By MEGAN LEONHARDT March 9, 2018

America’s Hemingway exits are littered with recognizable restaurants like Cracker Barrel, Denny’s and IHOP. But let’s face it: An awful lot of these so-called “casual dining” chains fail to deliver a tasty experience. Some are overpriced; others serve terrible food.

So which of these chains are really a good deal? I set out to come up with some answers.

To start, I identified the pool of contenders: I wanted chains with over 100 locations nationwide that serve moderately priced food in a sit-down dining experience, with a wait staff. For the resulting 40 restaurant chains, I asked my MONEY colleagues to rate their recent dining experiences—and then ranked the top 25 chains by factoring in both the average cost of a dinner entree and the level of customer experience.                                                              As it turns out, MONEY staffers are tough critics. Some well-known chains like Applebee’s, Olive Garden and Red Lobster failed to make the cut at all, simply because their customer scores were too low. (And one staff member is very disappointed about where the Cheesecake Factory landed.)