We visited our local BJ's on a Tuesday night around 6:30 p.m. for dinner, and were happy to find it wasn't very crowded at all.

We were seated immediately, and our server arrived at our table to go over the menu before we knew it.

Fans of BJ's love the chain's Pizookie desserts, which are cookies baked in a skillet, served warm and topped with ice cream.

My son and his girlfriend are no exception: Sometimes, they'll visit BJ's on a date night just to share a Pizookie.

When there's a seasonal Pizookie, like the recent Spooky Pizookie topped with orange Halloween-themed ice cream, they're quick to head to the restaurant to try it.

During our visit, BJ's had a special Monday through Friday menu with meal deals that include a Pizookie dessert. The $13 Pizookie Meal Deal comes with an entrée, such as fried chicken or a deep-dish pizza, as well as a personal-sized Pizookie topped with a scoop of ice cream.

There's even an option to add an appetizer or upgrade to a full-sized Pizookie for an additional $4.

BJ's has been brewing its own beers since 1996, and the menu features a wide selection of ales, ciders, stouts, and more.

However, we started our meal with a round of sodas for the teens and me, and a few glasses of wine for my husband.

Priced at around $4 to $4.50 each, our sodas included free refills.

On Tuesday, when we visited, glasses of wine were half off, making my husband's cabernet only $5.50 per glass.

BJ's has other daily specials that offer additional savings, too, like half-off pizzas on Mondays and $13 loaded burgers on Wednesdays.

My son was eager to show us the "cool" way BJ's mozzarella sticks are served, so we ordered the $14 appetizer to share.

The golden-brown mozzarella sticks came to the table stacked like pieces of a Jenga game, in layers on top of one another. I'd never seen mozzarella sticks served that way.

Fortunately, they tasted as good as they looked. The mozzarella sticks and their accompanying marinara dipping sauce were pretty tasty. And the cheese pull was legit, with lots of stretchy, gooey mozzarella pouring out of each stick when they were split in half.

The nine mozzarella sticks included in the appetizer were plenty for us to snack on, especially since we wanted to save room for our meals and Pizookies.

For his meal, my husband got the boneless wings — a full pound of battered, white-meat chicken bites that cost $16.

Served with celery and a blue-cheese dipping sauce, the appetizer worked great as a full meal for him, leaving him satisfied with the portion size.

BJ's offers a variety of options for wing sauces, ranging from honey barbecue to Nashville hot. My husband chose the sweet and spicy Asian glaze for his wings and found it to be flavorful and enjoyable.

He said these wings were great, and that he could see coming back to sit at the bar with friends to enjoy a few orders of them with some of BJ's specialty beers.

I ordered the $13 Pizookie meal deal and chose the Enlightened Strawberry Fields Salad as my entrée.

The salad was really, really good, filled with candied pecans, blue-cheese crumbles, and strawberries tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette that I truly enjoyed. I also loved that it included grilled chicken for added protein.

The salad was so tasty, in fact, that I started making mental notes for how I could recreate it at home.

Between the fresh fruits and greens and the flavorful nuts and cheese, the dish was one of the best salads I've gotten at a restaurant. I'd definitely return to BJ's just to order it again.

My daughter also ordered the $13 Pizookie meal, choosing chicken Parmesan as her entrée. She wasn't a fan of the dish once it arrived at our table, complaining that the sauce was a little too sweet and the chicken tasted "off."

My husband and I both tried the dish and agreed with her that the sauce tasted pretty sugary for a marinara, and the chicken seemed a bit dry.

We didn't plan on mentioning the issue to our server, but he noticed my daughter wasn't eating when checking on our table and asked if everything was OK.

We explained that the dish wasn't what we expected, and he was incredibly kind and understanding, offering to bring a new dish (my daughter declined) and ultimately giving us a 10% discount on the entire check to make up for it.

It was lovely of him to have gone above and beyond the way he did, and it was certainly not something we expected.

My son, a picky eater, gets a plain cheeseburger and fries almost every time we go to a restaurant.

Our visit to BJ's was no exception, and he ordered the $15 classic cheeseburger, his go-to comfort meal. His verdict? BJ's cheeseburgers are really good — among his favorite burgers at a chain restaurant.

As a mom who wants her kids to be as happy as possible, I loved seeing our server try so hard to help my daughter when her order wasn't what she expected, and knowing my son enjoyed his simple cheeseburger meal.

Dinners out with teens can get expensive, so it's always nice to know they'll enjoy their food, or if they do not, the restaurant will try to make things right.

My son's girlfriend also took advantage of the Pizookie special, ordering the pizza-and-salad combo for $13.

Her Caesar salad looked great, made with green romaine and yummy-looking cheese, dressing, and croutons. She was able to choose any variety of personal pizza she wanted, and went with a barbecue-chicken one that looked amazing.

BJ's pizzas are also available in a gluten-free variety. Had I known sooner, I probably would've ordered one for my meal as well, especially given delicious-sounding flavor combinations, like chicken, bacon, and ranch, or pies with five different meats.

Me, my son's girlfriend, and my daughter got to choose our very own Pizookie variety as part of our meal deal.

I ordered the gluten-free chocolate-chip version that I'd upgraded to a full size for an extra $4. My son's girlfriend chose a regular chocolate-chip cookie, and my daughter picked a strawberry-shortcake cookie — all topped with vanilla ice cream.

I was skeptical that BJ's Pizookie desserts would live up to the hype, especially since I've had plenty of warm cookies topped with ice cream before.

However, after trying the Pizookie, I'm definitely a believer. The warm, gooey cookie was amazingly good with the perfect amount of melt-in-your-mouth, buttery, chocolaty goodness in every bite.

Paired with sweet, creamy vanilla ice cream, the dessert was so great that, between bites, I said to my husband, "OK, I can see coming here on a date night just to split one of these."

Ultimately, we spent just over $120 for drinks, an appetizer, entrées, and desserts for a group of five. It would've been around $132 without the 10% discount the server gave us due to my daughter's issues with her entrée.

At around $25 per person, the meal felt like a pretty good value, especially given the variety of food we received for the price.

My son and his girlfriend, who were already big fans of the chain, would absolutely return to BJ's for more pizza, burgers, and Pizookies.

My husband and I, however, are undecided. We may return for a quick snack at the bar or to share a Pizookie dessert, but I'm not sure we'd take the entire family there again for dinner, especially given my daughter's disappointment with the experience.

There are other chains we've all enjoyed, plus we usually prefer to support smaller mom-and-pop restaurants when we dine out.

Still, that Pizookie was really delicious, and I've definitely caught myself daydreaming about going back for one since.

BJ's Restaurant and Brew House did not respond to a request for comment.