Las Vegas is riddled with restaurants that look fancy but can't live up to the grandiose expectations of the city. Yardbird is not one of those places. If anything, they subvert it, because who comes to Nevada to get high-end preparations of dishes from the South?
The fried chicken is obviously the thing to get here - juicy and incredibly crunchy - though the biscuit turned out to be a serving side that lent itself well to exploring other parts of the menu, too. The large bones delivered to our table rendered their marrow easily, though it was upstaged by the orange marmalade and tomato jam that came with it. Even a tomato salad in February was successful thanks to golf ball-sized heirloom tomatoes and homemade ricotta.
After several of beers from one of the best tap selections on the Strip and an impossibly large butterscotch cake, the friends I brought to Yardbird were suitably impressed at the meal they had. It's maybe not what you come to Vegas to get, but it's excellent all the same.