Things seem to be going well at Yia Yia’s, despite the proliferation of restaurants in the Chesterfield Valley. A recent visit showed a full room at 8 p.m., although the bar was, to us, shockingly empty. A large and enthusiastic crowd always was ensconced there during visits over a number of years.
Yia Yia’s is a rare exception to the household rule about avoiding chains when possible; it belongs to the PB&J group out of Kansas City. We’ve had some good meals there in the past, and the restaurant has a fairly serious wine list. But things seem to have become a little shaky.
The bread is housemade, and it arrives with a dab of what looks like mayonnaise, but tastes a lot better. It’s a puree of roasted eggplant and yogurt, sprinkled with olive oil and some sesame seeds, very tasty. The menu has always been good for grazing, and we were satisfied with an "onion tartlet" which turned out to be two squares of flaky pastry topped with onions that might have been a little more caramelized, but the olives and goat cheese brought it up to a proper level.
A Caesar salad, with anchovies added at Joe’s request, wore a proper dressing. The appearance of a little roasted red pepper was a good visual note. But the large croutons, which appeared to be made in house, were so hard a fork couldn’t penetrate them. Neither could the extra dressing. The Greek salad came up woefully short. The greens were nice enough, but the red onions were limp, exhausted, perhaps from a rough evening at work, and the dressing was—gasp—sweet. The horror of it, a sugary dressing on a Greek salad. Maybe — only maybe — Aristotle might have known the philosophical underpinning of such a disaster.
A beef tenderloin came as rare as ordered, and with good flavor, although the sauce had the faint bitterness that hinted at scorching somewhere in its past and several bites of steak hinted at tenderizer. Potato puree was so liquid that we thought in the dim light that it might be polenta. It was rich and creamy, although slipping between the tines of the fork. Trout had twice as much breading as fish. Two fillets had some good spinach between them, several cloves of roasted garlic, and a tasty salsa of fresh tomatoes and tiny capers, all providing flavor that was lacking in the fish and the chunks of boiled potato that was the primary side vegetable.
Yia-Yia’s always has done some interesting desserts. A blueberry cobbler was the sort that involves a cake batter poured over fruit. Served with a scoop of ice cream, it proved to be the most successful dish of the night, surprisingly tangy for the usually bland blueberry, as though someone had snuck blackberries in when no one was looking.
And service is lacking, too. Dishes weren’t removed before the next course arrived, nor was some of the dirty silver. What was removed wasn’t replaced until we asked for it. Simple stuff, just overlooked.
Not up to previously established standards. Too bad.
YiaYia’s EuroCafe
15601 Olive Blvd, Chesterfield
636-537-9991
Lunch Monday-Saturday, Dinner nightly, Brunch Sunday
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: Satisfactory
Smoking: Yes
Entrees: $11-$28