IT'S ALIVE! Nick's Chili Parlor

When I first arrived in Indianapolis 25 years ago, there were (I think) three Nick's Chili Parlors: one 'way up North somewhere, the original at 2621 Lafayette Road, and the one I knew in the strip mall on the Northwest corner of Stop 11 Road and Madison Avenue.  I ate there once, really liked the chili and vowed to return, but by the time I did, the danged place had closed.  In its infinite wisdom, however, the strip mall management left the sign for the place up on their marquee out by the street for at least a year or longer, taunting me.  "Don't you wish you could eat here again?" it would sneer. I think the Northside location closed, too, and I actually had no idea at the time where the original location was, so I just assumed they had all closed.

Fast forward to the present:  I had cause to drive up Lafayette Road for work the other day, and lo and behold, what do I see but a big Nick's Chili Parlor sign out in front of the original location!  Welllll, you just know I had to have me some, even though I'd just finished lunch.  I locked up the brakes, returned the obscene gesture of the trucker who'd been behind me, and pulled onto the lot.  Contrary to the photos you'll see on Google, the place is quite nice and has a warm, modern feel.  It was about 2:00 in the afternoon, so the lunch rush was over, and I was able to step right up to the counter.  It was then that my digesting lunch audibly reminded me of its presence... so I decided to forego the delicious-looking hot dogs on the steam table and ordered a half-gallon of chili to go for something like $16.99.  The two ladies behind the counter acknowledged my order and then resumed their conversation, with one complaining about how her family members take advantage of her, and the other commiserating.  They acted like I wasn't there, but they worked as they talked and soon had my order ready, so I didn't mind.  

To cut to the chase, Nick's chili may not be the best restaurant chili I've ever had, but it's darned close: The Five Way had a really nice balance of meat, beans, and spaghetti, with two big portions of shredded cheese and diced onions on the side.  The liquid part of the chili was not a broth, it was opague, thick, and delicious.  It was the epitome of Midwestern-style chili, flavorful but not very spicy, so I had to add some Tabasco sauce, but that was just for to satisfy my Southern tastes.  The Little Woman and I ate half of it that night, and the rest will surely disappear before the week is out. It's worth the trip up to the 'hood, y'all!  

Thai Recipe Restaurant - Authentic? WHO CARES, IT'S DELICIOUS!

Thai Recipe, 404 E. Thompson Road, is (say it with me) in a strip mall and the storefront is so small you might miss it if you're not looking for it.  The dining room is bigger than it looks from outside, thank Heaven, and it is very well-appointed with simple but elegant furniture and decoration.  Simple but elegant describes the food, as well:  For lunch I ordered Pad Thai (stir-fried rice noodles with scallions, bean sprouts, little bits of egg, and ground peanuts in peanut sauce) with pork, which was FANDAMTASTIC, and The Little Woman had Original Fried Rice with shrimp, which was soooo tasty I almost wish I'd ordered it instead.  Both dishes came with elegantly presented Tom Yum soup, a spicy semi-clear broth with two little cubes of tofu and a leaf of cilantro floating in it, and a vegetable spring roll, both of which were incredibly flavorful. All that for $7.78 each!  

They give you a choice of 4 spice levels:  Mild, Medium, Hot, and Thai Hot.  Hey, I love spicy food, so I ordered mine Hot, and it was right at that fine line between "Wow That's Tasty But Almost Too Hot" and "Where's The Damn' Milk Already!".  I imagine if you order the Thai Hot they also give you the business card of a good plastic surgeon to repair your melted face....  Mau!  (Sorry, I don't know any Thai words, so I stole that terrible Vietnamese line from The Deer Hunter.)

Smokehouse on Shelby: Great 'Cue, Sides are Hit 'n Miss.

(D'oh!  I wrote this in February, forgot to publish it.)
Smokehouse on Shelby is in the Fountain Square Theatre Building in the heart of, you guessed it, Fountain Square.  It's a really neat space right on the northwest corner of the building (I think when the building opened in the 1920's it was a big drugstore) that is a little bit dark, but with huge windows through which you can watch the passing hipsters, BluIndy shared electric cars, and people on ungainly PACER rental bicycles.  The huge dining area has like 20-foot ceilings, giant old B-movie ad posters on the walls, and 60's-era booths and tables.

