Pete's Fish & Chips — Restaurant in Phoenix

I have lived in Phoenix my whole life and I have heard praise for Pete's almost just as long. So my review may be biased by just how talked up it was.

I will start by saying the employee who rang me up and gave our food/drinks as very pleasant and welcoming. So it is by no means bad in terms of service. I ordered a drink with a 4 piece of fish and chips. The food was honestly rather forgettable. Not worth the obnoxious limitation of cash only. That was one of the reasons I had never gone as I rarely have cash. With the actual experience of eating the food, I don't know if I will eat it again.

The fish was simply rectangularly cut and battered/fried. A small amount of salt on top. It lacked flavor. The accompanying sauce that Pete's makes wasn't bad, but it was nothing to wrote home over. I have honestly had better fish and chips from Red Robin which at least had flavor in he fish and batter. Not to mention bottomless fries. Now coming to he chips, while they are thicker than McDonald's or Burger King, they are still thinner than would be associated with Chips. They weren't bad, but again, nothing noteworthy. Just average.

I won't lie, I may have chosen a bad time to visit. It is possible that this as an outlier. But the food served seemed to just be basic frozen food that they simply warm and serve. That isn't inherently bad but it is far from being the best.

One plus for those who want to try them, they do have an ATM on site. Of course hat comes with ATM fees, but so be it. It also(as of the night I went), is best visited alone as the music was too loud to hear someone sitting right next to me at the bartop seating. If credit cards are accepted like 99.99% of all other restaurants in the Phoenix Metropolitan area, then I likely will come back and try other items.

For those who are going back and like heir burger, they do advertise a free burger coupon for every gift certificate purchased. Their menu shows $5 as the lowest amount. Nothing I saw specified a minimum value of the certificate, but it would be a good...

I really do not want to say something negative about an establishment that's been around a long time as Pete's. However, I did not like my #2 platter. Nor their famous red sauce. I'm still scratching my head because I don't understand why other people are saying this fish joint is good eating????🤦🏾‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️Arizona, this fish and chips is not good. I had the shrimp, 2 fish and fries combo and I added the fried scallops. This was my very first visit. I am not native to Arizona so I've been trying different joints to taste the local food. The shrimp was not a normal shape so I opened it up and found torn pieces of shrimp that looked like scrap pieces fried. I tried to eat it. I didn't like it. Horrible. Fish squares no matter if I dipped it in the red sauce or tarter sauce, HORRIBLE. Fries...how can fries taste bad??? These did! No salt. No flavor at all. Taste like cardboard. Poor scallops not good. Bit in one and water just ran out. I ended up throwing the entire platter away because I just couldn't eat it all because it was horrible. I'm disappointed. I should have paid a bill with the money I wasted on this food. It may be a local Thang but this is not good fish and chips. I'm sorry Arizona and Pete's. I don't know how yall have stayed open this long especially with a cash only establishment and Nasty food. Yall get two stars only because the girl in the drive thru was so nice and patient with me. She...

This is another of those places where the number of 5-star reviews is baffling, because over half the food I ordered ended up uneaten in the garbage (and I would have fed it to the pigeons, but feared that might result in complaints to the SPCA).

It's unimaginable how this place has flourished for 70+ years with this recipe for fish & chips. Is Arizona so far from an ocean people have forgotten what fish should be? Has the heat fried their taste buds? Has Safeway run out of Mrs. Paul's fish sticks or has Arizona outlawed home ovens to bake them in?

The fish rectangles are thin and covered with what tastes like a salt-bomb batter--the ratio about 1:1 fish to batter.

Maybe an addiction to Pete's sauce kicks in after a second or third visit, because to me it tasted like a sugary melted tomato jelly. The French fries were absolutely tasteless and throat-closing dry.

But who am I to question the obvious countless thousands who have kept this place going since before the Cold War? Give it a try. Maybe you'll love it. But perhaps, unlike me, don't go in ordering whole hog. Get something small so if it ends up in the garbage it won't mean some unsuspecting fish got chopped into small squares and deep-fried...