Jacques I.
Yelp
We made it to Yak's! So many travel bloggers I follow who's visited the northern California area all raved about Yak's on the 5, so of course, I had this place bookmarked since. After visiting, I can see why many love this burger spot that's right off of I-5.
We were driving from the Redding area up north to southern Oregon on I-5 on Labor Day, which is when we stopped by Yak's on the 5 for lunch. It seemed like there were a lot of visitors in town as the line was a long one during the lunch hour. The menu has a good amount of different burgers to choose from with excessive toppings, local beers on tap and sticky buns as their main and only dessert.
I kept contemplating which burger to get, but decided to order Mr. Sexy because it was a burger that had pastrami, which I heard was really good here. Despite how busy the place was, the kitchen turns out the food fast. I only had to wait about 10 minutes for my meal, which they call out when it's ready by a name that you pull from a jar. My name was Tooth Fairy.
My burger was big, especially with how much of the fried onion strings they put on. The pastrami was very good, and could've easily eaten this on its own without the burger patty. The aioli on the burger was a nice sauce with, to break up the saltiness from the pastrami, beef and onion strings. I could only eat half and then ate the other half for dinner. All of the burgers come with kettle chips, but most people upgrade to hand cut fries, which were fantastic and would recommend upgrading to.
The ambience of this place is really cool. I like that it's this casual, unassuming restaurant along the highway, with a back patio area that's spacious and dog-friendly. Those are the best seats in the house, but they do have indoor seating, too. I liked my burger, but have had better elsewhere, especially for how pricey the burgers are here, around $20. But I'm glad to have finally checked out a place that's beloved by many, and is named as one of the best burgers in the country.