Jersey Mike’s Subs
5025 E. 82nd Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46250
http://www.jerseymikes.com/

Every few months, I go on a kick where all I want to eat are sandwiches consisting of deli meats.  Clubs, turkey sandwiches, etc.  It’s usually one particular sandwich that pushes me over the edge and as I’ve mentioned before, it was the Mile High Club Sandwich that got me on this kick.  The thing about deli meat sandwiches though is that I don’t always want that big glob of bread sitting in my stomach, so I’ve started looking around for places that have wraps as an option as opposed to just sub rolls and much to my joy and surprise, Jersey Mike’s is one of those places (Blimpie does it too).  I love Jersey Mike’s, so I ventured over there recently and decided to get a wrap and see how well they did theirs.  I feel kinda foolish reviewing a sandwich that you basically build yourself, but whatever.

What I Got:  Club Supreme Wrap; ~$7.00 for a regular.

Jersey Mike’s has special “wrap only” type menu items, but they also allow you to turn any regular sub into a wrap.  I didn’t want any of the “wrap only” sandwiches, so I decided to fulfill my Club sandwich kick by turning the Club Supreme into a wrap.  The Club Supreme contains Roast Beef, Turkey, Bacon, Swiss Cheese and Mayonnaise, all done Mike’s Way (Oregano, Vinegar, Oil, Lettuce, Onion, Tomato).  I had them remove the mayonnaise and add pickles, banana peppers, honey mustard and Hot Cherry Pepper Relish.  They also give you the option to have the wrap be a regular flour tortilla or a tomato basil tortilla (they heat them on the grill in order to soften them up before loading them with ingredients) and I chose the tomato basil tortilla.  One thing I can tell you is that if you look closely enough at the picture above, you will see one thing missing:  THE BACON.  Dammit, they screwed up my order!

Anyway, as for the rest of the non-screwed up ingredients, they were delicious.  The meats, cheeses and veggies were plentiful and made this wrap quite a load.  One thing of note is that wraps don’t do a very good job of holding vinegar and oil because this thing was a mess since the liquids were running everywhere.  The pepper relish, an obvious copy of Lenny’s pepper relish, also added a nice spicy little kick to the “cooling” lunch meat and veggies, as did the banana peppers.  While I didn’t taste anything exceptional in the tomato basil tortilla, it definitely did taste different than your standard tortilla that you would get at the store, so in that fact alone, I guess it’s a success.  There’s not much else to say here as everything else is pretty much as you would have expected it to be.

Would I Buy It Again?  Yes, no question about it.  I already loved Jersey Mike’s to begin with because of their huge portions and quality taste, but now that I can partially eliminate the bread gut bomb that I usually get when I get there by substituting a tortilla shell, I love this place even more now that I’ll feel “lighter” (LOL) after eating one of their menu offerings.  Missing bacon or not, this Club Supreme is a winner.

-IndianapolisEater

Fox and Hound English Pub and Grille
4901 East 82nd Street
Indianapolis,  Indiana 46250
http://www.foxandhound.com/

I will be the first to admit that I am pre-disposed to a negative bias to Fox and Hound.  Those biases mostly have to deal with the beer and the temperature it is served at, but since I was there recently for a birthday party, I decided to grab my dinner there as well.  In the past, I don’t know that I’ve ever had anything other than your typical bar appetizers, so on this visit, I was willing to give some of their actual food a chance.  After my review of the Mile High Club Sandwich, I’ve been on a big Club-ish sandwich kick, so I decided to go with something similar to that that is marked on the Fox and Hound menu as a “Fox Fave.”  Well, we’ll see about that.

What I Got:  The Black Forest; $8.49.

According to the menu:  “A giant Bavarian pretzel roll topped with grilled turkey, applewood bacon, Monterey Jack cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and honey mustard dressing. Served with crispy fries.”  I can confirm that all of that was on the sandwich, although the side of crispy fries was a PATHETIC serving size.  It was as if I ordered a Happy Meal size fries order from McDonald’s…it was that freaking small.  Probably better for my health in that respect, but it was annoying.  What was also funny about this is that on the back page of the menu, there is a glamour shot of this sandwich and let’s just say that the glamour shot is not anything close to what you see above.  In fact, when this arrived, I was just about ready to add one more thing to my list of stuff that I dislike about this place, but I decided to at least give the sandwich a shot.

