UPDATE 06/07/10: this post is waaaay out of date. not all this stuff is even on the menu anymore! there is good news though, yard house is adding gardein to the menu. read about it here.

UPDATE 06/02/09: the ‘vegan’ lettuce wraps at yardhouse, which the staff told me were vegan as did the veganxpress iphone application, turned out to be almost entirely vegan, but with a sheen of oyster sauce sprayed on them to preserve them. special thanks to commenter kate, who alerted me to this. they use non-vegan fish sauce in their lettuce/tofu/mushroom wraps. i don’t trust anything at this place now, except the beer. the food can go fuck itself.

it’s always interesting to see what vegan options can be found at large chain restaurants, and it turns out the yard house has some pretty good selections. i usually visit yard house not to eat, but to drink vast quantities of alcohol. the place claims to have the largest selection of draft beer in the world, and serves the drinks in your choice of a standard pint glass, a huge half yard glass, or an enormous glass that’s a yard long and almost impossible to drink. after too many pints of strong beer on our recent visit, my husband and i decided we should order some food to help soak up the booze. i pulled out my iphone and launched the veganxpress application, a $1.99 app that lists vegan options at chain and fast food restaurants. thankfully, the yard house was one of the restaurants covered in the application, so we went about ordering up what was vegan on the menu.

chilled edamame: steamed soybean pods with kosher salt

we started with the edamame which was obviously vegan, and it was pretty tasty. not much to really say about it, but all of it was fresh and i really enjoyed the kosher salt. we also ordered the lettuce wraps with the mushroom option, and they were surprisingly good. these were actually some of the best lettuce wraps i’ve ever had, with lightly fried smoked tofu and 2 kinds of mushrooms. the chunky pine nuts also added a great texture, and the green onion a delicious but subtle flavor. i highly recommend these. be sure to specify you want the mushroom option though, because these also come with the choice of shrimp or chicken. blech.

mushroom lettuce wraps: Stir fried, smoke tofu, pine nuts and green onions with three dipping sauces and shiitake & portabella mushrooms

for our main course, we shared the portobella burger which was made vegan by omitting the cheese and mayo. i also told them to leave off the bell peppers, which left us with a huge mushroom, a slice of eggplant and tomato, and some basil. this thing was pretty dry and boring, but we livened it up with some hot sauce and were good to go. it definitely hit the spot, but i don’t think i’d ever order it again. my advice would be to stick to the lettuce wraps.

portabella burger (no cheese, no mayo): eggplant, peppers, basil, onion poppyseed bun

so next time you are at the yard house getting your drink on with some omnivores, rest assured, they have food for you too. and if you have an iphone, you may wanna drop $1.99 on the veganxpress app. i have used it a few times, and in my mind, it has already paid for itself.