B's Po Boys: Good Cajun Comes with a Price

B's Po Boys at 1261 S. Shelby St. just opened this week and it is already one of my favorite places. It's in a rather small brand-new building that has intentionally been given a patina on the outside that resembles a weathered shack by the bayou.  Inside it's all Nouveau IKEA decor: multicolored earth-tone checkerboard flooring that resembles linoleum, a Swedish style new-wood bar/counter topped with faux marble, steel chair stools, etc. There are about 9 or 10 outdoor tables, too, each with its own bottle of Sriracha hot sauce.  Next to the outdoor dining area are two long narrow troughs that I took to be horse shoe pits, but which are actually for bocce balls, a kind of Italian lawn bowling (not sure if  I spelled it correctly, sorry). The ambiance of the place nicely dovetails with that of the Brass Ring Lounge which is almost next door, and should draw the same sort of trendy clientele.

The cajun-style sandwiches and sides, however, are the real star of the show. For lunch we had two half-sandwiches ($6 each): I had the Spicy Sausage Patty (because they were out of fried oysters) and the Little Woman got the Barbecued Shrimp sandwich. The bread seems to be a kind of French bread that is lightly crisp on the outside but delicately soft on the inside, quite complimentary to the flavors of the fillings. The regular sides are $2 each, but we split two of the higher-priced side items:  Andouille Sausage, Red Beans & Rice and Chicken Gumbo & Rice, $3.50 for each 7.5 ounce cup. The Gumbo was my favorite, very savory and just a little spicy.  The half sandwiches were a little small for the price, I thought, but they were nevertheless very tasty. A couple of my colleagues have been there since, and both ordered $9 full sandwiches, which they said were quite filling, so that must be the way to go.  A medium-sized decent-flavor iced tea was $1.50.

Even though it's not a great bargain, I really liked the food there, and the cool ambiance of the place along with the really nice owner and service staff mean I'll be goin' back for some more Cajun. Ayyy-Heeeeeeeeeee!

Cafe Mediterrano- a different kind of buffet!

I was in a training class up on the North side of Indy a couple weeks ago, and happened to go with a couple colleagues to Cafe Mediterrano, on 86th Street just east of Allisonville Road, located (say it with me, kids!) in a strip mall on the south side of the street.  We only had a little while to eat lunch, and this place was just what the Southside Guru of Gluttony ordered:  a Mediterranean buffet with all that region's staple dishes:  DIY Gyros, Spanikopita, and Stuffed Grape Leaves were just a few of the dishes.  At $10 it wasn't my usual lunch bargain, but all the stuff was good, hearty fare.  As with most buffets of all types, the food seemed to lack some of the seasoning that the same dish a non-buffet restaurant would have, perhaps in the hope of pleasing (or at least not offending) as many people as possible.  You could always add some of the seasonings and condiments provided there to your taste, though.  :-)

The Yardarm Restaurant on the Municipal Pier in Fairhope, AL

Just a note from our road trip of the last couple weeks:  Fairhope is a sort of upscale suburb of Mobile that is across Mobile Bay from the Big Town and is within about an hour of Gulf Shores.  The Barfly is something of a cheapskate, if you didn't know, and staying in the suburbs was 'way less expensive than either downtown Mobile or the Shores.  The Key West Inn (part of a chain I didn't know about) was a great little hotel about 2 miles from downtown Fairhope, which is kind of like Old Towne Carmel, for you Indy residents:  lots of little boutiques, coffee shops, and antique shops.  The Municipal Pier is in a beautiful park on the Bay, and about 100 feet out on the pier is The Yardarm, a tiny little place that serves the best seafood we had the entire trip, which is saying something.  During our week there I ate my weight in oysters at several restaurants, fixed every way possible, and they were all  large, fresh, and tasty, but the fried oysters at the Yardarm were sooooo tender and juicy, with a light batter and a gentle seafood flavor that wasn't even the least bit "fishy".  A basket of those with two Corona Lights and I was ready for a nap on a bench out on the pier, if it weren't for those pesky herrons begging for leftovers....

Monell's in Nashville, Tennessee- The REALLY far Southside....

On a recent trip to the Music City, the Little Woman and I were looking for an open liquor store (but just as in Indy, they're all closed on Sunday), and we saw this grand old mansion on Murfreesboro Pike next to the airport with a sign out front that said "Monell's Family-Style Dining".  In the South that means that your party sits with others around a big ol' table with like 10 chairs and they bring the food out in big bowls that you pass around just like you were at home and feedin' the family.  While we were waiting for the food to come out, we helped ourselves to the bowls of cucumbers & onions in ranch dressing, and bowls of cole slaw that were already on the table along with pitchers of sweet and unsweet tea, fruit tea, and water.  Then the main course arrived and I was in home-style heaven with perfectly cooked fried chicken followed by mashed taters, green beans, and macaroni & cheese in their own bowls.  I had just begun to dig in when the REST of the main courses arrived:  pulled pork, meat loaf, and pot roast! No wonder they sell t-shirts that say "Help! I've eaten at Monell's and can't stand up!"  There are 3 locations in Nashville, all in historic houses.  It was the best part of the Nashville leg of our trip. 

BTW, if you make it to the Volunteer State, try to get your hands on some Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whisky.  Popcorn Sutton was a famous moonshiner who unfortunately took his own life at age 62 when he found out he was going to prison just a couple years back.  A group of investors including Hank Williams, Jr. were in the process of obtaining Popcorn's recipe at the time, and now they've managed to go legit, although the stuff is currently only available in Tennessee. Supposedly the state said they have to call it White Whisky because "moonshine" is by definition illegal.  It is just about THE SMOOTHEST alcoholic beverage I've ever sampled, exponentiallly better than Georgia Moon, the other well-known legal 'shine, which is produced by a large distillery in Louisville, KY.

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!