The waitress of 33 years revealed to us that for decades most of the staff at the San Diego Chicken Pie Shop has referred to their workplace as “a gay 90’s restaurant.” With the exception of rosary-wielding nuns and unshaven street laggards dropping in occasionally for the yellow gravy, the eatery does indeed absorb an influx of esteemed GLBT folk and seniors pushing 90.

I’ve always loved the pie shop, but make sure that I don’t exceed more than two visits a year. God forbid what a steady diet of these poultry-filled pies bathed in viscous country gravy would do to my well being. Starch and fat levels run high, which explain their homey, Betty Crocker savor and the assertion made by our waitress that the restaurant sells “thousands a day.”

The eatery came pecking onto the scene in 1938, when Missouri businessperson George Whitehead ran the shop downtown. He eventually moved it to Fifth and Robinson in Hillcrest before taking up residence in North Park 14 years ago and turning it over to a trust. Pot pies and urban renewals obviously haven’t mixed.

“A full pie dinner was only $1.20 when I started working here,” our waitress reminisced. “I get tired just thinking about how many of them I’ve served!”

Today the pie dinners sell for $5.25, which is a notable “cheap eat” when you consider what’s also included: a basket of seriously white dinner rolls; a mound of green peas; coleslaw of the KFC ilk; whipped (a.k.a. fake) mashed potatoes and your choice of good old-fashioned pie for dessert.

The restaurant’s main staple hasn’t changed one iota over the years. The pot pies are filled with an equal ratio of chicken and turkey, both of which are pressure-cooked in whole form and then torn apart by hand before getting encased in their buttery piecrusts. It’s a massive operation that begins well before sunrise each day. And once the doors open at 10:00 a.m., there’s usually a handful of devoted customers already milling at the door.

The expansive dining room is anything but chic – a nesting ground for ceramic chickens looking down at an old-fashioned lunch counter and cart-pushing waitresses wheeling around the bill of fare. Yet despite the lack of aesthetics and otherwise dull atmosphere, the folksy staff and restaurant’s cult-like standing make it a fun place to eat.

Though the pot pies are a must, my dining companion and I discovered that the three-piece Fried Chicken dinner isn’t so shabby either. You get a drum, thigh and breast coated with homemade, lightly seasoned breadcrumbs that stick evenly to the chicken while keeping it juicy. The burgers are average in size, but also quite good since they are char-grilled instead of fried.

We also tried the chicken soup, which is expectedly comforting given all the poultry flying around the place. Despite its pale color, the broth is flavorful and thick from the generous amount of meat and rice that goes into it.

Baked hams are made daily on the premises too. They’re sliced for dinner entrées and diced into the Chef’s Salad, the latter of which we shared with a full cup of robust blue cheese on the side. (Perhaps I’m wrong, but you get the feeling that this is the kind of place where the salads might come overdressed.) The rest of the menu coheres to that truck-stop-in-the-Midwest style of food that we all need once in a while after plotting too many months of sensible eating. Naturally, you’ll find Chicken Fried Steak, Sautéed Chicken Livers and Hot Roast Beef. And few visitors will escape without gobbling down a piece of pie for dessert, which is included with most of the dinners.

The kitchen makes every fruit and cream pie imaginable, with the exception of butterscotch, which was dropped after the restaurant could no longer find distributors selling cooked butterscotch. “The instant stuff didn’t cut it,” said our waitress.

While my companion thoroughly enjoyed his Peach Pie, I opted for cherry and wrangled with the broken pits that kept surfacing with each bite. I regretted not choosing the pineapple instead.

Service at the Pie Shop is swift. And though the food arrives at your table quickly, and usually all at once, it somehow tastes made to order. There’s really no other place in San Diego quite like it.