I’m glad I did decide to give it a shot too, because this baby was pretty good.  I think this might be the first time in my life that I’ve ever had a pretzel roll (weird, because I’ve eaten a hell of a lot of sandwiches in my life) and I can honestly say that I liked it a lot.  It was a bit harder than your typical roll and it also had a slightly salty taste.  When you mix that with the relative freshness of the veggies on the sandwich, it makes for a nice mix.  What I also appreciated was that the turkey was warmed on the grill, along with the soft and chewy bacon, and all in all this made a nice mix. It was incredibly juicy and when  you added the gooey-ness of the melted cheese to the equation, this made for a perfectly juicy and greasy delight.  When you mix this with beer, you’ve got a winner and I can see why they mark this sandwich as a favorite on the menu.

As for the fries, well, they were fine and pretty much standard stuff.  They were thick cut and despite the comical/insulting portion size, they were still decent and I have no complaints about their taste.

Would I Buy It Again?  Yes, I would.  I still have issues with Fox and Hounds’ handling of their bottled beer temperatures (tip:  order them by the bucket and have them ice the beers down so that when you need one, it will actually be cold), but I have no issues with this sandwich.  I would recommend it to anyone as a unique take on a Club-ish sandwich.

-IndianapolisEater

Rock Cola 50s Cafe
5730 Brookville Road
Indianapolis, Indiana 46219
http://www.rockcolacafe.com

We’ve certainly spent a fair amount of time maligning the Super 46 Sandwich competition that was put on this year by the state visitor’s bureau.  As you may have read in a magazine or on this blog, a bratwurst won the “sandwich” competition and frankly, we all know that is absurd.  I/we have had a lot of the sandwiches that were in the contest, but I wanted to do a review of a sandwich that I had never had, so that led me to a part of town where I have literally never been and to the Rock Cola 50s Cafe for the second place finisher of the Super 46 contest.  In my mind, this was technically the winner of the contest since it was an actual sandwich.

This is a small joint with a 50s design motif and everything is made on a flat top grill right in front of everyone.  There’s probably only about 8-10 tables along with a counter to sit at and this place could accommodate at most 35 people on a good day.  To continue the 50s design motif, they walls are filled with 50s trinkets and signs everywhere.  My favorites were the nuclear fallout shelter sign, the old Coke machine and the Bic pen distribution machine.  All in all, this was a 50s diner to a “T” (think the Happy Days diner).  My friend and I sat at the counter, so we got to see everything made right in front of us.

What I Got:  Mile High Club Sandwich with fries/drink combo; $5.99 + $2.99 = $8.98.

I hope my superior iPhone photography skills can do this sandwich justice, because it was huge.  I didn’t have my measuring tape out, but from top to bottom, this thing was every bit of at least five inches tall.  The menu says that you need to unhinge your jaw to eat this one and they certainly were not lying.  It was piled high with turkey, honey-baked ham, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, American cheese and hickory smoked bacon.  All of this was stacked on three healthy sized pieces of Texas toast.  Basically, this was everything a Club Sandwich is supposed to be with the added bonus of the fact that it was HUGE.  The funniest/most amusing part about it is that this sandwich, along with all others at Rock Cola, is stabbed through the heart with a huge steak knife in order to hold them together and/or allow you to slice them.

I’ll be the first to admit that when eating a typical Club Sandwich, I’m not really expecting a lot because it’s a hard sandwich to screw up.  It’s meat, veggies, bread and cheese and that’s it.  It’s pretty simple…except that some places screw simple things up.  Happily, Rock Cola 50s Cafe did not do that and this was honestly one of, if not the best, Club Sandwiches that I’ve ever had.  There’s nothing overtly special about the ingredients and they taste as you’d expect them to, but they all mesh together perfectly (keep in mind, I ate this in the middle of February, yet the veggies were still “fresh”) and create what I would classify as a hell of a sandwich.  The best part about this is that while it is huge, I didn’t really feel weighed down or bloated after eating it.  Not sure if that says I have a ridiculous appetite (I do) or that this sandwich is made so perfectly that it takes you to some sort of utopia where you don’t feel sick after eating a monster amount of food, but it’s a utopia that I’d like to visit often.

The fries were just standard, good tasting crinkle cut fries that were deep fried in oil that is probably older than I am.  I’m not making fun of that because that’s how you get “flavor” into oil and it adds even more nostalgic feel to this place.

Would I Buy It Again?  Absolutely, no question about it.  This was one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had.  To say something like that about something as simple as a Club Sandwich just proves how good it was.   I just wish this place was closer to my house and more convenient for me to get to because as I sat at the counter watching everything get cooked, I saw about five to six different menu items that looked so good that I wanted to eat my hand.

