Carol's Cornerstone Cafe- Small Town, Big Taste.

Early on a Saturday afternoon, the Little Woman and I were on the way to attend a party at a friend's house in the boonies near Greenfield, IN, and decided to eat a small meal before imbibing.  We happened upon Carol's Cornerstone Cafe, 301 E. Main St. in Greenfield and decided it would be a good little adventure to begin the weekend's festivities.  We went to one entrance and saw a sign that directed us to the door on the front (Main Street) side of the building.  We went in that door and stumbled into a kind of 1950's diner museum in progress.  There was a '56 Ford station wagon and another old car (I think it might've been a '53 Dodge but don't remember for sure) as well as old furniture, a gas station sign, and assorted knickknacks strewn around haphazardly, but it was all roped off, so we proceeded down the hallway and found the actual restaurant, which has that cozy country charm you'll find in numerous small-town homestyle eateries.  We had to sit in the small dining room near the front door (which is on the SIDE of the building) because all the main dining room tables were reserved for a big gospel sing-in they were having later that day.

We waited a good little while, until one of the locals said we should sound the little hotel bell on our table, but just as I was about to smack it the waitress appeared.  I ordered Liver & Onions with fried potatoes, and She had the Deep-Fried Cod with french fries and cole slaw.  The meal came out surprisingly fast.... Quite a few of the menu items were deep-fried, thus I believe they must have that process down to a science, because the four pieces of cod were freakin' EXCELLENT!  They had a light, buttery breading that complemented the flavor of the fish so splendidly that they were better than most of the cod pieces (not to be confused with codpieces) I've had in any number of actual seafood restaurants.  She very generously gave me one piece but slapped my hand away when I tried to steal another one, and She's usually not that protective of fish in any form, so that tells ya how good it was.  The fries were nothing special but were fried just right, and the creamy fine-chopped cole slaw approached the quality of KFC's, the standard by which I judge all slaws. 

My Liver & Onions were good but not outstanding-- the liver could have been browned more, for my taste, and it could've used more onion.  My fried potatoes were very good, though-- I like 'em browned as much as possible without being burned, and they had accomplished that quite well.  The crowning glory was that the whole meal cost us like $17.  Dang! Eat up, y'all!

Joe's Shelby Street Diner: The Best Parts of the Diner Tradition Live On.

Joe's Shelby Street Diner, at the corner of Shelby Street and Standish Avenue, is a true diner of the old-fashioned sort-- long counter with like 15 stools and two or three small booths in the main room, 5 or 6 booths in a side dining room that was added some years ago.The decor is sort of a mock 50's deal, with a neon Coca Cola clock, posters with Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, etc. but it's not so much that it's overwhelming, and although dishes on the menu have 50's names like the Big Bopper Omelet or something like that, you don't have to use the cutesy monikers when ordering.  Ownership of the place changed a few years ago, and though I liked the previous guy, the current proprietors have actually improved the food and service.  It's your basic diner food, prepared on the griddle out in front of everyone, and it has always been perfectly prepared-- I've never had a bad meal there, and the portions are beyond decent. Their one sort of unusual item is the Tower of Onion Rings, a little wooden stand that looks like a mini-coat tree, with several big, fat, heavily-battered onion rings hanging on each rung. We seem to get the same waitress every time we go, and she is as nice as can be, always accommodating if you want something different done with yer grub. The price is low enough to warm this cheapskate's heart, too.  LET'S RUMBLE!

Between the Bun: Good, But I'd Hoped for Better.

Between the Bun, on Madison Avenue just north of Main Street in Greenwood, has moved into what was Don Miguel's Mexican Restaurant for many years, then after Mike retired a number of restaurants opened up and closed in quick succession (remember the black hole theory of ill-fated locations). With a light, airy decor that includes old advertising signs and antique board-game boxes,  BTB seems to have the best chance of surviving so far, with big BIG burgers, big BIG hot dogs, and decent barbecue, although it's not cheap:  Dad's Classic Cheeseburger had a patty that was over an inch thick, and it came with a choice of steak fries, macaroni & cheese, or another side I can't remember at this here moment-- it was $7.59.  We had the burger with fries and a Pulled Pork Sandwich with fries and Spitfire barbecue sauce, which was their hottest of 3 sauces, quite spicy.  The burger was cooked perfectly, but I'd hoped for some kind of unique flavor or seasoning, to no avail.  It was just a big burger.  The pulled pork and sauce were decent, but again, nothing unique or outstanding for the $8.99 we paid.  The steak fries, however, were dusted with some sort of seasoning and were quite tasty.  En toto is was a good, not great, meal. I think Five Guys has 'em beat except for the grease factor-- BTB was a much leaner, cleaner sammich, I think. They're on the web at www.btbindy.com .

