Indy's Famous Pancake House - Breakfast/Lunch with a Latin Flair.

The first thing you notice about Indy's Famous Pancake House, 8028 S. Emerson Avenue in the same strip mall center as Ritter's Frozen Custard, The Tailgate Bar & Grill, Mexico City Grill, The Healthy Food Cafe, and Sushi Club, is that it has a HUGE menu-- literally.  It's like 10 pages of glossy 11" x 17" cards printed on both sides with lots of photographs of food.  When the server came back to the table with our drinks and we told her we needed a few minutes to look at the menu, she kind of smirked when she said "I understand.  It's a BIG menu!", half-chuckling at the obvious double entente.  

It's a simple little place that has all the traditional breakfast and lunch dishes, but there are a bunch of Mexican-style items as well, including several desserts.  They also have a number of booze drinks, including Mimosas and Bloody Marys-- perfect for that "hair of the dog" breakfast to kill a hangover, right?  The Little Woman had a Ham, Egg, and Cheese Croissant sandwich and I ordered Enchiladas Suizas: Both dishes were surprisingly delicious.  The croissant was so fresh, light, and flaky I thought it could be home-made, and the Enchiladas were tastier than most other Mexican restaurant dishes.  They were not the kind of pastry shell I'm used to, just corn tortillas rolled and filled with chorizo, eggs, and potatoes and covered with a spicy green salsa and a white sauce that tasted like queso and sour cream combined-- YUM!

To top it off, the price of breakfast was well within the $$ range-- enough to make an old cheapskate like me cry tears of happiness... or was that the heat from the salsa?  Anyway, I liked it very much.  iVamanos!

Gold Coffee and Pancake House: A Solid Performance

Gold Coffee and Pancake House, 80-something S. Emerson in the strip mall across the street from the new super-Kroger at Emerson & County Line Road, is a nice little breakfast and lunch-only place but nothing special, decor-wise:  dark wood booths and tables, pictures of breakfast dishes on the wall, etc.  The food, however, is where GC&P shines.  Our favorite pancakes are Denny's newest buttermilk ones, but these are as good if not just a little better. They were a little more done, browned at the edges, and yet they had a light and fluffy middle.  They were just sweet enough to be interesting, too. I could go on at length about the hash browns (but will try not to!), since I seem to be obsessed with the obscure peripherals of a meal, like drinks and sides.  A nicely brewed iced tea, for instance, is a wonderful thing, and hash browns prepared to my liking, like these, are a rare delicacy.  Most places (including Waffle House, dangit) give you what looks like a small pile of wet noodles; they hardly brown them at all, probably to save time, I guess.  But Gold's were nicely browned as if they'd spread them out on the griddle and flipped 'em a couple of times so that there was some crispy goodness in every bite.  The scrambled eggs were perfectly moist and tasty, too.  The service was fast and friendly, and the prices were very reasonable, so for breakfast or lunch I would gladly ditch the Metro Diner.  C'est Magnifique! 

The Oasis Diner is True to Its Name....

The Oasis Diner, on the Western edge of downtown Plainfield, IN is a traditional diner, styled like a train car on the outside, with shiny chrome walls and a row of rectangular plate-glass windows across the front.  It sat derelict for years on US40 just west of the Marion County line, until the current owner had it moved to its current very nice location where it was extensively renovated.  It was still too early in the year to eat outside, but whenever the weather warms up it would be cool to eat out on the patio and watch the World go by.  The menu begins with diner food, but also features many other interesting dishes.  The Special of the day when we went was some kind of bourbon shrimp, I think, but it was Sunday and we wanted breakfast even though it was after noon, and they were happy to oblige.

I had the humongous Loaded Biscuits and Gravy, which had home fries underneath and three eggs on top of a thick layer of home-style white sausage gravy, which had big chunks of sausage the size of small meatballs.  The Little Woman had the Breakfast Sandwich with ham, cheddar cheese (you have your choice of meats and cheeses), two eggs and jalapenos on a large English Muffin (you have your choice of breads, too), and she added a short stack of pancakes that came with bacon maple syrup (oh yeah!).  The short stack was only two cakes, but they were HUGE, covering an entire dinner plate.  Everything was HUGE—we both could have split either dish and been perfectly satisfied, but of course I had to eat all of mine and then try to vanquish half of her pancakes, but I was (sniff*) unsuccessful.  Everything was freakin’ AWESOME!  As soon as they rolled me down to the Juicing Room to relieve some of the internal pressure inside me I was fine, although I didn’t eat anything else the rest of the day, and that’s saying something….  

Another Broken Egg: A Gourmet Breakfast

Another Broken Egg, in a strip mall (where else?) at 9425 N. Meridian Street, is, sadly, not on the South side.  If it was, you might not be able to get into the place for the line.  I swear it seems like the South side is largely ignored by independent restaurateurs.  Perhaps they are unwilling to challenge the chains which seem to dominate the landscape.  Actually, I'm not certain that Another Broken Egg isn't also a franchise, come to think of it, but if it is, we need one down here.

The place is only a little pretentious, with a coffee bar that serves lattes and such, but the rest of it is modern and not ostentatious.  The menu varies from moderate to upscale dishes, like $3.99 to $15.99, and they are all variations of classics, like City Grits and an Herb-infused Bloody Mary (alcohol, oh yeah!).  The Little Woman and I split the Lobster Omelet Plate ($14.99) which was big enough for both of us to feel stuffed upon completion.  It had more lobster crumbles in it than I would have expected, even given the stiff price, and it was deeeeeelicious!  It also included a boatload of perfectly-cooked home fries.  There was nothing not to like, except that it's all the way up at freakin' 96th & Meridian!