Restaurant Review - Yap

Welp.  It happened.  We ate somewhere so disappointing that I had to write a bad review.

I mean, I guess I didn't have to.  But I am anyway.  It just....wasn't good.

First, a little history.  This little space has been several different things over the years.  It's right on Main Street downtown among several restaurants, but for some reason NOTHING can stay open in this place.

For one, it's dingy.  Old and in serious need of a remodel, I was SO EXCITED when I saw a new name on the outside of this place!  Greenville has more restaurants per person than any other city of our size, and somehow Jay and I always feel like we end up going back to the same places over and over again.

This is likely because we are poor.

Anyway, we catered a baby shower and found ourselves starving one Sunday at 2pm. We definitely didn't feel like cooking anymore, so we headed downtown to find somewhere affordable to eat while we waited for the shower to be over.

Enter Yap.  We saw it.  We wanted to try it.  The menu looked great!  Nothing mind-blowing, but totally affordable, and a good variety of appetizers, salads, sandwiches.

We sat down.  It was dingy, just like it always is in the sad place.  The waitress did tell us that more improvements were on the way, so maybe we need to go back and see if any new improvements have been made.

There were a few drink specials that we took advantage of, but even a "special" mimosa price was $5 for a small glass of mostly OJ.  Sorry, not a great deal.

Our waitress was nice.  She was not, however, efficient.  It was 2pm and there were three servers plus a bartender that we saw, and maybe 3 tables occupied.  So....I didn't see a ton of excuse for the poor service.

The food was the real killer.  A special appetizer of some house special cheese fries revealed something resembling velveeta over top of something resembling flash frozen fries.  Sigh.  There was a nice side of black bean salsa which tasted homemade, and since we are who we are we gobbled them up anyway.

For an entree, we shared something called a pita burger with a side of mac and cheese, at the recommendation of our server.  The mac and cheese also tasted boxed, though it was made with ziti instead of macaroni - a nice touch.  The burger, interestingly, was served on a hamburger bun.  No pita.  It had some kind of yogurt marinated veggies over top, which I suppose gave an element of Mediterranean to the dish, but...why not call it a Greek burger?  Why call it a pita burger if there is no pita in sight?

Luckily, nothing on the menu was expensive, and there were some salads that looked interesting.  However, based on what we ate, the descriptions on the menu far outweigh the actual food quality.

We need to try it again.  We know that.  But for the opening month of a new place trying to grow legs in a city with some GREAT restaurants....I'm not quite sure how long Yap will last.