Came here to a friend's birthday recently. I was not sure if it would be a good place for such thing, but the atmosphere was fine. Probably on par with Kelsey's.
The food was surprisingly pretty good. The only gripe, as with most chain restaurants, is they try to please everyone by covering every type and ethnic origin of food. This makes it confusing, and quite frankly, you start wondering about how authentic their dishes are (they aren't, btw).
With a name like Pickle Barrel, you expect it to be a deli of some sort.. and their smoke meat combinations are actually pretty decent.