Plano restaurant with fun name, Suburban Yacht Club, is now open

No, your yacht cannot moor outside of the Suburban Yacht Club in Plano. But almost everything else will make you feel like you’re in Southern California, hair blowing in the wind, an iced cocktail in your hand. There’s even a small man-made body of water outside in Granite Park. Sip enough rum and this Plano walk might start to look like the Santa Monica Pier. Well, maybe.

The Suburban Yacht Club opened on September 7, 2021 and offers a fun new place to soak up the vibes of SoCal without flying.

This new restaurant on the “Best Coast” theme offers a menu that matches the decor. Chef Brian Luscher, who owned and operated The Grape in Dallas for years, joined the team at 33 Restaurant Group after The Grape closed permanently in 2019.

The Suburban Yacht Club is Luscher’s first new restaurant menu since The Grape, and here it seems to be having a lot of fun. Luscher’s team includes Dallas chef Daniel Pittman, who cooked great food at LUCK (Local Urban Craft Kitchen) in Trinity Groves before he left in 2019.

Dinner probably starts with a cocktail, and four frozen drinks like a Frojito or a Mangonada Margarita could hit the nail on the head in the heat. Two cocktails to share, priced at $ 35 and $ 40, come with a bang: sparklers or flaming fruit. You probably need it.

33 Restaurant Group founder Preston Lancaster, who operates six other restaurants in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, grew up in North Texas but now lives in San Diego. Many potential restaurant customers here are doing the opposite: Toyota’s headquarters, just across the Dallas North Tollway, brought thousands of Californians to Texas in 2017.

Lancaster and his team also operate Union Bear Brewing Co., which is a few doors down from Plano’s Granite Park. Their other restaurants are Cadillac Pizza Pub and The Yard, both in McKinney; Taverna Rossa in Plano and Southlake; and Heritage Pizza and Taproom in The Colony.

At the Suburban Yacht Club, Luscher says he was inspired by Southern California food, which tends to be simple, sometimes healthy, and often focused on seafood.

“I’ve always loved going to the West Coast, because the emphasis is on the ingredients, but also cheeseburgers and tacos,” Luscher says.

“If you take yourself too seriously, it doesn’t work.

Starters include fried calamari, grilled chili butter shrimp with chimichurri and flaming hot Cheetos elote. Citrus ceviche is one of Luscher’s favorite dishes. The spicy tuna tostada is spiced up with a drizzle of spicy chili mayo.

Most patrons might be drawn to the “street” section of the menu for tacos, such as a shrimp option with coleslaw and mangoes, or the beer battered fish. The mushroom and poblano rajas taco, a vegetarian dish, is a delight even for carnivores.

Those who give up calorie counting might love the Short Rib Taco Quesabirria. Like the elote Flamin ‘Hot Cheetos, SYC’s birria tacos are forgiving and on-trend.

The last time you ate a Luscher burger, it might have been The Grape’s cheeseburger, which Texas monthly name it best burger ever in 2009. So Luscher added a cheeseburger to his menu at SYC, and while it’s not a staple menu item like shrimp tacos and ceviche, it’s inevitable that burger lovers will show up just for try it out.

The Boardwalk Beach Burger was made to taste like a backyard burger, the chef says: American cheese, a mix of ketchup-mustard-mayo sauce, and lettuce, tomatoes and pickles on the side.

He says of the whole menu, “It’s refreshing for me not to have to prepare everything. “

Lancaster says the name, Suburban Yacht Club, “started out as a joke,” he says. “It made us laugh. “

But the menu and the decor are not too themed: no one wears a captain’s hat or tells jokes about pirates.

Connoisseurs have been waiting for this new restaurant since May 2020, when it should have opened without the coronavirus pandemic. It’s 16 months late, but this laid-back seafood restaurant, hemmed in by a heap of Californian transplants, seems right on time.

The Suburban Yacht Club is located at 5872 TX-121, Plano (at Dallas North Tollway and Hwy 121). Dinner only, at the start, starting September 7, 2021. Lunch comes later.

For more food information, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.