Review: Best Bet Breakfast & Lunch
Author: indianapoliseater | Filed under: Food Reviews, Location: Noblesville, IN
Best Bet Breakfast & Lunch
14300 Mundy Drive
Noblesville, Indiana 46060
This place has been around for a couple years now and I have been a few times pre-blog, but this was my first visit since the blog started and I figured that a review was in order. The place is a little hole in the wall at the end of a strip shopping center and the whole place is done up in a Las Vegas/gambling motif (which is hilarious by the way).
On my prior visits, this place was kind of hit or miss. My first visit was outstanding, my second visit was awful and my third visit was mediocre, so the real question is if Best Bet is still unpredictable and I still can’t answer that definitively after my most recent visit.
What I Got: The Flop (playing up the gambling angle); eggs, sausage patties, potatoes and two pancakes. Also comes with unlimited toast basket. $7.25
In this visit, I tried hitting all the different varieties of breakfast foods available as I took a trip to the proteins (meats and eggs) and starches (pancakes, bread and potatoes). In order to make this easy, let’s tackle this by individual menu item.
Eggs: I got mine scrambled and it was pretty standard stuff. They offered to make them with cheese (a nice touch), but I declined. The taste was pretty much what you would expect of scrambled eggs with no real huge positives or negatives.
Sausage patties: I saw somewhere on the web that Best Bet uses locally grown pork for their sausage and I could definitely taste a freshness here. I also have to give them kudos for cooking the sausage so that it maintained some sort of tenderness. That may not seem like a big thing, but I’ve been to far too many breakfast places that serve you sausage patties that are about as hard as a hockey pucks. My only gripe was that the patties were fairly thin.
Potatoes: They certainly don’t win any presentation points with these. When they came to me, you could tell that they just took the potatoes out of a large batch of potato mush on the griddle (I verified this on my way out) with an ice cream scoop and dumped it on the plate. Despite the lack of visual attractiveness, these actually did taste pretty good. They were seasoned with a peppery taste and that did a lot for them because potatoes at a lot of places are usually very bland.
Pancakes: Again, pretty standard stuff here. I got the buttermilk variety pancakes (blueberry pancakes were an option) and all I can say is that they made them right. They were perfectly cooked and fluffy.
Would I Buy It Again? Yes, I would, although I will continue to be leery of their up-and-down nature. There’s not a ton of non-chain, locally owned breakfast places in the Fishers/Noblesville area, so Best Bet kind of wins by default. Still, the food on my most recent visit was tasty and it was enough to bring me back. The price was a bit higher than I would like for breakfast, but when you balance that with the HUGE amount of food that they give you with this order, it actually turns out to be a good deal.
One more thing: As part of their unlimited toast basket, Best Bet has these little homemade cinnamon and sugar covered donut balls that they serve you (I have had them on prior visits) and they are delicious. When they weren’t part of my basket on this past visit, I was very disappointed and asked the server what happened. Turns out that the donuts are only part of the standard basket on the weekdays. On the weekends, you have to actually request that they bring them to you. The good news about that is that they are usually warm and fresh and that is huge. So, my tip to you is to make sure that you ask your server to bring some out to you. You will not regret it!
-IndianapolisEater
Tags: best bet, Breakfast, eggs, Food, pancakes, potatoes, sausage
An unlimited toast basket sounds sounds amazing.
@Charlotte: It can be, although I’d imagine they might get pretty upset if you kept making them go back and get more toast for you.
Good to know about the sausage patties. It seems everyone ruins them because they take about a minute to cook through.
I live in Noblesville and have been to Best Bet several times. I love that it’s a locally owned breakfast/lunch spot, and the owner/chef and her husband really work hard to remember customers and make you feel welcome. I’ve had their banana and their blueberry pancakes, both of which are fantastic, fluffy and bursting with fresh, ripe fruit. The biscuits and gravy are also a favorite, although I always need to add extra pepper. Their lunch burgers are hand-formed and very juicy.
If you want a non-chain, non-fussy breakfast on the northeast side, Best Bet is the place to go. I also have to mention Bub’s Cafe, another great breakfast/lunch place but it’s in the Carmel arts & design district, on the monon. Standard breakfast fare with a bit more of a gourmet twist, great outdoor seating and the freshly fried donut holes are to die for.