Teddy's Burger Joint: Burgers and Then Some....

Teddy's Burger Joint, 2222 W. Southport Rd, is on the back corner of a little strip mall, and if it hadn't been for a billboard I saw out on SR 37, I'd never have found out about it.  They've tried to put up little directional signs here and there, but you really have to look for the place, which is in the little mall right behind Piper's.  We stopped in early on a Friday afternoon, and at that time there was only one other customer in the place.  I thought maybe they just opened and hadn't had a chance to get a good start yet, but when we asked how long they'd been in bidness they proudly said since October of 2010!  As we got closer to dinner time, though, the crowd started rolling in....  It's primarily a family place, but they have wine, draft beer(!), bottle beers ranging from imports to craft beers to American standards, and draft root beer, too!  The decor consists of a  polished concrete floor, rustic wood, exposed duct work (think Hooters' without the girls), and a fireplace with a mix of regular tables and wooden picnic tables.  The little woman said to make sure I mention that the draft beer is reeeeally cold, something she prizes (along with blistering hot soup and steak so rare it moos when you cut it... but that's another story or two).  The burger prices seem a bit steep until you consider that they come completely dressed and include fries and sandwich-length pickle slices. I had the Bison Burger, which is offered at market price (ten-something dollars, that day), and My Love had the Philly Burger, which was $8.69 or so.   She had a 23-ounce Sun King Wee-Mac ale (see previous post about beer-tasting at the local breweries) and I had a big Flat-12 Amber Ale.  The burgers were really decent, but lacked the deadly greasy goodness of Five Guys' semi-homemade big sliders, I think in an homage to halfway healthy eating.  The Bison Burger is very, very lean, and you can also get a Vegetarian Burger, as well as healthy whole-wheat buns and such.  The grilled onions and green peppers on the Philly Burger were outstanding!  For the kids there are 3.99 burger plates and  a play room with chalkboard walls and floor as well as a big TV on a kid-friendly channel, and there is a sandbox on the outdoor patio, which also has a number of picnic tables for good-weather dining.  I liked it, overall, although I haven't had a favorite burger there yet, but they have a number of variations, so we'll be back!  Oh, yeah, they have a small stage, too, for live music on weekend nights. Whoa!  What's not to like?

The Quest for a Great Steak Sandwich, and Some BBQ, Too!

Kyler had asked me a while back to let him know if I ever found a good steak sandwich anywhere, and, like the Union Army at Bull Run, what I thought would be a quick and easy quest turned out to be a rather long and nightmarish one.  Seems like when I was younger every little burger bistro and beer joint in town had its own version of the Great Steak Sandwich, but today many either don't offer one or don't provide the appetizing entrees-on-bread that I remember (but back then, everything looked better under the coal-oil light).  So I was pleasantly surprised when Steve the chef at the Old Meridian Pub offered a Wednesday special Prime Rib Sandwich that wasn't normally on the menu.  It was on a kaiser roll, and the slab of well-browned prime rib extended two inches out from the bun all the way around.  It was flat delicious!  Now, I dunno if a Prime Rib Sandwich objectively counts as a Steak Sandwich or not, but I'm counting it.  I swear the OMP folks aren't paying me to say good things about them!  I just love that place, is all.  

After the OMP we stopped in at Robby's Pub at Southport & Bluff, and they had a special on hamburger sliders at 75 cents each(!)  I was stuffed already but couldn't resist, especially after the Little Woman (perhaps envisioning an early life insurance pay-off) encouraged me to have TWO of 'em.  The buns were classic White Castle-sized, but the little burger patties were at least a half-inch thick, seasoned to perfection, and covered with sauteed onions.  My lady almost lost a fingertip trying to snitch a bite of one of 'em before I realized what she was doing.  Ya gotta warn me, dear!  Between the two of us (how could I not share?) they disappeared in seconds.

