Another week, another Western restaurant opening in Sanlitun. Here we are again. This time, we're just down the road a bit from M. Night Shyamalan's The Sanlitun Village *wink*, just on Sanlitun Nan Lu there, across from that new "Sanlitun One" thing. Sanlitun, Sanlitun, Sanlitun. Opened last week, The Smokeyard is a new steak and other stuff restaurant which assumed the erstwhile location of F by Tribute, a Californian-via-Hong Kong prix-fixe restaurant. F by Tribute was never quite able to land the J on that ultra pretentious name, and sort of hovered around at the back of your mind for a few years before quietly bowing out of the space and letting Beijing get on with the business of being Beijing: accommodating boutique everyman caterer-types with their own American comfort food restaurants. The people behind "The Smokeyard" are Fatface Dining, who, according to the omniscient BeijingBoyce, are planning a chain of these Smokeyards in Beijing and beyond. Right here's where we'd put in something about learning to walk before you run, maybe. This is inside: So yeah. To those ends of reproducing and replicating these all over the place, The Smokeyard does very much look like a restaurant that's pre-fab out of the box. Rather than work specifically with the nice and elegant two-floor space that occupies this specific address, it kind of feels like they just moved their brand identity into it the place wholesale and exploded it onto the walls. The end result is kind of like one of those nice-but-not-too-nice restaurant chains that are in the strip mall with the Old Navy, the Payless Shoes, and the Cineplex. Someone likes America. Someone likes the idea of painting bricks on concrete walls. Someone like trucks. I guess nothin' says STEAK like TRUCKS DRIVING THROUGH BRICK WALLS, really. And the steak is the central item on the menu at The Smokeyard. Specifically one kind of steak, so far. One cut of steak. It's 98rmb all-in for a 150-gram filet mignon steak sourced from northeastern China. Signature steak - 98rmb I ordered an entree as well, but the steak came out a good 10 minutes before the entree did, so we'll just with start right here. So it's a lil' slab of meat, doffed in mushrooms, perched on a bed of finely mashed potatoes, with a side of veggies. I ordered it medium rare. The steak was... actually pretty damn good. It was wonderfully cooked. Luscious meat. People make a big deal about Australian or Japanese-imported meat, but it's very much conceivable to serve a nice steak sourced from China. This was definitely evidence of that. I gotta say, it was a nice surprise. Really properly done, with the juices exploding out of the thing as soon as a jabbed my butter knife into it. Yeaaaaaah, butter knife. Hey, steak restaurant, get some fuckin' steak knives. How can a steak restaurant not have steak knives? Check it out, this is an inventory of every single thing in the cutlery drawer at my own apartment: -3 single chopsticks, differing lengths -one of those really tiny spoons that looks like it's for stirring tea in the 18th century -an empty Kurt Russel DVD case stuck to the bottom on the drawer with this black syrup-like substance (The Soldier) -a steak knife I'm barely hanging on to an adult life here and even I've got a fuckin' steak knife, why don't you. Oh, here comes the entree: House Triple Sliders - 48rmb I got the Sliders because ordering them reminds me of the TV show Sliders and I like that TV show. These sliders were... just so-so. You've had worse. They were decent enough -- nice and juicy -- but not very creative. I feel that there's something jubilantly silly about sliders anyways (What are these hamburgers for hobbits, oh myyyyy!?!?!), so you should really go for broke on making them fun. Put some Smarties and foie gras in there, I don't know. For desert, I got the "Pot 'O' Cheesecake" which was 32rmb. It was.... eh. Pretty unmemorable. No much going on here. This is a pot 'o'? For drinks, the menu specifies that they serve "CRAFT BEER - FROM THE TAP" -- hey, I've heard of that, have you heard of that?! -- for 18rmb. It's not even named on the menu, but the beer is sourced from Lark's, which is some real straightforward by-the-numbers beer. That's not a bad thing. Sometimes you just want beer that tastes like some beer. *** The Take-Away: It's rough around the edges. Steak was fine, sure, and fairly priced at 98rmb, but the message is a little mixed (What "yard"? What's being "smoked" exactly?) and the execution is not there yet. There's some promise, though, and we only just waded into the menu. Apparently, they've serve "Bombass Quesadillas" for 32rmb. Are you a fan of "Bombass" cuisine? Think it's like "Classic American" mixed with more trucks driving through walls... *** The Smokeyard is at Unit 5, 6 Sanlitun Nanlu, near Gongti Beilu.