Some colleagues went there to celebrate one guy's birthday, and since he's even older'n me and soon to be retired and/or dead, I figured I'd better attend.  I ordered their signature Barbecued Brisket sandwich, which comes with a pickle and two sides, and I ordered a BLT to go for The Little Woman.  They have quite an array of side items, so I had mustard potato salad and coleslaw, and she got mac 'n cheese and sweet potato fries.

I'll cut to the chase:  the Brisket Sandwich was EXCELLENT, cooked just right and very smokey and on a delicious soft roll, while the BLT was very good, with really tasty Applewood bacon and fresh lettuce and tomato.  The accompanying sweet potato fries, too, were GREAT!   The coleslaw and mac 'n cheese , however, were lackluster, being rather bland and tasteless.  I'm not a big fan of Miracle Whip, but Good Lord, man, you simply MUST use it in coleslaw, 'cause if you don't, the result is basically just milky cabbage.  They at least TRIED to create flavor with two kinds of cheese food in the mac 'n cheese, but whatever variety of Kraft singles they melted to make the sauce was 'way too mild.  So, IMHO, I will go back there again, but will stick with the MEAT and SWEET POTATOES.

The Tailgate: I'm in Burger Heaven!

The Tailgate, 8028 S. Emerson Avenue #V is (sigh) in a strip mall, in part of the old space where Gallagher's I was located.  It's a neat, clean little place (capacity 99, according to the fire marshal sign) with a nice bunch of TV's, including one humongous HD flat screen on one wall.  Other than that, it's your run of the mill kind of bar, except that they have a charcoal grill in the kitchen... I said, they have a charcoal grill IN THE DANGED KITCHEN!  It's vented to the outside so no one gets asphyxiated, but the grilling aromas nevertheless permeate the place, making you hungry the moment you walk in, just like the Weber Grill Restaurant downtown, but at half the price. We had just eaten, the last time I went in there, but I vowed to retu rn for something from that wondrous innovation in olfactory excitement as soon as possible.... 

Low and behold, some of The Little Woman's high school buds are regulars there, so we arranged to meat them (d'oh! I meant to say meet them, but the memory of the grill is overwhelming my typing subconscious) to watch the Colts' skin of their teeth win over Jacksonville.  I had the Bacon and Bleu Burger, which is one of their "stuffed" burgers.  It had bacon crumbles and cheese INSIDE the patty, with additional bleu cheese and bacon on top, which was AWESOME!  Really, though, the star of the show was the burger itself: grilled to perfection, with exactly the right amount of char (which I have trouble achieving at home, dangit).  The next time, and there WILL be a next time, I assure you, I will eschew the "stuffed" stuff and opt for a simple, ordinary, exquisite Tailgater, so I can enjoy all that charcoal goodness without distraction.

Sorry to run a bit long, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the beer-battered onion rings ($1.99, with the burger) with which I thought I would be disappointed, since they were big and fat, which usually means a concrete-hard coating that is not to my taste, but hallelujah!   The coating was light, crisp, and nicely seasoned, making the mild sweetness of the onion inside a nice contrast.  TLW had a Chicken Wrap (which she said was good but how could you compare it to that magnificent BURGER?!) which came with homemade coleslaw.  Coleslaw, like potato salad and onion rings, is one of those personal preference kind of tastes.  The Tailgate's slaw was fresh and very unusual in that it was made with mayonnaise instead of Miracle Whip, making it more savory than sweet, and I actually liked that very much.  I can't say enough good things about this place-- The owners, Denny and Paula, are the nicest folks:  Denny makes homemade ice cream, I guess as a kind of hobby, and he was giving out free samples throughout the game, and it was deeeeelicious!  Ah, Sweet Mr. Reese of Life, I've found my Man-Cave away from home....

Basey's: A Nice Place, NOT a Nice Price.

We visited Basey's , 415 S. West Street, on a Sunday (but not a Colts game day), because one of our favorite bartender/waitresses, Cathy, works there.  It's a deceptively small-on-the-outside but actually rather roomy place that is literally in the shadow of Lucas Oil Stadium, and it has been there since long before LOS was built, although it appears to have been recently renovated:  It has a very clean and neat interior decor, more like a family restaurant than a bar (and they do have a family room), and there is a very festive covered open-air bar in the back that has roll-down transparent plastic curtains and overhead space heaters for cold days, although on this day in the early fall it was completely open and quite pleasant.  We ordered some hot wings and an order of fried pickle chips, both of which were decent and not outrageously priced, although the "Boom Boom" sauce for the chips was just okay, seemingly a combination of Thousand Island dressing and cocktail sauce.  Arrrgh, Matey! Here be the end the of "good" part of the review....

