Piper's: Casual Elegance

Piper's, at 2130 W. Southport Road, is a casual-atmosphere fine dining restaurant.  It kind of puts me in mind of Eddie Merlot's but is a little less swanky (how's that for eloquent, articulate description, eh? eh?) My wife has a passing acquaintance with the owner, who has many years' catering experience although the restaurant itself is only about 15(?) years old.  I ordered one of the chef's specials, the Seared Duck.  I have a hard time finding duck at any of our regular haunts, so this was a real treat for me.  I reeeeally love roast duck, and I should have realized the implication behind the title "Seared" and maybe made a special request of our waiter to do more than sear it, but I didn't do either of those things.  My duck was tender and tasty, but it was a little underdone for my taste, but again, that was my fault and not the restaurant's.   Our meal was very good, and at a little over $70 for the two of us (including three glasses of wine), it was definitely a good deal for the price.  If I had more money than I knew what to do with, I would certainly eat here all the time.  www.piperscatering.com/restaurant   

Mallow Run Winery: A Victim of Its Own Success

Mallow Run Winery, 6964 W. Whiteland Road, Bargersville, is one of the nicest wineries you could visit in Central Indiana.  The gravel drive from the road back to the winery is picturesquely lined with grape arbors, and the winery itself is an old stone-and-wood barn in the side of a hill overlooking Mallow Run creek. There are tables inside and a deck outside with tables, as well as an outdoor patio down below the barn  with tables that is covered with a tent and heated during the winter. They have a limited menu of sandwiches and cheese trays which is relatively reasonably-priced for a winery.  There is usually live musical entertainment on the weekends, too, and during those events, patrons are encouraged to picnic on the lawn between the barn and the creek.  The only problem I have with the place is that it has become so danged popular on the weekends that it is often difficult to get a place at the counter for a tasting or a table at which to sit to eat and drink, so the lawn is sometimes your only option.  The savvy regulars thus usually bring camp chairs and a beach umbrella to create their own shade as the lawn has only a few trees. Still, once you finally get situated it is usually a great little experience. 

The wine, yes, let's talk about the wine!  Most local wineries here seem to favor sweet wines, although they all offer at least one dry red.  Mallow Run, however, has a number of dry red varieties, and I found their Chambourcin quite complex and tasty, and their Merlot ain't bad either.  You can buy wine by the glass, but there's something very satisfying about buying a bottle and spending the afternoon drinking it there at one of the tables.  Sante!     www.mallowrun.com   

Big Woods Brewing Company - Welcome Addition to Downtown Nashville, IN.

Big Woods Brewing Company, 40 Molly Lane in Nashville, IN is a little bit hard to find even with a GPS.  It's on a back street, and my GPS kept telling me we were THERE, but we WEREN'T, dammit!  The easiest way to find it is if you're heading south on SR 135 (I forget what it's in-town name is), turn west on Main Street and look for a 3'x3' old fashioned finger-pointing sign on the side of a building at the entrance to an alley on your right that says "Brewery".  We had come up from Louisville on our way home to Indy on Sunday of Labor Day weekend and it was about early dinnertime, like 5:00, so the tiny place was PACKED.  They have a cool little outdoor patio by the alley, er, street where you can sit and order beer while you wait for a table.  I had their Busted Knuckle Ale, which was a bit expensive ($6 pint) but delicious, kind of like a light porter or maybe a black-and-tan, and she had a Six-Foot Blonde, rather like a Sun King cream ale, only a bit heavier.  We were seated before we needed a second beer, which was fast considering how busy they were.  There is a tiny dining room, or you can eat on the tiny front porch, maybe 25 tables in all between them. The food was artisan-like, which is to say a little pricey, but it's a resort town, y'know?  I had a pulled pork sandwich, which was decent but not outstanding-- it came with an artisan-made horseradish sauce that tasted every bit like Arby's Horsey Sauce to me.  The Little Woman had a burger that was very good but nothing unique for the price.  I can't say I WOULDN'T eat here again, but I'd rather come back here for the great beer and go somewhere else to eat just for value purposes.  I had a wild-game sandwich at one of the other downtown Nashville places awhile back, and it was incredibly delicious and fairly cheap, too.  I just wish I could remember where I got it-- except I'm not allowed to eat that again because it produced a noxious gas by-product that necessitated the evacuation of the elevator of our hotel for several hours.  Anyway, Big Woods Beer is well worth the price, the food not so much.  

Salt Creek Winery: A Small, Beautiful Experience

Salt Creek Winery is at 7630 W. Co. Rd. 925N near Freetown, Indiana in (I think) Jackson County.  The Little Woman and I were coming back to Indy from Louisville via a detour to SR 135 (due to her aversion to Interstate Highways and my driving on them) so that we could visit Mallow Run Winery near Bargersville on the way back, but as I needed to make a pit stop to see a man about a horse and maybe drop off the kids at the pool, when we saw the sign on 135 that said "< Salt Creek Winery 2"  we decided to detour off the detour, and am I ever glad we did (and not just because of that pit stop thing)!  