I honestly can’t say enough good things about this place and it’s going on the recommended list because it’s all I’ve been able to think about for the last 24 hours.  It’s a dive and it’s got simple ingredients with a fairly simple menu, but they do it so unbelievably well.  Hopefully with the publicity they have gotten from the contest, this place will be around for a long time to come because this is the kind of small diner that every city should be proud to have and obviously is since it has (at the time of this writing) a 100% approval rating on Urbanspoon.

-IndianapolisEater

Asia Bistro
7426 Fishers Station Drive
Fishers, Indiana 46038
http://www.asiabistrofishers.com

In what is becoming almost a monthly Sunday night tradition, it was time for me to venture out again for some Chinese takeout and since I was spending some time with my mom and her husband at their house, we decided to try out one of the relatively new takeout places in her area, Asia Bistro.  Since it was my first time trying the place, I decided to go with one of my “testing” Chinese dishes and got…

What I Got:  Quart of General Tso’s Chicken (comes with white rice); $8.95.

As you can see from my very “arty” photo, the dish comes with a quart of General Tso’s chicken mixed with broccoli and then a smaller pint sized container of white rice.  Visually, there’s not a whole lot there.  The chicken bits were covered in a sticky sauce and there were noticeable red pepper flakes in the sauce on the chicken (you can also see them on the broccoli in the picture above).  One thing I did notice that the chicken was particularly soft and the breading of the chicken was also soft as well.  I’m all for tender chicken, but not for mushy breading, so I was little worried as I got ready to eat this one.

My worry subsided a bit, but I can honestly say I was not particularly impressed with this version of General Tso’s chicken.  It’s not that it was overwhelmingly bad, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly good either…it was just edible.  The thick sauce was neither overly spicy, nor overly sweet, but instead somewhere in the middle.  When you order something like General’s chicken, you’d like the sauce to be one of those things (I prefer the spicier version), but this one was neither and that was a big disappointment.  As suspected, the chicken was tender and that was nice, but the breading was soft and doughy and since I like a bit of crunch in my General’s chicken, I really missed that.  All in all, this was just boring.

Would I Buy It Again?  No to the General’s Chicken and probably not to Asia Bistro.  Just too boring and not really worth a purchase.  If I want Chinese food, I don’t want to be bored by it and Asia Bistro gave me that sensation.  The name of this place is deceiving, because this is not what you think of when you think of “bistro quality” food.

As an aside on some of the other menu items, my mom and her husband got different dishes and my mom’s response to her Shrimp with Lobster Sauce was “I’ve been eating this for forty years and this is the worst I’ve ever had” and her husband’s response to his Roast Pork Lo Mein was virtually the same as my review of my food as he said his was “bland.”  Not exactly a ringing endorsement of a place, eh?

-IndianapolisEater

Mexico City Grill
11653 Fishers Station Drive
Fishers, IN 46038
http://www.mexicocitygrill.com

Saturday night brought me to a restaurant location that EatHSE has reviewed on this blog before, Mexico City Grill.  I have been to this restaurant several times before and always ordered the same thing, so I figured I would mix it up a bit this time and order something different and do a review.  I reiterate the chips and salsa part of his review, so I’ll just stick to what I got as my entree and here we go…

What I Got:  Pollo Loco; ~$9.50 (can’t remember the exact price and the menu is not posted online for me to verify).

My outstanding three years of Spanish in high school tells me that Pollo Loco loosely translates in English to “crazy chicken” so I was handed a seasoned and grilled chicken breast served with Mexican rice, lettuce, two avocado slices and pico de gallo.  Served on the side were three warm flour tortillas (not in the photo).  If you can’t tell in the picture, this chicken breast was pounded thin and when I say thin, I mean extremely thin.  Frankly, it was so thin that it was borderline comical and I’ve got to say that I was disappointed in how absurd it was.  I guess the thinness of this chicken breast was the loco part because no one in their right mind should pound a chicken breast that thin unless they are telling a joke.

I was disappointed in the flavor as well because while the seasoning was nice, the chicken breast was pounded so thin that it probably took about 7.3 seconds to grill and that was about 2.5 seconds too long because they dried this one out quickly.  When I was able to mix the chicken with the rest of the plate in a flour tortilla it was palatable, but once I ran out of tortillas and had to start eating just the chicken breast, I was pretty disappointed because not only was it dry, but it was also tough.  What a major, hardcore disappointment.

The remainder of the dish was pretty much standard stuff.  The avocado slices were nice and I always appreciate that and the rice, while fluffy did taste as if it was made in a big batch and then kept in a warmer tray for a long period of time.  Thankfully, it hadn’t dried out yet and was still flavorful with a bit of spice too it, but it was nothing to write home about.  The pico de gallo had a slight tang, but again, nothing to write home about.  All of this stuff wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either.  It just existed.

