New breakfast restaurant open in Clovis. The owners run a popular high-end steakhouse
You won’t find plain beige biscuits and gravy on the menu at newly opened Yolked Kitchen in Clovis.
Instead, the menu at this all-day breakfast restaurant is a bit more creative. There’s breakfast fried rice with kimchi and braised pork shoulder. There area also breakfast cocktails, including one called Everything But the Toast served with a slice of bacon atop the glass.
The restaurant is in the Parkway Trails shopping center at the northeast corner of Willow and Nees avenues, just over the boundary with Fresno. It’s in the former Mr. Sushi #2, a few doors down from the upscale 13 Prime Steak restaurant — which is convenient for the Yolked owners since they also own 13 Prime.
“Basically everything we do at 13 Prime, we’ve just flipped it to the morning,” said Falina Marihart, who owns the restaurants with her husband, John.
So that “elevated” cuisine, full-service bar, modern decor — it’s all at Yolked also, just with a breakfast menu. So is the same chef, many of the bartenders and other employees.
The Yolked dining room was gutted and remodeled into a light and airy atmosphere with lots of yellow. Sharp-eyed diners will notice that even the lights look like eggs, or that the servers wear little pins in the shape of a sunnyside-up egg.
A patio is coming in a few weeks that will have tables overlooking the rail trail at the back of the building.
The food
The menu is American, with a Mexican influence.
You’ll find pancakes, of course (with a secret ingredient Marihart refuses to share). There’s also chilaquiles (a Mexican dish with tortilla chips smothered in sauce and eggs), listed on the menu as “Netflix & Chill-A-Quiles.”
Customers Kelly and Lyle Fearn of Clovis tried out the bananas Foster French toast and the pastrami hash and eggs for the first time on a recent weekday.
There are other breakfast places in town, of course, but “they’re all the same,” Kelly Fearn said. “This is different. There’s no biscuits and gravy.”
“It’s almost like art,” chimed in her husband, about the food.
Indeed, a picture of the New Mexican Christmas burrito is inspiring some figurative drooling among more than one would-be customer. It’s a carne asada burrito with both red and green chile sauce made from Hatch chiles popular in New Mexico. It has a sunnyside egg on top so yellow and cheery it’s practically smiling.
Prices range from $14 for a “Veganator” burrito to $24 for steak and eggs.
Most of the menu is the creation of chef Tommy Chavez. He’s also the executive chef at 13 Prime. His son Cruz Chavez is sous chef at Yolked.
The elder Chavez used to run a breakfast restaurant in Visalia, also named Yolked.
Breakfast drinks
There’s coffee, of course, with all sorts of espresso-based drinks such as lattes.
Wine and bottled beer and wine are available. And there are zero-proof (non-alcoholic) cocktails available, including a drink called the Designated Driver with cucumber, jalapenos and lemon flavors.
You can get a bloody mary and a mimosa. Or, a flight of mimosas with four fruit juices and an entire bottle of prosecco, a sparkling wine.
But the unique cocktails are their own little sideshow here. The same mixologists who create the drinks 13 Prime is known for launched the cocktail menu here.
The drinks have creative names, such as Walk of Shame and Afternoon Delight.
The Yolked Up mimosa is served with peach Schnapps and prosecco, a large ball of frozen orange juice in the middle of the wide, flat coupe glass.
And that Everything But the Toast cocktail? It lives up to its name. It’s made from bacon-washed whiskey, barrel-aged maple syrup, egg white and bacon. A little round of lemon peel sits submerged in the middle of the foamy egg white, looking a lot like a yolk.
Details: Yolked is at 1305 N. Willow Ave., suite 190. Hours: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. It does not take reservations, but you can get on a waitlist via the Tock app.