Don Gusto PJ: Look closely or you might miss it!

Don Gusto PJ is a tiny Mexican sandwich shop and bakery on the northeast corner of the intersection of Meridian Street and Hanna Avenue. You can't see the name until you get close to the windows, but there is a none-too-big sign on the front of the roof that says "TORTAS" and "PASTELERIA". I'd like to call it a boutique Mexican restaurant, but that might imply the place is fancy and expensive, which it is not, although the chef and the proprietor both wear chef tunics like you see on Iron Chef.  The menu offers about 10 different sandwiches but also has other traditional Mexican entrees like quesadillas, sopes, and burritos. They only have 6 tables, so much of their business is to-go orders, but when I went in to order to-go the first time,  the inside of the place was just so neat and tidy that I had to come back and have a sit-down meal.  The first time, I ordered a steak quesadilla, and it was unlike any I'd had before. Instead of being wrapped in a papery flour tortilla, it was encased in a fried pastry-like corn tortilla shell like a big empanada only it was flaky and tender, and it came with sour cream and lettuce spread across the top.  It was big enough that The Little Woman and I split it for lunch, and it was sooo tasty it almost didn't need the green tomatilla salsa and red pepper sauce that came on the side.  The tomatilla stuff lit me up a little bit, it was so spicy, but it was also so GOOD I wanted to take a gallon or so home.  The steak quesadilla and a bottle of Lipton iced tea came to $4.35, WHAT? WHAT???  The pennies in my pocket almost stopped screaming because I'd let up so much on pinching them!

On Saturday we both went there and ate-in: she had two tacos and a side of refried beans, and I had a steak burrito which wasn't as big as La Bamba's, but it was pretty darned big.  It was reeeeally tasty, I think because there was a bunch of sour cream mixed in with a bunch of cheese along with the beans and tomatoes and rice and lettuce and cilantro.  Her tacos had an even lighter, fluffier version of corn tortilla than our quesadilla had. TLW said she thought maybe they fried it in oil in a shallow pan and then folded it into a taco shell while still hot. It was light and crispy, and the steak bits were well seasoned and accompanied by fresh onion and cilantro.  She had a can of Diet Coke and I had ice water for which the waiter/proprietor provided fresh lime wedges.  Altogether it was $11.71!  I was in shock-- my pennies fell silent and breathed a sigh of relief. !Increible!

You know my theory: if an ethnic restaurant has a lot of customers of that same ethnicity, it's likely to be good, right? (A certain Asian place proving to be the exception as I reported some time ago, but that was probably only because the dishes it served were foreign to my dumb-American palate.)  Well, Don Gusto had a constant parade of Latino patrons while we were there, which ranged from scruffy working men to somewhat well-to-do-looking families, and they all looked satisfied, if that tells you anything.  I thought my quest for the non-cookie cutter Mexican restaurant was at an end with Taco Meats Potato, but alas, that went sour. I must say that Don Gusto is unique, or at least different from any other I've experienced.  !Vamanos a comer!

Ella's in Calabash, NC: A Great Seafood Place in a Sea of Seafood Restaurants

We were staying in Ocean Isle Beach, NC, which is part of a cool chain of little island communities stretching from North Myrtle Beach, SC to Wilmington, NC and beyond.  They're great for a geezer like meself because there is very little of the tiki-taki jumble of commercial development and condos that the bigger beach cities seem to be full of.  Our island had a beach store, three restaurants, a bar, and an ABC (liquor) store, and that was big compared to the island part of nearby Sunset Beach, which has only a tiny beach store and an ice cream shack!  

Calabash, NC is somewhat different:  It is a tiny town on an inlet, not the ocean, and it has a fleet of fishing boats and tens of seafood restaurants even though the town's population is only a little over 1300.  Ever since I was a first-grader in Myrtle Beach with my parents, I've heard and seen advertisements for "Calabash-style" seafood, but danged if anyone I asked really knew what that meant.  After a little research I'm proud to report that it is basically just large portions of lightly-battered, lightly fried seafood, and in Calabash itself it means really FRESH seafood right off the nearby boats, and that is hard to duplicate anywhere else that's not right next to a fishing port.  

