YARD HOUSE.

They built an identity around a tap count. Not the beer. Not the brewer. Not the region. The count. Like a mall store bragging about square footage. You walk in and they want you dazzled by the wall. You are not dazzled. You are in a Darden property.

Eighty percent of those taps are brands you could buy at a gas station warm. The other twenty are "craft" the way a chain hotel is "boutique." They rotate the handle art seasonally. The beer is the same.

The menu is a PDF with photos of things that exist at every restaurant in a 400-mile radius of any major airport.

Fourteen televisions minimum. All showing different sports simultaneously. Nobody is watching any of them. Everyone is on their phone, photographing the tall glass.

The music is a playlist curated to offend nobody and inspire nobody. It exists the way elevator music exists — to fill the silence that would otherwise reveal you are sitting in a 7,000 square foot room with strangers who also couldn't decide where to eat.

The staff is trained. Polished. They say "Awesome!" every time you order. It's the "Awesome" of someone who has said "Awesome" four hundred times this shift and has a quota and a manager named Trevor who does region check-ins on Thursdays.

You will find a Yard House at the following coordinates:

· Outdoor mall within 200 yards of a Cheesecake Factory
· Hotel district adjacent to a convention center
· Airport terminal — gate area — the one past security where hope has left
· Downtown "revitalized" block where the city tried
· Near a sporting arena, for people who couldn't get tickets and are processing it

This is not an accident. This is a Darden site selection spreadsheet reading foot traffic data and saying: here. Plant a Yard House here. Not because the neighborhood needs it. Because the neighborhood is already numb enough to accept it.

Two people. Apps. Entrees. Two drinks each. No dessert — the dessert menu is laminated and features a lava cake that's been on it since 2011. $110–140 before tip.

For that number you could eat at an actual local restaurant where someone's grandmother taught the kitchen manager how to deglaze a pan correctly. Where the beer list has seven options and every one of them belongs there. Where the bathroom doesn't have a framed photo of hops arranged artistically.

You chose Yard House because it was visible. Because you were walking and it had a sign and you were tired and it was easier than deciding. Darden knows this. Darden counts on this. Darden is never surprised.