Yard House

Sometimes convenience is more important than really good eats.  Okay, this may not have been true early on in the life of this blog, but it certainly is now.  Hey, when I'm on vacation, I really should be making decisions based on what works for my family rather than trekking across town to line up at a trendy spot so I can blog about it. Hence, we ended up going across the street from where we were staying over to LA Live.  From all the choices there, we went to the popular chain restaurant Yardhouse.

We started with the Poke Nachos with almost everything on the side, because not everyone wanted everything, but wanted some things.  LOL... So these crispy wonton crisps were supposed to be topped with ahi tuna, avocado, serranos, white truffle sauce, sweet soy ginger sauce, sriracha aioli, cilanto, green onions, sesame seeds and nori.  This was pretty good, especially when we used the sauces with it.  I particularly enjoyed the combination of soy ginger with the aioli.

We also got the Wisconsin Fried Cheese Curds with hot honey sauce and horseradish aioli.  This was a fairly generous portion of cheese curds.  Texturally, they were only slightly melted and still had a nice bouncy chew to them.  On the outside, the batter was indeed crispy and light, but completely soaked with grease.  So much so, the parchment on bottom of the basket yielded pools of oil.  Ignoring that, the cheese curds were good and went especially well with the hot honey.

For myself, I had the BBQ Bacon Cheddar Burger featuring a 1/2 pound USDA prime blend patty, applewood smoked bacon, cheddar, BBQ sauce and garlic aioli.  I asked for the patty to be prepared medium-rare and it came out closer to medium.  No matter though as it was juicy and nicely charred.  Bacon was super crispy and the sesame bun was nicely toasted and airy.  Hence, it didn't eat heavy.  However, the burger was quite filling though.  I got parmesan truffle fries on the side and they were crispy with enough seasoning for impact.

Viv had the BBQ Chicken Pizza which was loaded with tender morsels of chicken.  There wasn't enough BBQ sauce though as the pizza ate dry.  Crust was pretty basic being the thin crust variety.  It was crunchy but not particularly memorable.  With the proliferation of Neapolitan pizza joints all over the place, pizza crusts like the ones found at Yardhouse are very mediocre.  But I get it, a chain restaurant needs to keep things streamlined especially with such a large menu.

For my son, he went for the House Cheesesteak featuring chopped ribeye, white cheddar, steak sauce, roasted garlic aioli and fried onion strings on a hoagie. As you can see, this was rather large and he was completely satisfied by both the portion size and the execution.  The soft roll encased tender beef that had a nice sear (with some crispy bits).  Lots of umami here including beefiness, aromatics and sharpness from the cheese.  The side of yam fries were crispy and not greasy.

Naturally, the most expensive dish was ordered by my daughter which was the Sesame-Crusted Ahi with crispy garlic, sesame seeds, green onions, jasmine rice, charred baby broccoli, baby tomatoes and creamy ponzu sauce.  As pictured, the ahi was perfectly medium-rare with only the slightest sear on the outside.  Hence it was tender and vibrant.  However, it was also quite bland and there wasn't enough ponzu to do anything about it.  The veggies were cooked perfectly though.  Good dish, just needed more seasoning.  As for the other dishes, we were satisfied and thought the pricing was fair.  Pretty good for a chain restaurant and it did the job given what we were looking for.

The Good:
- Well-portioned
- Decent pricing with all things considered
- Huge menu (something for everyone)

The Bad:
- Pizza was meh
- Service was good, but long periods of time without anyone checking on us