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!