SR 135 is very, very pretty in itself, but the little county road back to the winery is right out of a Thomas Kinkade/Currier & Ives/Ansel Adams picture, and the gravel drive off the road takes you right into the front yard of the owners' beautiful home where the little winery sits.  I dunno if General Steel or some other design company mass produces that type of building, but the exterior and interior layout of SCW is an almost exact duplicate of Buck Creek Winery in Acton (which I like very much).  Whereas BCW overlooks I-74, the back porch of Salt Creek Winery overlooks wooded hills and a beautiful green valley that stretches away for several miles.  We had a free tasting then each bought a glass of wine, and we drank them while relaxing in comfortable patio chairs on that back porch while enjoying the view and listening to the outdoor sounds of late summer/early fall accompanied by the giggles of two little children playing in the field that is the foreground for the long scenic view.  The field is about an acre or so, and has a deck/stage at its edge that I suspect hosts small musical acts, on occasion. 

Oh, yeah, the wine:  I'm not really a connoisseur but their wines are very good, although not as bold in flavor as some others, more of a subdued, subtle taste, very smooth.  The Merlot was very dry and thin, not nearly as strong as to what I'm accustomed, but the Cabernet Sauvignon was very tasty and the Sunrise Red was as good as any table wine I've ever tasted.  My favorite by far, though, was the Chambourcin, which was very complex, several different flavors melding together perfectly. We're dry not sweet wine drinkers, but She sampled their Blackberry wine and although She deemed it too sweet for her, I thought it was, again, smoother and less bold than most other places' fruit wines.

It was an idyllic, relaxing experience.  (Insert contented sigh here).  We tarried as long as we could, but eventually resigned ourselves to going back out onto the road home.  After this stop and another at Big Woods Brewing Co. in Nashville (look for a future post) we were, alas, too late to make it to Mallow Run, so that would have to wait for another day.  :-)   www.saltcreekwinery.com 

The Rainbow Coffee Shop: Good Eats, Cheap. The Service Not So Much....

After attending an annual party at a friend's house in the boonies of Hancock County, our host generously allowed everyone to stay the night rather than try to negotiate the myriad country roads and turns required to safely get back home to Indy.  There was one legendary occasion several years ago where one regular attendee tried to drive home after one too many and wound up getting arrested in New Castle, of all places! This year the festivities ended relatively early and we got to bed at what even my Great-Grandma would say was a decent hour, for a Saturday anyway, thus we were awakened by the crowing of a rooster at 5:30 a.m., were hungry and dehydrated, and rather than wait for everyone else to rouse from their respective stupors, we drove to the bodacious burg of Morristown and, seeing that the Copper Kettle wasn't open yet, we spied the Bluebird Coffee Shop, Restaurant, and Dinner Theatre at 158 E. Main Street.

There was a huge dining room with a buffet table for the restaurant, but only the coffee shop on one side of the place was open at that early hour on Sunday, and there were already ten or twelve locals in there chewing the fat, er, talking, that is, while they also were actually chewing the fat....  There was only one waitress, so I guess she can be forgiven for being a little slow to get us a menu.  I had the Three-Egg Cheese Omelet with sausage, onions, green pepper and tomatoes added, along with a side order of fried potatoes and coffee, and She had a Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Sandwich with hash browns and iced tea.  It was all decent but not outstanding:  Being of Southern extraction, I always expect a spicy breakfast sausage, but this stuff was kinda pale-looking and bland, but it tasted okay otherwise.  My fried potatoes were underdone, perhaps owing to the cook having to get a bunch of orders out as quickly as possible, but the hash browns  were DEEELICIOUS, browned and seasoned quite nicely, and the coffee and tea were good, too.

The really delightful thing about this breakfast was the price-- $13.65!  The base price for the omelet was $3.50 plus 25 cents each for the sausage, onions, green peppers, and tomatoes.  Her Sausage & Egg Sandwich was $2.50 and the has browns and fried potatoes were $1.50 each.  WHAT A DEAL!!!  When we were ready to pay, however, the waitress vanished for an extended period, so I wound up just leaving $15 cash (a 10% tip, sorry Mabel!) so we could amscray.  I've heard they have a breakfast buffet from 6-11 a.m. during the week that is quite good, and the Fried Chicken Dinner is supposed to be good, too.  Maybe we'll check that out after NEXT YEAR'S party...

UPDATE, 12/16/2013:  There was a big fire there yesterday that started in the Long Branch Saloon next door.  I don't know the extent of the damage, but I bet the Bluebird will re-open at some point....

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!