Quaker Steak and Lube (August 1994)Sharon, PA Encouraged by the positive comments on this bboard (or, I guess, the lack of negative ones), three of us went to Quaker Steak and Lube in Sharon, PA, to try out the wings. So you can calibrate this review to your personal tastes, my preference for Pgh wings is Fat Frank's in the Strip. The "Hot" sauce there is a pretty standard buffalo wing sauce, and the "911" there is the same as the "Hot", plus what seems to be a lot more chili powder, so I usually get the "Hot" wings to optimize flavor and heat. Tender and meaty wings, although the quality seems to vary a lot. QS&L has several varieties of wings. I don't remember all of them, but there were Regular, Medium, Hot, Suicide, Cajun, Mexican, Ranch, Garlic, Golden Garlic, Louisiana Licker, and the Atomic wings. The latter are made with Habanero or Scotch bonnet peppers. The atomic wings were definitely flavorful, as opposed to a chili powder heat, and probably the hottest food I have eaten. Red face, tears rolling down the cheeks, and so forth. Yuan and Dan have higher tolerances than mine, so they ate a few more. In particular, Dan had eaten a jalapeno sandwich for lunch (lots of jalapenos between a couple of slices of bread), so his heat tolerance is up there. After 5 or 6 of the Atomics, he started to get some color in his face. We also tried the Suicide, Cajun, Ranch, Golden Garlic, and Louisiana Lickers. The Suicides were comfortably hot for me. The Cajun wings had a nice Cajun flavor, and the Ranch wings tasted a lot like the Golden Garlics, the biggest difference being that the Golden Garlics had more garlic flavor (surprise). The Golden Garlics, their prizewinning wings, were tasty, with lots of garlic flavor. The LLs were covered with what tasted to me like store-bought BBQ sauce, and were the least interesting of the lot. Our biggest complaint was that many of the wings were "petrified" (Yuan's term), which I believe is because they sat out for a while after deep-frying before the sauce was applied. Some of them were a bit on the tough side. The sauces made up for that, though, despite the fact that many of these were very salty. I personally don't care about decor, service, or ethnic authenticity, as long as the food is good and there are no rats scavenging on my plate, but for those of you who do: the decor is classic Americana, and this is clearly the place to be in Sharon on a Saturday night. Great for people watching. Service was O.K., not great. We got a kick out of the beer selection: "What do you have on tap?" Oh well. I would recommend a trip for the Golden Garlics, and if you're a heat fiend, the Atomics should be to your liking. As mentioned in earlier posts, it's not a cheap wing joint: 10 Atomics, 75 other wings, and 2 pitchers of Penn Pilsner came out to around $50 with tip. -js, ych (originally posted on pgh.food)
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