BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse occupies a converted full-service space at Grossmont Center in La Mesa, anchoring the 5500 Grossmont Center Drive dining corridor with a 200-plus-item menu built around its Southern California craft-beer heritage. The tap wall pours the chain's proprietary lineup of handcrafted ales, lagers, and seasonal releases — a brewery-branded program that shares the La Mesa craft-beer corridor with independent producers like Helix Brewing Co. in the Village. Founded in 1978, BJ's built its national reputation on a Chicago-style deep dish pizza adapted with a Southern California twist, using a proprietary dough that undergoes a slow-rise fermentation before baking in a seasoned pan. The Pizookie® dessert bakes a fresh cookie in a cast-iron skillet and tops it with vanilla bean ice cream, a signature finish that has generated its own search demand nationally. The full bar program mixes craft cocktails alongside the beer roster, and the Grossmont Center location serves as a late-night anchor near Reading Cinemas for post-movie dining in the Brigantine Seafood & Oyster Bar corridor along Lake Murray Boulevard. The kitchen fires a lineup spanning slow-roasted prime rib, enlightened entrees under 600 calories, and handcrafted burgers ground from USDA choice beef, running the protein spectrum from a single facility at Grossmont Center.