Restaurant Review – Backyard Social

Its not really a restaurant per se. This venue is a big open air building with a huge bar underneath surrounded by plenty of seats and VIP areas that you can reserve for parties of 6 or more. And here’s the best part, for me anyway, there are 8 food trucks parked on the outer perimeter for you to enjoy! And there’s more! Tons of games like corn hole, miniature bowling, darts and shuffle board. And there’s more outside seating. And live music! And not enough parking! We had to park in a grassy field across the street from it, but not really that big a deal. However, when I left later that night, I pulled out into the wrong lanes of the divided road to make a right turn. And I was the designated driver! I did not drink at all! All I can say in my defense was that it was dark!

Anyway, its a nice drive down to Alico Road on I-75. I just watched Wink News talking about an accident on I-75 near Daniels, but it was going north so I thought I’d be OK. and I was! Huge backup in the northbound lanes, but free sailing in the southbound lanes. When we left, the traffic had all cleared up so I can’t really complain about the drive. Half hour there, half hour back, if that.

So the place is packed, but we find one open table and start to bring a bunch of chairs to it for everybody. There were three young college aged ladies at the table next to us and one of them actually got up and told us three different times that she was not happy with us being there! If we were the Patrick Swayze Chippendales it would have been a different story. But we were more like the Chris Farley Chippendales! We all ended up having a good time in our separate worlds even though we were only an elbow away! As you can see in the above pic we did actually take over the end of their table for a while! So even though she complained we got along pretty well. But I bet they were glad when we left!

Now for the food. My wife and I started out with a Lamb Gyros and it was really good! Nice flavor on the lamb and just the right size to split. Somebody else had the Chicken Gyros and they liked that too! Next up, my wife and I split a Wagyu Cheeseburger for $13. It was huge. We ate it all, but that was all we ended up having. We were stuffed. Somebody had the Mac and Cheese, Cheese Fries and a Meatball Sandwich. All very good! There was a BBQ truck, a Gluten Free Truck, Vegan options, Puerto Rican food, a lobster truck and a ice cream counter. Be sure to check out the menus below.

There were a lot of kids playing the games, bowling and shuffleboard. I saw some adults playing corn hole outside. Nobody was playing darts at the time. The drinks were ok. My wife had one Moscow Mule and liked it, the next one was way off the mark. There were a lot of beer glasses on our table. Just make sure you know who’s is who’s, right Jerry! It was very loud in there. You had to get right up next to one another and still had to talk in a loud voice to be heard. My wife was hoarse when we got back home. Nice! 🙂 If you’re going to go in a group I highly suggest you call in advance and make a reservation for one of their VIP areas. You can also reserve them online. The VIP areas come with a waitress, so you don’t have to worry about standing in line for your drinks! I think they might even pick up your food for you because I did see some waitresses standing by the food trucks. We ordered our food online and got a text message to pick up the food when it was ready. That was nice, no waiting in the food line anyway! Here’s the link for Backyard Social’s website.