Heidelberg Cafe - Affordable Authentic German

Heidelberg Cafe and Bakery on Pendleton Pike just east of I465 is (yay!) not in a strip mall, and much to my dismay it's not on the South Side.  I'd been by there and seen its tidy signs outside a kind of dumpy-looking little white-painted brick storefront like 50 times over the years, but it was always while I was working and not able to stop.  I saw it yet again last Friday when I had an appointment in Lawrence and resolved to go there on Saturday, which we did-- I intended to stop in for some coffee and pastry, then go to nearby Ft. Harrison State Park for a little hike and maybe picnic with some KFC.  As soon as we sat down in the Heidelberg, however, all that changed.

They don't have just pastry and coffee.  There is a nice little lunch menu of German dishes, served by waitresses in German-style waitress dresses, some of whom have real German accents, as do a many of the customers, which I thought boded well  (remember the axiom of ethnic restaurant + lots of customers of that same ethnic community = GOOD).  I had the Heidelberger (essentially a foot-long German hot dog on a plate with two small pickle spears and bread with butter), a side order of  Korean potato salad (just kiddin', it was German), and coffee.  The Little Woman ordered a Bratwurst which automatically came with the potato salad, bread, and pickles.  The coffee was nothing exotic but it was very good and the wait staff kept it coming. Both meats were smoky and delicious as was the potato salad, which was served warm as it should be.  The pickle spears were fresh, delicate, and crunchy, some of the best dill pickles I've ever had.  For dessert I went into the bakery part of the building and purchased an Alligator which we had them microwave a few seconds to make sticky and warm.  It was ohhhhhh so good with the coffee!  

It was a pretty good deal, too, considering we both ate for under 20 bucks.  The food might not be as rich as the Rathskeller's downtown or the Edelweiss Restaurant's in German Park on the South Side, but it was just as authentic, filling, and a heck of a lot cheaper. We rolled ourselves off our chairs, waddled over and  browsed the bakery and little German grocery section (which had a big selection of pickles that I wished I'd taken the time to shop), and also their selection of German-language newspapers, magazines, and souvenirs (They're also a licensed Hummel dealer).  We finally made it to the park to hike, but any picnic plans were  dashed for the rest of the day by our lingering satiation by Bratwurst.  Prosit!

El Puerto - Just A Little Different From the Rest

El Puerto, 7045 Emblem Drive, is (need I say it) in a strip mall in between Mike's Car Wash and Meijer, near the giant sucking vortex of traffic quicksand that is the intersection of Southport Road and Emerson Avenue.  I think it's part of a small chain, as there is another El Puerto at Emerson & Thompson Road.  The decor is simple but clean-- it was a Schlotsky's sandwich shop when first built, and likely retains the original seating.  I've been to the other El Puerto, too, and the decor is similar although this one has more windows and seems more light and airy inside.

On this day I got an order to go, and it was a working lunch so no beer or booze (*sigh*).  The very cordial host took my order promptly and the food was ready !muy pronto!  I had the lunch Chimichanga with beans and my business partner (just kidding, it was The Little Woman) had a burrito with beans, and they were both DEEELICIOUS.  The Chimi was cooked just right, not doughy but not hard, and it was covered with a tasty white queso sauce and filled with spicy shredded beef, while the burrito was covered in a red sauce that was also quite flavorful. The beans had a little bit of white cheese melted on top, which I love, and the to-go order came with a little cup of salsa and a quart-size bag of tortilla chips.  The salsa was excellent for us but maybe a little too spicy for some folks. 

Both dishes seemed a little different from the same ones at other Mexican restaurants (YAHOO!). All the decorations in the place were from Cancun so maybe this is the style of the food there.  I was in Mexico once, visiting Tulancingo in the state of Hidalgo when I saw a restaurant advertising Michoacan-style food, but was unable to go in and ask what that might be because I couldn't leave the tour group....  I've since had the opportunity to ask several Mexicanos living here what regional Mexican food differences there are, but none of them had any idea beyond one guy who said that in Cancun they eat a lot of seafood. D (wait for it) UH!  I can tell you, though, that in Hidalgo they have Pastes (pronounced PA STAYS), a variation of the English Pasties that British miners brought over when they came there to mine silver, yet another variation of which (the pirogi?) was the lunch of German and Polish miners up in Minnesota.  A paste is a pie crust-like pastry baked hard and filled with meat and cheese, to which the Hidalguenses have added plenty of Mexican spice and flavor.  The tour guides brought 'em to us in big boxes like doughnuts, and I woulda consumed a whole box of them if those danged Seguridad Publica guys hadn't tackled me.  Ah, but I digress.... 