Finally, we drove the new truck south on State Road 37 to SR 144 and had a couple of brews at Whiskey River BBQ, a rustic little place just behind the Dairy Queen that was so famous for its biscuits & gravy before it closed.  The bar part is pretty small compared to the great big family dining area, but it was full of people that were mostly locals who knew each other. Everyone was very friendly, though, and the beer & drink prices were decent if not quite the deal that OMP has.  I was too stuffed to eat another bite; even a rare truffle morsel would have made me explode like the guy in Monty Python's Meaning of Life, but the guy next to me ordered the (HUZZAH!) Steak Sandwich.  It was smaller than OMP's but looked like a great little piece of meat covered with sauteed onions AND mushrooms.  The guy said it was the best he'd had in a long time, and from the aroma I believed him. We did have what WRB calls Nachos but which one of the patrons more correctly called a tostada (and I din't explode? Hmmmm......).  It was two crunchy tortillas (about taco-size) covered with jack cheese and barbecued pork with a little BBQ sauce mixed in.  The taste was not Mexican but it was reeeeallly good.  We loved our time there, and when we got ready to leave we purchased a pound of pulled-pork BBQ, which was the most finely shredded  I've seen.  It and the sauce (a sweet molasses-type, sort of North Carolina style) were very good but maybe not the best I've ever had, but of course I had not trouble eatin' it!  Oink, y'all.  

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!

   

La Margarita: Slightly Upscale Mexican

La Margarita Restaurant and Tequila Bar just recently opened in the heart of Fountain Square at Virginia Avenue and Woodlawn Avenue (part of the old GC Murphy Building).  It has a trendy, comfortable decor and  quite a selection of tequilas behind the bar, of which I was unable to sample any because it was lunchtime and I was working, dangit! We were immediately presented with tortilla chips and three different salsas:  a pureed spicy tomato sauce similar to other restaurant's salsas, a spicy green tomatillo salsa that I found to really delicious, and a watery kind of pico de gallo that was good but hard to keep on the chips.  The chips themselves were thick, hard, and crunchy, so much so that I got a fragment stuck in my gum, but it did have good flavor, right up until I pried the chip shrapnel out with a drink straw....  I had the lunch special quesadilla & tortilla soup combo and the Little Woman ordered a taco salad.  The quesadilla was a little smaller than I expected and the outside was a toasty brown, also unexpected but quite tasty.  The tortilla soup was a little bland for my taste, compared to say, Don Pablo's (maybe La Margarita's is more true Mexican-- most of the food I had in Mexico had more subtle flavors than the way they're presented in the US).  The taco salad had very fresh greens and was in a pastry bowl that, like my quesadilla, was more browned than we're used to, but it was nevertheless tasty.  At $7.25, lunch was moderately tasty and not a bad deal, but it didn't provide the giant mounds of food you usually get at your run-of-the-mill Mexican restaurants.  If we go back it will likely be just for a tequila tasting....  !Andale!

Don Hall's Castleton Grill: The Decathlete of Restaurants!

