This isn’t exactly your grandmother’s Southern cooking. This is Yardbird Southern Table & Bar, born in Miami and coming at you by way of The Venetian. Put together Southern hospitality with unique twists on down-home comfort food and you’re starting to get the feel for this joint.

This 8,000-square-foot restaurant wraps around a corner revealing bits and pieces through chicken wire-reinforced windows and openings with ranch rope as barriers. Once inside, elbow your way to the bar, usually stacked deep with revelers fresh off a day of walking the Strip or at a nearby convention. Wood reclaimed from old barns and jars of vegetables line the walls while a chandelier made from Mason jars and Edison lights illuminates the main dining room. Over the open kitchen, executive chef Todd Harrington spent hours creating the chalkboard sign. Sidle up to one of the 180 seats, all with a view of the kitchen and the foot traffic outside. Then get comfortable as the Southern-fried goodness two-steps out of the kitchen.

At dinner, that means 46 items to narrow down for your order. Quick bites and small plates, salads, fixin’s, plates serving two to four guests and the infamous bird make the cut.

The fried green tomato BLT has already gained fame as a critic’s favorite with its stack of pork belly, tomato jam and pimento cheese made in house, as have the deviled eggs with a large pile of fluffy yolks topped with a redneck caviar (that’s smoked trout roe for you Northerners). Don’t ignore the smoked and roasted bone marrow you can slather on hunks of country bread; it’s some of the smoothest in the city and comes with three generous bones. Black-eyed peas cassoulet make the pork croquette with its Virginia ham feel like you’re truly in the South.

Go lighter with the low and slow smoked chicken salad. It’s smokiness melds with the fried cornbread patty underneath, while a yogurt dressing adds that bit of tang.

Those main courses dubbed plates will feed an army. A handsome 18-ounce tomahawk pork chop from Niman Ranch that comes out to the table for a presentation before being sliced in the kitchen has just a little spiced crackling. The shrimp n’ grits feels ultra-Southern with its creamy Nora Mill Granary grits. Be more adventurous with a short ribs version of the dish that Harrington just added to the menu and hopes to make a staple. Go old school with St. Louis-style pork ribs or an amazing macaroni and cheese.

But it’s the chicken, that plump, juicy chicken, that will haunt your dreams. Four varieties make the menu, but order the chicken ’n’ watermelon ’n’ waffles to get a taste for some of the sides. Parent company 50 Eggs’ CEO John Kunkel says the recipe is based on the fried chicken his grandmother used to send home with him when he visited her in South Carolina, and rarely would the chicken make it to the end of the driveway before it was devoured.

And that’s just what Yardbird is, an ode to Kunkel’s Southern grandmother who could make these dishes without ever consulting a recipe. They were ingrained in her, just like the restaurant feels like it’s been in Las Vegas since she was working her magic.

The Venetian, 11 a.m.-midnight daily, brunch 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Fri.-Sun. 702.297.6541