We stopped in Calabash's American Legion post, and the local vets (almost all of whom were folks originally from other places who decided to settle there) recommended Ella's Seafood, right on the east-west main drag street that runs right down to the inlet.  We had a raw oyster appetizer plate that I thought was THE BOMB, that is until I got my combination platter which included mounds of shrimp and some roasted oysters that just BLEW me AWAY!  All the seafood was unbelievably delicious.  Ella's is neat, nautical, and nothing fancy, but I can't see how they could be beat for taste, portion size, and price (which is saying something if you know what a cheapskate the Barfly is!)  Some of the reviews I'd read complained that the cut corn tasted like it came from a can.  Geeze!  That's like saying the Mona Lisa is a terrible painting because it's not in a very pretty frame.  You want CORN, come back with me to Indiana, sourpusses!  Our fried corn will have your lips smacking, but the just-flown-in-last-week seafood in Indy will leave you depressed after you've had Ella's.  Arrrrr!

Lucille's Home Cookin': A Decent Experience, but with a Shocking End.

Lucille's Home Cookin',  150 W. Howard Street in Crothersville, IN is a little more than 60 miles south of Indy's southside on the old US 31.  We were coming back from a weekend in Louisville (see previous post "Louisville: the Hungry Drunk's Paradise) and driving the old road because 1) The Little Woman (who has been in two serious car accidents when she was younger) hates the traffic-congested, semi-truck infested Interstate Highways, 2) she hates the way I drive and figures we have a better chance of surviving a lower-speed crash by taking the old road, and 3) I like the taking the old roads for the scenery-- If you want more speed, take a danged airplane! Anyway, we came to the only stoplight in downtown Crothersville and looking to the west I spied a 3' x 4' neon sign that simply said "EAT".  Intrigued, I steered us into the parking lot of a tidy little commercial storefront with an apartment above. In the window was a chalkboard sign announcing "Lucille's Last Sunday Brunch", and I was sold, though my lovely wife had mixed feelings but knows when the Adventure Eating bug crawls in my ear and bite into my brain, I am no longer under in control.

The brunch buffet had about 10 items:  fried whitefish strips, pork cutlets cooked with apple wedges, and a host of home style side items, along with a number of cakes/cookies for dessert.  All in all it was a good home-cooked style meal in a little storefront location, but when the bill came-- ouch!  It was $15/person, a little steep for such a small buffet, I thought.  Still, we did enjoy the ambiance, and the experience.

Whitt's Inn: Smokers' Paradise and Quintessential Small-town Bar

Whitt's Inn, on US 31 at Tracy Road in Whiteland (or is it New Whiteland?  I can never remember where the one town ends and the other begins) is an unassuming little free-standing place at the edge of a strip-mall parking lot, so there is never a problem parking there even when they have one of those organized-group motorcycle rides in the summer.  The decor is your basic formless carpet/K-Mart Cafe chairs and tables that most bars have, but the place does have a kind of homey feel to it.  The staff is always friendly and the other patrons usually are, too.  On our last visit, however, there was a regular in there whose conversation had more F bombs in it than a freakin' episode of the Sopranos!  And of course he was the loudest sumbitch in there, so we all had to hear it.  Now, I was previously of the opinion that cussing was one of the freedoms that made a bar so relaxing, just like smoking and no-women-allowed used to be, but this guy made ME feel uncomfortable.  He wasn't angry or offensive, really, he just used "F-ing" like we would use any other adjective, only moreso.  The cook even joined in the mood the guy had created when she put an order up in the window and told the bartender to "TELL (F-bomb guy) TO PICK UP HIS F*CKING SH*T!", which got a big laugh, so I imagine his vernacular had been the subject of some discussion in the bar on previous occasions.

Anyway, I had an order of french fries that was pretty good, the beer and drink prices were decent, and they had Amber Bock on draft, which made me happy.  The only real drawback to the whole experience, aside from the aforementioned purveyor of profanity, was that the bar felt kind of gritty, like it hadn't been hit with a rag intentionally in a while, so I may have been taking my life in my hands with those french fries, but I did look in and see that the kitchen appeared to be clean, so maybe that particular bartender just needed to PICK UP HER F*CKING SH*T!  I always seem to have a good time there, so we'll be back.