The Patio Gyro Place- The Quick, The Cheap, The Not Ugly

The Patio Gyro Place, 7371 S. Madison Avenue, is in a really small strip mall next door to Pay Less Liquors and across the street from The Party.  It's only been open a month or so, and it looks so tiny from the outside you might miss it, overshadowed by the liquor store's giant sign letters.  I was surprised to find that they have a decent-sized dining room with about a dozen tables, nothing fancy but neat and clean.  I had planned to just get 2 gyro sandwiches, but I was ambushed by an extensive menu that includes hot dogs, Mexican dishes, catfish platters, jalapeno poppers, and ribeye steak sandwiches, to name but a few of their many offerings.  But like the kid who goes into Baskin Robbins and has 'em read off all 33 flavors only to order vanilla, I stuck to my original plan and ordered a chicken gyro sandwich and a regular (beef & lamb) gyro sandwich.

I've never seen 'em prepare sandwiches at other gyro restaurants, so I don't know if they do it differently,   but this place has a griddle on which they pour batter to make the sandwich bread right then and there, so it tasted really fresh. The tomatoes and onions were really fresh and crisp, too, and they didn't skimp on the tzadziki sauce, either.  It seems like all regular gyro meat is provided by one supplier (Kronos), so it has the the same tasty goodness wherever you go. The chicken, on the other hand, was better to me than most other grilled chicken sandwiches because they browned it nicely on the griddle. The REALLY great thing about this place is the price:  $4.49 for a good-sized gyro sandwich or a combo that includes fries and a drink for $5.99. We split a baklava for $1.45 that was tasty if not as light and fluffy as what the Acropolis serves up the street.

The service was quicker than I expected, so it would probably be a good workday lunch destination.  The menu says there is a sister store, The Patio, in (I think) the 7300 block of E. Washington Street.  The Gyro Place made a great first impression, so if The Patio is just as good, we have yet another go-to place. I'll at least have to go back for some of the myriad other dishes.  O-pa!

UPDATE, 07/01/2013: The time I ordered a gyro sandwich and a breaded tenderloin sandwich:  the gyro was good, the onions on it were crisp and fresh, and it was swimming in tzadziki sauce, which wasn't a bad thing.  The tenderloins was HUGE, and it was decent if not radically different from all the other tenderloins I've had.  The value for the price continues to amaze me.  :-)

Windows On The World-- Never Forget.

Some folks didn't really understand my last blog entry about this place (Windows on the World: End Of An Era, blog entry for 09/11/11), which wasn't in a strip mall.  It was a restaurant at the top of one of the World Trade Center towers.

It's Patriot Day - never forget.

Britton Tavern - Good, Not Cheap.

So on Saturday afternoon we'd helped clean up our niece's new house in Fishers in preparation for their move-in and were extreeemely thirsty, punched "bars & nightclubs" into the GPS and came up with the Britton Tavern at 141st Street and State Road 37 in (yep) a strip mall.  This establishment is rather big, generally clean, and kind of generic, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  What hit me first about the place was its really good sound system, with the rock muzak playing very rich with bass notes and sound emanating from what seemed to be many, many speakers.  They publish a new glossy menu each month with the bands scheduled to play there (I recognized the names of several popular Indy-area bar bands), along with the drink and food specials.  Classy, I tell ya!

It was a beautiful day, so we sat in the small outdoor seating area and took in the sunshine and the traffic noise from SR37....  The bartender was friendly without being obsequious, the service was good, and the draft beer was really cold, a real plus at any bar.   The only (slight) drawback was that our 64 oz. pitcher of Dos Equis Amber was $16, which is only 4 bucks a pint, not terrible for import draft at a bar, but  it hurt a little bit after having paid only $6 for the same size pitcher of Pacifico at Bojack's in Franklin the Saturday before.  Still and all, I would go here again, I think.  Slainte!

Bojack's Pub- Pretty Place, Pretty Deal

Bojack's is located (say it with me) in a strip mall that runs perpendicular to E. Jefferson Street in Franklin, Indiana near the Franklin College (or is that Franklin University?  Seems like no institution of higher learning is a mere college, anymore) campus.  It's a really nice little strip mall, though, being red brick and only containing a few little upscale shops in addition to the bar, and the parking lot is bordered by a tree-lined creek, making the place almost picturesque. There is a large covered outdoor seating area, but it was hot outside. The inside of the bar is clean, classic sports bar decor, with 5 pool tables and 15 flat screen TV's.  The Little Woman and I had drifted south in an effort to find some dinette chairs to go with our kitchen table, and after stopping at Dinette Land, then going on to find that Amish Furniture Mart no longer exists and Long's Furniture was closed due to a fire or something, we decided to stop in Bojack's, one of the few Franklin pubs we've not visited.  The others (with the exception of The Tavern, which seemed a little sketchy) are all very comfortable places-- we've pondered maybe making an overnight visit, checking into one of the motels by I-65 and seeing if their shuttle might take us to town and back.  Ahh, someday....

It was 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday and the regular crowd hadn't stumbled in, yet, so I dunno what it's like later in the day,  but we ran into an old bud who now lives in Prince's Lakes who said he likes to stop in Bojack's and drink a beer on the way home when he doesn't want to do it with the rednecks in Edinburgh (opinions expressed here may not be those of the author).  The cook was late because his car had stalled in high water from a storm, so the barmaid (a comely girl with glasses and hair in a bun-- sort of a naughty librarian thing) was doubly busy and not in the mood for chit chat or taking too long to decide on your food order.  She lightened up considerably once the wayward cook had arrived and manned his duty station.  The beer special was a pitcher of draft Pacifico for $6, and it turned out to be a good sized (64 oz.) pitcher, too, so Bojack's made a good first impression on us.  But bar food is always a hit or miss proposition, so we hoped for the best and placed our orders for a 7-inch personal pizza with 3 toppings and the day's special, a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich with sweet potato fries.  Both were really good, if not great, a definite passing score for pub grub.  The pizza was like most bar pizza, but it was really fresh, and the cheesesteak meat was nicely marinated. The kicker was, though, that the price was reeeeeally GREAT!  The pizza was $2.99 and sandwich plate was $6.95, so our entire bill came to like sixteen bucks and some change.  Incredible!