Would I Buy It Again?  Yes to Mexico City Grill, but no specifically to the Pollo Loco dish.  I have had good meals at Mexico City Grill (the dish with seasoned pork chunks is my go-to dish, but I can’t remember the name and the lack of menu stops me from looking it up), so I’ll just stick to the stuff that I know well and like and not venture out again next time.  I know that there is a large seafood tortilla that my mom and her husband swear by too, so they do have good dishes here.  Unfortunately, I chose one of the dishes that is not one of those good ones.  Oh well, you live and learn.

-IndianapolisEater

Pizza Hut/Wing Street
http://www.pizzahut.com

The Super Bowl is approaching (in Indianapolis!) and every year I see a story about how the night of the Super Bowl is the busiest nights of the year for pizza delivery businesses.  Along those lines, there is no better pairing with pizza than chicken wings, so while watching football this past Sunday, I decided to try out one of Pizza Hut’s non-traditional wings offerings from their co-branded Wing Street business.  For those of you lucky enough to have a Pizza Hut that has a Wing Street location in it (not all Pizza Huts do), they have several flavors outside of your normal hot, mild, barbecue, etc., so I went with…

What I Got:  14 piece Garlic Parmesan Crunchy Bone-In Wings; $9.99.

As you can see when opening the box, these wings have breading and are not your normal fried wings in that they are just covered in sauce and that’s it.  If you look a little closer, you can see that these things are sitting in a absurdly deep and disgusting pool of butter, so obviously butter is the chosen method of delivering the garlic and Parmesan flavors into the wings.  They are then dusted with additional garlic and Parmesan seasonings to amp up the flavor even more.

Butter is the primary taste in these wings as well, because that’s the majority of what you taste as you bite into these.  Unfortunately, because there is so much butter, the “crunchy” aspect of the wings ends up being lost and the breading on these wings ends up being just a soggy mess.  The soggy mess carries strong flavors of both garlic and Parmesan, but they are so greasy that you are really taking a bath with each wing that you eat.  Honestly, my mouth felt like I had eaten a stick of butter after I’d eaten these things and that is not a good thing.  I don’t necessarily mind the use of butter, but when it is used in this ridiculous amount, it becomes completely unappetizing.  Outside of the negatives of the mushy breading and the dripping butter, the wings did have one thing go positive for them:  they had decent size.  At a lot of these delivery places, you get shorted on the size of the wings and that really, really gets me angry.  In Pizza Hut/Wing Street’s case, that does not happen, so they do get one positive check mark.

Would I Buy It Again?  No, definitely not.  Next time I want this much butter, which will be never, I’ll just go with the alternative and eat a stick of butter.  It’s sad too, because the Garlic Parmesan flavor itself was decent, but the abundance of butter everywhere just ruined the entire package.  If they could find a way to tone down the butter and allow the wings to maintain their crunchy texture, they may have a winner.  Unfortunately here though, they do not.

-IndianapolisEater

Remember the post from a little over a week ago about Indiana’s Super 46 Sandwiches and the contest to pare the list down to a winner?  Well, the first and second round of voting are over (don’t know how I slept through the second round) and now they are down to eight sandwiches.  Several people, including me, voiced their opinions that some of the sandwiches on the list were a joke, so now you can check to see who has made it this far and who did not.

If you go to this link, you cast your vote for your favorite sandwich in each match-up.

For a Cliff’s Notes version of the match-ups prior to visiting the site, here’s how it shakes out (Indianapolis metro area restaurants are in italics; others are spread throughout the state):

Match-up #1:  Hamburger from Hinkle’s Sandwich Shop vs. the Bratwurst from Schnitzelbank

Match-up #2:  Ultimate Grilled Tenderloin from The Streamliner Restaurant vs. the Roast Pork Po’ Boy from Papa Roux

Match-up #3:  Breaded Tenderloin from The Nickel Plate Bar & Grill vs. Duane Purvis All-American from Triple XXX Restaurant

Match-up #4:  Mile High Club Sandwich from Rock Cola 50s Cafe vs. the Grilled Cheese Sandwich from Fair Oaks Dairy Farm

So, if you want to go out and vote for a favorite sandwich or make sure to vote against a joke of a sandwich so that it doesn’t embarrass our state, feel free to head to the site and cast your vote for this round before it ends next Friday!

