Yardhouse

So this past sunday after attending and shooting the 29th annual Pan Pacific Festival Parade, Taro and I decided to leverage our choice street parking (ie: free) and check out the newly constructed Beachwalk Venue for food.

This area is seems to be new and trendy, with a typically southern california architectural style. AFter a bit of strolling around we decide to check out the Yardhouse.

After a 25min wait we get a table.

The beer list is Massive! It takes us a long time to decide what to try. They have a “six-pack” which is a preselected assortment of 6 beers, but this time I’m not interested, its 3 Gordon Biersch’s and 3 Maui Brewing items which you can easily find at the supermarket. Eventually I decide on the Rouge Hazelnut Brown, and Taro on the Fransizkaner Hefe-Dunkel (Dark Wheat). Since we’ve already taken a long time digesting the menu, we place our food order at the same time, with the waiter noting that he’d get those beers right out. Five minutes pass, I’m starting to think “Where the hell’s my beer!?“, but dont really say anything because they seem kind of busy, maybe things are moving slow in the bar. 10 minutes pass. Dammit, “Where the hell’s my beer!“. Taro is starting to look a little restless now. 15 minutes pass. “DAMMIT! Where the hell’s my beer!!??” By now I’m getting cranky for lack of beer. Then our salad order comes out. I got the Chopped Salad, and Taro got a Ceasar Salad. BUT NO BEER! I’m about to go explode with anger when another waitress comes by with our beer.

Okay things are not off to that great of a start, as timing is one of my restaurant peeves. The beers are wonderful. I think I’d get this rogue variety again. Taro’s beer was a little dense, but it was also pretty tasty, I’d probably get that sometime again too. on to the salad. I was expecting chunks of avocado, but this is acceptable, its kind of a salsa like mixture with large chunks of bacon. Bacon makes everything better, this with the beer calms me down considerably.

Right up until Timing Faux Paux Number Two. Around halfway into my salad, my main dish comes out. Grr… I even forgot to take a picture until I ate most of the salad. I’m daydreaming about how much I dislike cold burgers. Incidentally I ordered “Sliders” which are coming into popularity again, this is the style popularized by White Castle, they are mini-sized burgers. which are around 6 bites or so. Or 2 bites if you are Wayland. So I finish out the salad and get on to the main dish.

Whoa, Solid! it comes with fries! Taro ordered the Bernaise Burger, and notes that the cost is around the same as eating a burger at Kuaaina, after you factor in fries and goodies. The taste is wonderful! They must grind the meat in-house using a good cut, they were not at all greasy, even after sitting out while I finsihed my salad. Taro also enjoys his Bernaise Burger.

I ate two of my Sliders, and Taro ate half his Bernaise, as we are both thinking we want to sample more beer. So for the 2nd round, Taro orders the Rogue Morimoto Soba Ale, and I order the Lost Coast Downtime Brown. Again both these beers are pretty tasty. Both are hoppier than our first round. I’d probably get the Lost Coast again, but Taro notes that he probably would skip the Soba Ale in favor of something else.

Now to be fair, the place was pretty busy, and our server was very polite and helpful when he was around. My feeling was that they did not have enough help on hand to handle the Sunday crowd; however it did take away from the whole dining experience. That was made up for in the quality of the burger. It was really quite good. I spent $33 on my Salad, 4 Sliders, and 2 beers.

Quality: B+

Service: C+

Value: C

Overall 2.5 out of 4 grinning monkeys, and 2 out of 4 bulging forehead veins.

Root: Just my input on our visit, I noted of the architecture, of the oh so fashionable SoCal roof thingy over the walk. Super tall, curvy glass canopy. I remarked that though cool looking, it looks totally useless. Derek states that it works for rain if there’s no wind. Hmm, windless day in Hawaii? And it being made of glass makes it pretty inneffectual for shade, except for the little white square pattern in it. There’s a water fountain feature that I’ve seen similar seen on mainland, basically flat ground with pukas in it that water jets shoot out of in various sequences. It invites frolicking, but unfortunately while we were there there was no frolicking of the type we would have liked to have seen, just a toddler kid getting soaked.

On to the Yardhouse. Yes, the beer timing was a bad boo boo. The timing of the later dishes might have been less annoying if we had been already enjoying our beers. Seeing as the vast beer on tap list is their feature, this shouldn’t have happened. The beer list is quite impressive. It’s kind of funny that there’s only a couple bottled beers, the non-alcoholic ones.

The Fransizkaner Hefe-Dunkel I had was quite tasty. An unfilttered wheat, with a nice addition of smokyness of a dark.The Rogue Morimoto Soba Ale you could smell the floralness of the strong hops. It was actually pretty good for a strong hopped beer, but eventually it got to be a bit much for me. If I’m going to go for a strongly floral accented beer, I’ll do a Hoegarten, which by the way Yardhouse does have on tap! Actually was tempted, but with so many untried selections I had to try something I’d never had before.

Food: quality excellent. Salad looked nice and fresh, no funky looking bits. Ceasar dressing acceptably good, actually pretty good, just that I prefer it with more bite. I saw in the menu mention that it is an eggless receipe. As noted, the burger was excellent, and humongous. In all honestly the burger itself was superior to Kua Aina, and now that I think about it, this being a half pound burger the value is even more on par to Kua Aina. The bernaise sauce didn’t do much for it though.