El Puerto is nothing fancy, but the food is just a little different and a little tastier than most of the other cookie-cutter Mexican restaurants, for which I am VERY grateful for every cup and every plateful.  Thank you Lord for all this food.  Amen!  Sorry, got carried away there....  !TOME Y COME AQUI AHORITA, MI GENTE! 

The Party's New Face-- More Than Just a Makeover

The renovation of The Party, 7350 Madison Avenue, is almost complete, and owner Steve Waugh has really transformed the ancient former Rax Roast Beef location.  There is a DJ booth, some nice new seating in the great new bar area, and the covered outdoor patio is a thing to behold-- There are two little man-made waterfalls out front and a gas fire pit in the middle as well as propane area heaters stationed at intervals throughout the patio, and I'm told there are even radiant heating panels in its ceiling!  With all the renovation expense I expected prices to rise uncomfortably like they did at Waugh's other joint, Big Daddy's at Meridian and Pleasant Run Parkway, but so far that hasn't happened.  On Monday drafts were $1.50 + tax, the regular price for a well drink is still $3.50, and a glass of Sutter Home wine is $3.95. (They still have half-price bottles of all varieties of their wines on Sundays, too!)  There's a pretty extensive pub grub menu, too.  What's not to like?  Cheers, y'all!

Zelma's: An Eastside tradition stays fresh.

One afternoon on a crisp Fall Sunday, we went in Zelma's, 935 N. Shadeland Avenue,  for the first time in maybe fifteen years.  I remembered the place as the rather comfortable epitome of the words "greasy spoon", the type of 24/7 place that decades ago would have been frequented by the likes of Philip Marlowe.  Now, however, though she is still open 24 hours a day and probably serves a lot of late-night drunken revelers and other nefarious characters, the spoons are NOT greasy and the dining room is bright and clean.  

The Little Woman had a grilled tenderloin sandwich with fries and coleslaw while I ordered the Beef Manhattan which (in case you weren't born on this planet) is usually brown gravy over roast beef on an open-faced sandwich with mashed potatoes, but in this case it was just like they made a regular sandwich, put it down on a plate with some mashed potatoes and poured gravy over it.  I later learned one of their specialties is Fried Chicken, so I guess I wasn't exactly sampling their flagship dish, but our stuff was decent if not outstanding.  The gravy and mashed potatoes seemed straight out of the Sysco catalog but were tasty nevertheless, and the sliced roast beef was browned, which suggests to me they warmed it in a frying pan or the broiler.  However they did it, the browning added a little extra flavor to the beef.  Her tenderloin was again decent if not inspired. Both the coleslaw and my dinner salad were very, very fresh, a real treat coming from an all-night diner. The price was right, too-- less than twenty bucks for both of us. All in all, Philip Marlowe would be happy to eat there, except he'd have to put his cigarettes away and straighten his tie, because it's so clean and bright he'd want to look presentable.

UPDATE, 02/27/2014:  We visited again last Sunday, I think it was, and the food was really decent but the service wasn't so good.  They became quite busy, and the waitress (sorry I forgot her name, although she said she'd been waitressing 36 years) was not keeping up very well, and didn't look like she was trying too hard, either.  The first cup of coffee she brought me was, no joke, ice cold, must have been sitting on a warmer that was turned off.  It took her a while to get back around to me to warm it up, too.  Still, when the food came it was very good-- I had Zelma's Breakfast deal: 4 slices of bacon, 2 eggs, toast, home fries, and coffee all for just $6.50, which seriously warmed my $$ heart.  Enjoy!