Okay, the Castleton Grill is just outside the Castleton Square Mall is not on Indy's Southside, but you should know about it in case you're ever hungry after a day shopping at Mall and don't want to pay the hostage-ransom priced food places that are actually IN the Mall, but don't want to go far from there to eat.  In our case, we go there as part of our special occasion getaways.  On Valentines Day, for instance, we went 'way up north to Eddie Merlot's, then drank in the bar of and stayed the night in the Four Points Hotel. The next day after a night of passionate lovemaking (Hey! It's my blog, I'll fantasize if I want to), we went to Castleton Grill for brunch. I call CG the decathlete of restaurants because "Jack of All Trades" is just SO cliche, and "Master of None" doesn't automatically go with the title.  CG offers a rich and varied menu of comfort food, like a Denny's on steroids, and it makes all of its dishes very well. There is a full bar, too: they have an awesome Bloody Mary, which is unequaled by any other restaurant or bar's Bloody Mary, and on Sundays it's on special presumably because it is a great hangover cure, if indeed such a thing exists.  The drink itself is a large one of the horseradish-imbued variety, with a generous amount of Hair of the Dog and a wonderful combination of the lime, celery salt, pepper, and spices you would expect in a Bloody Mary.  But oh, the accompaniments that come with it!  There are two stalks of asparagus, a stalk of celery, a pickle wedge, a sliver of red bell pepper, and its crowning glory, a single bite of sirloin steak!  It is almost a meal unto itself, and is even worth the 8 bucks they charge for it during the week.  On our most recent visit, the Little Woman had the Flank Steak Sandwich that was not the Great Steak Sandwich that Kyler is trying to find, but was more like a Penn Station sandwich, and just as good.  I had a Patty Melt, which was two 1/4 pound patties ensconced in two pieces of wheat toast and surrounded by bacon and giant gobs of Swiss cheese, accompanied by the best onion rings I've had in a long while.  I've never had the same thing twice there, only because there are so many menu items I have yet to try!  Until our next special occasion, I await the delight that is Don Hall's Castleton Grill!    

Great China Buffet: Not Different, but Really Good.

Great China Buffet,  in the strip mall (sigh) on the northeast corner of Madison & Hanna, is not to be confused with Fun China Buffet, or Great Wall Buffet, or China Buffet.  If there is anything individual about Great China Buffet, it was that is is the neatest, cleanest Chinese buffet I've ever been in, with the nicest proprietor I've ever met-- I wander around buffets like an Alzheimer's patient in Grand Central Station until I finally cover every bar, so I can choose only what I want from their humongous cornucopias of goodness, and he twice asked me very nicely if he could help me find something, and since no cops or ambulances arrived to take me back to the home I can only assume he was really trying to be helpful. Almost all of the dishes offered were the standard Chinese fare (with one exception- they had roasted chicken thighs that had been cooked bone-in and then sliced, bone-in. They were very good if you're not squeamish about exposed bone marrow-- the meat charred a little on the outside and tender inside.), but all the dishes I sampled were well-prepared and tasty.  This place and Tokyo Buffet (see previous post) are now my go-to Asian buffets.

The Acropolis-- Unpretentious Old World Greek

The Acropolis, on Southport Road just west of Madison Avenue, is an unassuming mom & pop place, both inside and out.  The Greek-style columns on the front of the building (sorry, they taught me the difference between Doric and Ionic columns in junior high school but danged if I can remember which is which) are understated but nevertheless a nice touch.  The inside decor is simple cafe style but with nice tablecloths (my old buddy Jim the Scumbag Attorney said you have to tip at least 20% if the restaurant has tablecloths. It was his one gesture toward decency and good manners.) There is nothing understated about the food, though.  Everything I've ever had there is deeelicious, and an excellent value for the price, which is $$ on a $$$$ scale.  Every trip to a Greek restaurant should include Saganaki as an appetizer, a plate of 1/4 inch thick slices of white cheese (Casera, Gus said) into which rum (not ouzo) is poured and then lighted.  Mmmm... flaming cheese with toasted pita bread for dipping! Mmm.... Mmm.... Oh! Anyway, all the food is great there.  If you don't know anything about Greek food you can always just order a gyro: a mixture of roasted lamb meat and beef on pita bread with onions, feta cheese, and tzadziki, a kind of creamy cucumber sauce (I'm sure you can get some sort of American food for that one person in your party with OCD who REFUSES to eat anything they've never eaten before).  There is a full bar also, and The Little Woman and I both have a shot of ouzo, although I'm not a big fan of that licorice-flavored Greek liquor.  I've never compared the price-per-ounce, but I'm pretty sure you could buy the green Nyquil cheaper and enjoy the same taste. The Acropolis is open every day of the week, but if you go during August check to make sure, because Gus the owner and his family go back to Greece to research new recipes (or so they tell the IRS) for a couple of weeks.  O-pa!