Shula's Steak House.

The small chain was named one of the 10 best high-end steak-house chains in America by the Daily Meal, and has seven locations in Florida, Chicago, Houston, and Richmond, Virginia.

The steak house, which is owned by Shula's Restaurant Group, is named after former Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula. The chain aims to carry on Shula's legacy, so each location has a loose football theme.

Trying sit-down chain restaurants has become a hobby for us and our teenagers. In the past year, we've shared meals at chains such as Olive Garden and Buffalo Wild Wings to see whether they lived up to the hype.

Recently, we decided to try Bonefish Grill — a seafood restaurant with over 160 locations across the US — for the first time.

Both popular breakfast chains have been in the news lately — Waffle House (slightly) raised its notoriously low base pay, and Cracker Barrel recently reported a dip in revenue. With Waffle House's new investments and Cracker Barrel's decrease in earnings, I was curious to see how the two stacked up in the long line of breakfast chains.

There aren't a lot of chain restaurants at Disney World, and with lots of dining options across the parks, my family hasn't been to many of the property's franchises. But recently, my husband, two teens, and I visited STK Steakhouse at Disney Springs for the first time.

For months, I've been trying chain restaurants in search of the best meals and deals for my family. Recently, I put two of the most famous chicken-wing chains to the test: Hooters and Buffalo Wild Wings.

I ordered the same meal at both chains to see which served the tastiest wings, appetizers, and sides. Here's how they stacked up.

We love getting breakfast together on the weekends, so we decided to visit Bob Evans for the first time to see what kind of value we'd find.

Here's how our visit to the famous chain went.

I was excited to check out the deals from seafood chain Red Lobster since it has family meals ranging from pasta to crab legs on its menu. Plus, with the debt-laden chain reportedly considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year, I was wondering if its food would be such a great value after all.

So, instead of cooking dinner on Taco Tuesday, I headed to seafood chain Red Lobster to try its family taco meal deal.

Since I live with two teenagers who'd eat McDonald's for every meal if I'd let them, I tried to find the fabled $12 "dinner box" at my closest Mickey D's locations.

Since my family started visiting chain restaurants for the first time about a year ago, we've dined everywhere from Ruth's Chris Steak House to Bahama Breeze.

I've never seen customers lined up just to get a table at any of them until we visited Olive Garden on a Friday night.

Here's what it was like to order, pick up, and eat a family meal from Cracker Barrel, and why I'd definitely order a to-go dinner from the chain again.

We've tried various chains including Ruth's Chris and Olive Garden, and have found some impressive dishes while making our rounds.

But our recent visit to the upscale steak-house chain The Capital Grille blew us away. It may just be our best chain-restaurant experience to date.

My family has never cared much for chain restaurants, but in the past year, my husband and I have visited more with our teenagers.

By dining at steak houses such as Ruth's Chris and iconic breakfast spots including IHOP, we've learned to appreciate what chains have to offer, from reasonable prices to a consistent experience.

But we'd yet to try a Brazilian churrasco meal like the one offered at Fogo de Chão.

While my family spent years avoiding chain restaurants, we recently started visiting them with our teenagers.

We've been pleasantly surprised by chains we've visited so far — from the Caribbean-themed Bahama Breeze to steak-house chains such as LongHorn Steakhouse — so I was excited to up the ante and head to Ruth's Chris Steak House.

My husband and I have always prided ourselves in the fact that we rarely eat at chain restaurants and try to support locally-owned businesses whenever possible.

But lately, our teenagers have been asking about the chain restaurants they've seen in ads or on TikTok, so we decided to try some together as a family.