BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse is a lot like P.F. Chang’s. Not in terms of the food it serves — in fact, Chinese is one of the few categories BJ’s 100-item-strong menu doesn’t dabble in — but in terms of its success in winning over diners.

P.F. Chang’s is regularly rated by Gazette readers among the top Chinese restaurants in town. We critics often pooh-pooh chains (and sometimes for no good reason), but our readers are more open-minded. So I won’t be surprised if BJ’s makes a top showing among local brewpubs in this year’s Best of the Springs (Vote for your picks now at gazettedev.gazette.com/bestof).

The California-based, 102 restaurant-strong chain opened its local spot in 2010 in a cavernous space in the new shopping center anchored by Costco on North Nevada Avenue. It’s a higher-end chain. Expect more than TGI Fridays. And expect to pay more, too.

The big restaurant is stylishly done-up. The ceilings are high. The dim but focused lighting splashes on luxuriously high-backed booths and tables easily arranged for parties of two or 15. A few TVs over the bar could make it a sports bar, but the list of wines, beers, and fancy entrees could make it a date-night place.

The décor is a bit schizophrenic. On one wall, a huge New Deal-style mural depicts workers proudly harvesting grain. Another wall is hung with tastefully vague, Pottery Barn-style prints of abstract fruit.

The menu is many pages long, and quite varied. While none of the food is ground-breaking, all of it is dependable. It runs the gamut: pretty good deep-dish pizza (think Old Chicago), pasta, salads, sandwiches, burgers, barbecue, and even serious entrees like steaks or balsamic-glazed chicken.

You can almost picture the corporate strategists filling every possible niche to maximize profit, which would be creepy if it weren’t so darned tasty.

You might order the avocado egg rolls ($10), which bring to mind Chili’s or a dozen other places. Here, the lightly fried wonton skins filled with big chunks of ripe avocado, cream cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, red onions, cilantro, pine nuts, chipotle peppers and spices were delicious and not too heavy.

You might order a pizza — the “signature dish” — with everything ($13.25 for a small) including a puffy, chewy, 2-inches-thick dough and a generous, fresh sprinkling of veggies and meats. It does not stand above the rest of the menu, but it’s perfectly all right.

So are the crisp, pounded chicken breasts in a jagged coat of Parmesan cheese and crunchy panko bread crumbs ($13). The dish is both rich and light with a lemon-chardonnay-butter sauce.

The barbecue here is not true barbecue, but its not bad either. The slow-roasted pulled pork ($10.25) is tossed in a sweet, smoky sauce made with BJ’s Red Ale and topped with crispy onion strings.

BJ’s is not a true brewpub, because while the chain brews its own beer, it does not brew it in Colorado Springs. Still, the phalanx of house ales and lagers is a step above most brewpubs (including most local ones), and BJ’s isn’t afraid to also serve very nice craft beers from outside its family, such as Dale’s Pale Ale or 60 Minute IPA, that are hard to find on tap.

If you like to drink good beer with good food, BJ’s is a very good option.

It also has good servers. Ours was intricately familiar with the beers, to the point of explaining the yeast strain in the hefeweisen (Bavarian, not American), and was not afraid to make recommendations from the menu. She steered us toward a delightful beef pot roast ($13.50), tender, juicy, and arranged over a pile of roasted celery, carrots and buttery mashed potatoes. I highly recommend it.

Perhaps the most addictive part of the menu is the Pizzookie  — a dumb name but an irresistible dessert consisting of a hot, just-out-of-the-oven, 8-inches-around cookie, still in its own deep-dish pan, topped with quickly melting vanilla ice cream. I usually can’t stand chain deserts, which tend to be pre-made and cloyingly sweet. But the Pizookie is terrific.

The only thing I didn’t like about BJ’s is how much I liked it — how much the corporate strategists had succeeded. But in the end that is my issue, not BJ’s.

BJ’s RESTAURANT & BREWHOUSE3 STARS out of 5(a tasty chain)Address: 5150 N. Nevada Ave.Contact: 268-0505; bjsrestaurants.comHours: 11 a.m.-midnight Mondays through Thursdays, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Fridays through SundaysEntrees: $9-$15Vegetarian: Several optionsAlcohol: Full bar and extensive craft beer listCredit cards: Yes

Photo by COURTESY COLORADO COLLEGE