What??? Biscuits & Gravy on Saturday at Wheatley's Friday Fish Fry

Am I the only person in Indy who didn't know about this?  Not only did Wheatley's Friday Fish Fry, on the corner of Southeastern Avenue and Northeastern Avenue in the heart of Wanamaker, start up for this year last Friday March 2nd for both lunch (11:00 to 2:00) and dinner (4:00 to 8:00) every Friday through November, but they are now also open Saturday mornings for biscuits & gravy, eggs and/or hash browns. Wheatley's is reason enough in itself to visit Wanamaker.  I've run into many a fellow downtown office worker who has also made the trip there just for lunch. You can't beat the great no-frills fried fish, french fries, cole slaw, and baked beans, and in Spring when the weather is nice it's quite a treat to sit at one of the outdoor tables and breathe in the fresh grass and small-town ambiance while you munch on your humongous fish samich.  On this chilly March Saturday, however, we drank coffee and ate our biscuits in one of the two dining rooms, the one with picnic-type tables with padded benches and plexiglass on the tops covering historic photos of various Wanamaker sights.  Being from the South, I can barely tolerate most restaurants' sausage gravy, which is usually differentiated from the wheat paste with which we used to make papier mache birds in elementary school only by the use of milk and occasional odd bits of sausage (although Bob Evans' is a notable exception).  Wheatley's, however,  has it right, with gravy that has the flour browned just so and just the right amount of seasoning, crumbled sausage, and sausage grease.... Hey! It's SAUSAGE GRAVY, dangit!  You wanna eat healthy, go to the HOSPITAL!

UPDATE: 07/17/2012--  The Fish Fry is now open Saturday, 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, and they serve the biscuits and gravy from 8:00 right up until that time.  We got there at about 10:30, and maybe because it was so late, they didn't have any eggs or bacon like the last time we were there, just biscuits & gravy and hash browns, which were just as good, though.  I've been told that the place has new owners, but can't confirm that.  Let's hope they carry on the tradition without too many changes....

UPDATE: 08/04/2012-- The sign in the window says they will now be open on Sundays for Fried Chicken! Woohoo!  We went a week later on Sunday and had the fried chicken-- a two-piece dark with two sides is $5.99 and a two-piece white is $6.99, and they also sell it by the piece.  The sides included green beans, macaroni & cheese, and mashed potatoes.  There may have been another side, but I don't remember 'cause I'm old, y'know (it was corn-- see next update below).  We both had the two-piece white with mashed potatoes and green beans:  The coating on the chicken could have used some more seasoning for my Southern tastes, but it was still decent and the chicken was perfectly cooked, really tender and juicy on the inside.  The mashed potatoes were made just right, and the Little Woman raved about the chicken gravy on the taters-- very tasty.  The green beans were just okay to me, because where I come from they have to have some ham or some bacon grease in 'em to taste good and these had neither of those, sorry.  All in all, though, it was a great Sunday meal.

UPDATE, 05/18/2014:  It's as if they read the update above:  the green beans were a little salty but tasted excellent, as did the cut corn, and the coating on the chicken was also more seasoned and quite flavorful, maybe the best restaurant fried chicken I've had in a long time.  The Little Woman again raved about the chicken gravy on those really good mashed potatoes.  We also ordered a breaded tenderloin sandwich that was DA BOMB (if people still say that)-- it was sort of a hybrid, not so pounded out as to be wheelcover-size, and thick but not so thick as to be hard to bite off a piece.  It was tender, juicy on the inside, and seasoned to a turn, as my grandma used to say.  I'm tellin' ya, the folks at Wheatley's really knows how to fry some stuff!  YUM-O!

   

Wanamaker Revisited: Gusto! and Brewskies

We started out at Brewskies, which is on Southeastern Avenue in Wanamaker (ain't everything?).  It was a Friday evening and there was a big, big, crowd packed into a bar area not much bigger than Tammy Faye Baker's dog house, and just about everyone there was smoking, including the bartender and the waitress.  They have those activated charcoal ceiling fan add-ons (which you've probably seen if you've been in many bars-- they look kind of like big plastic wheels spinning overhead) to combat the smoke, but I'm sorry to tell you and Eddie the Wheel Salesman that those things don't work worth a darn, as far as I'm concerned.  We had to leave after one beer just to be able to breathe.  The crowd was friendly, though, with several folks recognizing us as newcomers and welcoming us to the place, which like several other Wanamaker establishments (like the Ordinary and Wheatley's fish fry) is something of an icon of the neighborhood.  The patrons were mostly of our own age group (40+) and appeared to be good solid citizens.  The beer and drink prices were decent, too.  We didn't get to see the family dining area, but the food smelled good.

After a couple of deep breaths of cold, clear winter night air and a short drive with the windows down, we passed up The Gold Mine (I'm sorry, we were in there about 6 months back and the place was dirty and kind of smelled, and the 2 cars parked outside on this Friday night told me things probably haven't improved), and arrived at Gusto! (the exclamation point is part of the name) which is on Southeastern in the same little 50's mall as the One More Lounge (see past posts).  Gusto!'s crowd was smaller, younger, and kind of smart-looking.  The owner (Tim? sorry if I don't get his name right) said all of their food ingredients are fresh and never frozen, and the food looked and smelled delicious, though we didn't eat because we'd just come from the Hibachi Grill.  The drink prices were good, and Tim poured a tasty new concoction of his own making for the 6 or 8 people at the bar to sample (for free!) that was called an Orgy, or Orgasm, something like that-- a combination of Red Bull and some French liqueur with a name similar to the drink, which I also can't remember.  I peeked in on the family dining room and it looked very homey and comfortable.  We had a great time, and definitely plan to come back for the food.  Ah, you Wanamakerites, or Wanamakerers, or whatever you are, you're a lucky people to have such great institutions devoted to beer, fish, pizza, and meat!

UPDATE, 06/30/2013:  The Marion County non-smoking ordinance has probably cleared the air inside Brewskies by now, but I saw where they were cited for having illegal gambling machines.  Heck, that'll be a selling point for some folks!