1222 Irvine Blvd.
Tustin, CA 92780
Theme restaurants have never done it for me. Theme restaurants are eateries that use a theme to create a memorable experience. Some examples that you might be familiar with are Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, Chuck E. Cheese, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Medieval Times, and Rainforest Cafe. Not really a glowing collection of restaurants that I would ever want to return to. Tasty food seems to be an afterthought for all of these places, but I was hoping that maybe Rock and Brews in Tustin was going to be able to break the curse of bad theme restaurants.
Rock and Brews started off as a whim between five guys after a KISS concert in 2010. In attendance were a concert promoter and his brother, a well-respected restauranteur, and Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of the rock band KISS. They all wanted to create a restaurant that prepares their cuisine in a scratch kitchen using the freshest ingredients they can get their hands on, all in a rock and roll atmosphere. That's what their website states, so I was definitely intrigued, and enlisted my sister and nieces to join Katie and me on a long-overdue dinner meetup.
By my count, Rock and Brews now have 12 locations, not including a number of spots in casinos and airports. Their menu predictably features plenty of musical wordplay in describing their menu items. Plenty of starters, pizzas, sandwiches, burgers, salads, sides, and desserts are available. Just a couple of items eclipse the twenty dollar mark, with most hovering around the $15 mark, which is a pretty low price point these days.
This Tustin location we visited used to be home to a Lonestar Steakhouse, but it has been completely revamped and is unrecognizable from those days. The restaurant seems way more spacious, with high ceilings, a large bar off to the right side of the restaurant, and lots of band posters and TVs hanging throughout the restaurant. We were seated on the outside patio, which was heated, so we were pretty comfortable. Let's see if Rock and Brews can break the theme restaurant curse of mediocre food.
Katie has been pretzel crazy ever since she went off her keto diet. I guess she's making up for the lost time. The Giant Soft Authentic Bavarian Pretzel ($12.95) is not really my cup of tea, but everyone else seemed to dig it. It came with spicy mustard, which definitely had a kick to it. Katie decided to upgrade her pretzel experience by opting to have the Bier Cheese ($3.95). I found this sauce to be a little on the thin side, so I preferred the mustard in the few bites that I had.
Loaded Potato Skins ($12.95) are way more my jam. These ones at Rock and Brews come with a mix of cheddar and pepper jack, candied bacon, green onion, and ranch. These were just okay. They kind of skimped on the cheese, and I'm not even sure if there was any pepper jack included here. They placed just a small sprinkling of bacon on each potato and I would have rather had sour cream instead of the ranch that these were topped with. Not awful, but not memorable.
My niece is approaching adulthood but still orders off of the kid's menu for some reason. This is an improvement over the two years when she ate nothing but buttered noodles when she was younger. On this evening she ventured out by getting the kid's menu Mac and Cheese ($8.95). From what I saw this appeared to have come straight from the Kraft box, which makes sense since kids love that stuff. This also came with fries, which made this a double starch meal for my beloved niece.
My sister had the Beer Battered Fish and Chips ($17.95). I'm not sure what kind of fish they use here at Rock and Brews, but it's probably not a good sign that my sister was unsure whether they had made the mistake of giving her chicken strips instead of fish. She decided it was fish, but wish it had a crunchier breading around it.
Katie was pretty happy with her Key Club Turkey BLTA ($15.95). This turkey sandwich came on a french roll with sliced turkey, avocado, tomato, garlic aioli, lettuce, bacon, and melted swiss. She felt this was a nicely put-together sandwich with fresh produce and a nicely done garlic aioli. The onion rings are the way to go here. They had a crunchy breading and were served nice and hot.
I steered clear of the pretty tasty burger I had here once during the pandemic and went with the Demon Chicken Sandwich ($17.95). This scary-sounding sandwich came dressed with sliced pepper jack cheese, jalapenos, a habanero slaw, chipotle ranch, marinated red onions, and just for good measure the fried chicken breast is tossed in their Rockin hot sauce. You'd think this would be way too overloaded with heat, but it was more subtle than I thought it would be. The chicken breast had a nice crunch to it, and as I ate this, the heat intensified, but not to the point where it became unbearable. I opted to not get the fries with this and went with the Caesar Salad instead. The salad was okay, but tomatoes do not belong on a caesar salad, ever.
The grand finale for us this evening was the Giant Brownie Sundae ($9.95). A very simple sundae with a brownie topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream. This was fine but it would have been better if the brownie was warmed up a bit and if they would have used hot fudge instead of chocolate syrup. I had two bites and then let the rest of them spoon fight over the rest.
Rock and Brews definitely could not break the theme restaurant curse. For all the talk on their website about being a scratch kitchen and using locally sourced ingredients, I find it hard to believe that what I tasted this evening was not delivered on a truck within the last week or two. That's not a knock on them, but don't try to portray themselves as something they are not. Rock and Brews is fine for what it is, safe, casual food, with a menu where almost everyone can find something that they'd like to order. It's like a Chili's with better music. Not awful, but not anything that I'd rush back for.
Out of five jars of face makeup, (because I'm sure the guys in KISS have used more than their fair share of face makeup over the decades that they have been in the music industry), five being best to zero being worst, Rock and Brews gets 2.5 jars of face makeup.
For more information about Rock and Brews, head to their website by clicking here: https://www.rockandbrews.com/
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