Apparently Basey's has NO well drinks or well liquor:  If you order, say, a Gin & Tonic, they give you something like freakin' Tanqueray and charge you accordingly, like $7 or $8 a round.  Cathy even apologized when she brought the bill, knowing we'd better be sitting down when we read it: With our two appetizers and our usual 3 drinks each (Honest, Officer, I've been PBT'd before and never tested over the limit, I swear!), plus a non-alcoholic 8 oz. ginger beer that I later learned was $4.50 (!), our total was right at 80 bucks, with a decent tip for Cathy's excellent service bringing it up to almost $100.  I guess you have to expect to pay more to drink Downtown, but for us that won't be happenin' until the next time we win the Lottery.  Drink up, but very SLOWLY! www.baseysdowntown.com  

El Jalapeno: Good Mexican, and a Little Bit Different

El Jalapeno, 4902 S. East Street, is (yay!) free-standing restaurant in the building that formerly housed Dimitri's and before that Denny's.  It still retains the nice interior woodwork the Dimitri's folks installed, but they have added bench booths with colorful carved woodwork that depicts Mexican village scenery.  They have uncovered all the windows, too, which gives the place a light and airy feel, at least during the day.

The first and best thing we experienced when eating lunch there was the chips and salsa, which wree excellent.  The salsa had just the right amount of heat, and the amount of cilantro and onion in the puree made it quite tasty.  We had some hot salsa also, but though tasty, it was just the standard stuff. I actually found some dishes on the menu that weren't standard Mexican fare, though.  For lunch, I had El Burrito Roqueta, pork tenderloin and melted cheese rolled into a soft tortilla and topped with El Jalapeno (red) sauce and pico de gallo.  It was very good: the meat was browned nicely and the pico de gallo was very fresh.  I think it would have been better as a Chimichanga, but I'm not sure that was on the menu.  Service was fast and polite, and the lunch prices were really reasonable.  !Andale!

The Thompson House: Great Drinks, and Definitely NOT Your Ordinary Pub Grub

The Thompson House Bar & Grill, 711 E. Thompson Road, is around the corner in the same old strip mall as my home away from Home, the Green Door Lounge, but don't hold that against it-- the place is new, clean, and attractively furnished, although the rather ornate bar with a brass rail supported by brass elephant-head brackets seems a little fancy in contrast to the otherwise simple decor.  It's also next door to El Compadre Taqueria, the home of the best tacos I've had in Indy (see review), so a range of evening entertainment and dining options can be had right there in that one little commercial center.  Some of TTH's owners used to own Lizard's, a gun & knife club at Thompson & Madison that closed a couple of years ago, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have taken such care with this place.

TTH is first and foremost a bar, with ten or more electronic dart boards and a couple of arcade games around the walls, as well as eight TV's scattered about the room, and a stage where live entertainment plays three (?) days a week.  The sound system for the jukebox is GREAT, which has seduced me into putting a lot of moola into playing the songs I want to hear.  Something about that speaker set-up makes it possible to hear the music AND engage in conversation with the people at your table without either drowning the other out.  Since they opened about 6 months ago, the crowd has mainly been composed of middle-class working people with a few well-to-doers, too.  There are usually at least 4 or 5 Harleys parked outside with their weekend warrior owners stopping in for only 1 or 2 before continuing their ride.  The drinks are decent and not overpriced, and they have a number of meaningful specials through the week.

All this down-to-earth ambiance makes TTH a very comfortable place to relax, which is reason enough to go there, but, OHMIGOSH, you have to try the FOOD!  It is 3 cuts above your usual pub grub:  I've been trying something different off the menu every time I visit, and have yet to be disappointed.  The best thing I've found so far is the Reuben sandwich:  fresh rye bread, homemade corned beef, and sauerbraten grilled in teriyaki sauce make it ever so tasty, every bit the equal of Gandolfo's Deli (see review) and at little more than half the price. I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Robert's Ribs available on Fridays.... LET'S EAT, Y'ALL!