The Library: No Shushing Here!

There isn't a lot of fine dining on the Southwest side of Indy, so the semi-upscale Library Restaurant & Pub on Lynhurst Avenue at Sam Jones Expressway is quite the hidden gem.  It's NOT in a strip mall, for starters: the building is quite beautiful inside and out,  a sort of French Provincial Mansion that belongs up North in Pretentioustan instead of in the middle of the urban sprawl of Airportland.  The decor inside is simple but elegant, with chandeliers and even an art gallery upstairs, but the ambiance is actually quite casual even though the price is $$$ and the food is excellent. 

The Little Woman had Beef Tenderloin pasta with Gorgonzola sauce and I had Prime Rib Manhattan, both of which were large-portioned and deeeelicious.  The pasta and tenderloin medallions were tender and perfectly cooked with a very strong Gorgonzola flavor.  Prime Rib is the specialty of the house, and the Manhattan is a smaller cut placed on a sliver of bread and covered with garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, and topped with onion straws. It was really, really, REALLY good, and (hold on to your seat) more than I could eat in one sitting.

We hung out at the bar after dinner, only partly because they have half-priced bottles of wine on Mondays (it was our Belated Valentine's Day dinner and we had a room in the hotel next door).  Owing to the airport/office park/industrial area in which it's located, the bar draws mostly business travelers away from their homes in other cities and likely drinking on expense accounts, so the conversations were uncensored and quite lively and entertaining.  If only I could've figured out a way to record them and then find out out whom to blackmail, we could have made it a profitable evening as well!  (JK) ...The bar prices were not a bargain but not outrageous, either, which made this $$ guy very happy.  CHEERS!

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….  

The Peppy Grill: New Life for a Fountain Square Institution

I have no idea how old the ridiculously tiny Peppy Grill, 1034 Virginia Avenue in Indy, really is.  When I came here 23 years ago it had been owned by Jerry Wyman and later his ex-wife Mary for many many years, and they ran a pretty tight ship.  At that time it was one of very few Southside eating establishments that was open all night, so it was a hub of activity in the wee hours, with a mixture of hungry cops, thieves, repo men, drunken night club goers, and early-shift factory workers all sitting down across from each other in order to get some good basic diner food.  (They gave cops a 50% discount except during the hours of 3 to 5 a.m., when the cops were asked not to come in because they frightened away the drunks.  A small bit of corruption, I suppose, but hey, bidness is bidness and ya gotta respect that, y'know?) Alas, at some point Mary retired and sold the place, and thereafter it suffered a long, slow decline as it passed from one lazy or inept owner after another.  The last time I tried to eat there was about 2 years ago, when I sat there for almost 30 minutes without anyone lifting a finger to help me, so I left and never went back.

A Facebook post saying the Peppy was under new management brought me back, however, and on a Saturday morning we journeyed to Fountain Square.  At 10:00 in the morning the place was full of twenty-something hipsters, and if they're the new face of Fountain Square, I'm all for it. Vive La Renaissance!  There was only one waiter and he didn't seem terribly experienced, but he was hustling.  She ordered a Grilled Tenderloin Sandwich along with (so glad they're back!) Sour Cream Fries with Ranch dipping sauce, and I had a Western Omelet.  The service was a little slow, but the waiter guy and the owner, who called herself Grandma Suzy, kept our coffee cup and iced-tea glass filled while we waited.  I dunno what kind of coffee they used, but it was darned good, and the tea seemed to have been brewed rather than poured out of a jug from Sysco.  Since tenderloins are an Indiana tradition, everyone has their own idea about which is the best.  This one was big,  pounded thin and very well browned, which is just the way I like it, and the omelet was chocked full of onions, peppers, and tomatoes, very tasty.  Our total bill was like $23, not too bad for a $$ guy like meself.  The jury's still out on whether this current iteration makes it, but it is still nice to see the Peppy Grill full of semi-satisfied people again, even if they're not gypsies, tramps and thieves!        

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!