Good Food and Beer . . . Lots of Beer

Got beer? “Ach, ja,” the Yard House in Costa Mesa responds.

Its menu boasts of the largest selection of draft beers in the world. And indeed there are 180 colorful taps lining the bar, each connected to its own tank: everything from Tetley’s English Ale to Bay Hawk Hefeweisen.

This muscular New Age tavern, a spinoff of the original Yard House in Long Beach, also has one of the area’s more extensive pub menus, a compendium of wood-fired pizzas, creative appetizers and interesting main dishes.

Veteran O.C. chef Carlito Jocson gets credit for most of the doings in the kitchen. Jocson, who is originally from the Philippines, cooked high-end Italian at Antonello. Fusing European and Asian cooking clearly seems to suit him.

A few of his creations, notably grilled shrimp skewers with Indonesian fried rice and his crunchy salmon spring rolls, are real surprises where East meets West with a bang. More to the point, at a tavern, these are dishes that raise a thirst.

Yard House is really the first major restaurant to open in Costa Mesa in quite a long while. It could be just the shot in the arm the long-sluggish food scene on upper Newport Boulevard could use.

It’s a peculiar room, no more brightly lit than a neighborhood pub in the British Midlands. The tables have dark wood trim and faux granite tops; the booths are upholstered in a hard plastic material that resembles burlap. Very macho. The bar and those 180 taps take up most of the center of the room.

On one side there’s a small gallery’s worth of conceptual art hanging on the wall. Behind the bar, several black ceiling ducts are exposed. All in all, this is a young, boisterous room, with a partially exposed kitchen and a noise level bordering on ear-splitting when things are going full tilt.

For the moment, things are hopping here every night of the week. You get a vibrating buzzer from the front podium when you arrive, but the only really good place to stand is by the bar, an area that always seems to be jammed.

Once you’ve decided to wet your whistle, try a “six pack,” six beers in 4-ounce tumblers served on a numbered wooden platter. It’s an entertaining idea, even though many microbrewed beers are more than just vaguely similar when tasted side by side.

You can also drink your beer in a “yard” or “half-yard,” but a warning--if you should be unlucky enough to break one of these super-long glasses, there’s a replacement charge.

Bring an appetite. The appetizers alone merit more than one visit. Seared ahi sashimi is blended with a seven-spice mixture and dressed with a sesame soy vinaigrette. They’re delicious flavorings and good-quality fish. The lean and mean Korean barbecued short ribs, marinated with brown sugar, garlic and soy, are flame-grilled.

The crunchy salmon spring rolls I mentioned are lined on the inside with lots of smoked salmon and served with an appealing Japanese-style seaweed salad.

Traditionalists will like the mesquite grilled artichoke, served with a roasted garlic aioli and warm homemade potato chips. Oysters are served either breaded and fried with two dipping sauces, or raw on the shell with a nice ponzu, scallion and fresh ginger mignonette sauce.

I wouldn’t order the Thai chicken noodle salad if I were doing any of the Asian starters. It’s a giant platter of cabbage slaw, chicken and wheat noodles, but the so-called spicy peanut dressing is dominated by the flavor of sesame oil and soy. If you’ve ordered, say, ahi or ribs, you’ll also find it repeats their flavorings. Crab cake salad with chipotle ranch dressing is a better choice, and so is a nice roasted turkey Cobb salad with all the usual trimmings.

In the sandwich department, the Yard House makes one of the best cheeseburgers around, a huge, hand-formed patty you can have with smoked Gouda, Gorgonzola or just about any cheese you can think of.

But pass on the soulless, albeit huge, New York-style pastrami sandwich. (Since when do New Yorkers grill pastrami?) The warm roast beef dip, meanwhile, is fine, served on garlic bread with a piquant horseradish dip.

A few of Yard House’s main courses deliver too. In the original Long Beach restaurant, the owners tried an inner chop room, an experiment that ultimately failed. They aren’t doing that here, but they have retained an excellent prime New York steak, a gigantic grilled prime rib chop coated with fresh chopped herbs and--my favorite item here--an enormous, double-cut pork chop that the kitchen roasts with caramelized apples and serves with a tasty mushroom risotto cake.

Grilled shrimp skewers are the best of the seafood choices. The flavorful shrimp are brushed with garlic and oil before being thrown onto the mesquite grill, and the Indonesian fried rice they rest on is exotically fiery.

I’m not personally a fan of Chilean sea bass, but this version--soy glazed, served with braised bok choy and boiled Japanese-style soy beans on Thai rice--is fun.

The desserts have clearly been created to appeal to a young crowd. “Banana banana banana” is a banana tart with banana ice cream and a chocolate-covered frozen banana.

The Kona coffee macadamia nut mud pie sundae is a big bowl of ice cream with the nuts chopped into a light chocolate sauce. The warm chocolate souffle cake, which all the waiters push, is properly gooey in the center, paired with an acceptable vanilla bean ice cream.

Got legs? The smart money says Yard House does.

Yard House is moderate to expensive. Appetizers are $3.95 to $9.75. Favorites are $10.50 to $23.95. Desserts are $4.95 to $6.95.

BE THERE

Yard House, 1875 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa. (949) 642-0090. Open 5-11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 5-12 p.m. Friday, 4-12 p.m. Saturday, 4-11 p.m. Sunday. All major cards.