-IndianapolisEater

Granite City Food & Brewery
150 West 96th Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46290
http://www.gcfb.net/

Every now and then you just feel like eating a huge meal and being fat.  That feeling happens to me more than I’d like, but I try to control it by limiting myself to no more than two giant meals a month.  If I didn’t do that, well, we’ve been there before.

Anyway, I was experiencing one of those moments a while back and that led me to Granite City Food & Brewery for their Sunday Brunch.  I’ve been before and didn’t do a review, but since I’ve told so many friends about this offline, I figured that it was time to share with my blog friends as well.  FYI, WIBIA has been there before to review their non-brunch food items and has been there for brunch as well.

What I Got:  Sunday Brunch; $14.99.

Here’s a link to the menu their brunch offerings on their site, so I’ll spare listing them all out and just hit what I got and took photos of.

When you first arrive, they bring out a plate of caramel rolls and that’s what you see in the picture in the top of this post.  They bring one roll per person and these things are about as big as your head.  If you know anything about nutrition at all, you know that cinnamon rolls are just about the unhealthiest thing in the world, so when you are getting a giant cinnamon roll dripping with warm caramel sauce to start your meal, well, you might as well throw your calorie counts out the window for the day and/or week.  In terms of taste, these things are soft, sweet, gooey and basically the most sinful  and delicious thing you could ever eat in your entire life.  Frankly, you could stop after this and be okay, but I had to get my money’s worth in this meal!

After gorging myself on a caramel roll, plate #1 was a stop at the make-your-own Eggs Benedict station with assorted meats, cheeses and vegetables and as you can see above, I was definitely not shy about my creation.  They have a cook working there that will construct everything to your liking, so I chose a mixing of just about everything they had on the line (by the way, that’s a sausage patty under the poached egg).  Ha!  Unfortunately, while it looks delicious, it really wasn’t all that great.  The hollandaise sauce was flat and since this was a make-your-own station, a lot of the food had been sitting for a while so it wasn’t fresh/crunchy.  It’s too bad too, because when done right, Eggs Benedict is awesome.

Plate #2 wasn’t exactly healthy either.  From top in clockwise direction, you’ve got hickory smoked bacon, biscuits and sausage gravy and then baked reggiano hash browns.  Let’s start with the bacon and I’ll use one word to describe it:  delicious.  First of all, it’s extremely thick and that is awesome.  Secondly, it straddles the line between being too soft and being too crunchy…in other words, perfectly cooked.  The peppery kick from the seasoning added a nice bounce to the bacon and frankly, I can’t say enough good things about it.  Unfortunately, that’s not the case with the biscuits and sausage gravy.  The biscuit was pretty standard, but the gravy was pretty weird.  First of all, it could have used more flour because it wasn’t particularly thick.  Secondly, it had more of a yellow-ish color instead of your traditional white coloring and that was not something that I would ordinarily expect.  As you can see in the picture, there’s also little specs of red and green in the gravy and that comes from the pepper and herb seasoning that they put into the gravy and I can honestly say, I was not a fan.  Peppery and spicy sausage gravy is something I don’t mind…I prefer it in fact, but that is usually a black pepper heat.  The spice in this gravy was more of a red pepper flake spice and zingy (nice word) and I was not a fan of that.  Granite City gets points for trying to be different here, but it just didn’t work.  The last item on the plate is the baked reggiano hash browns and once again, one word describes these:  delicious.  The reggiano makes these things thick and creamy and also adds a nice salty bite to the mix in general.  It also makes them creamy and when you add in the fact that these were baked to add some crunch, you get a bit of heaven.  If I had the recipe for these, I would seriously make them at least once a week because these are the best hash browns that I’ve ever had in my life.

Plate #3 brought one of my favorite foods in the world, prime rib.  In addition to that, in clockwise fashion again, we had garlic mashed potatoes, more baked reggiano hash browns and some salad.  Let’s start with the prime rib…all I can say is that I had such high expectations and left so disappointed.  First of all, as you can see above, they carve it paper thin and that is just ridiculous since this is a buffet and you can have them add more and more prime rib until you get enough.  What a joke.  Dissertation aside, the problem with thinly slicing prime rib is that it ends up with no juices and that affects your product and honestly, the roasts that they are using for their prime rib roast are not particularly high quality anyway.  It lacked flavor and when combining that with thinly slicing it, it really makes this a loser and a huge disappointment in my mind.  The garlic mashed potatoes were good, but there’s not much of a point wasting a lot of time on them.  They were creamy and had a nice garlic kick and I appreciated that.  Outside of that, there’s not a whole lot to say.  I’ve already covered the hash brown, so I’ll just say that there’s a reason they made it to the second plate.  As for the salad, I had to be healthy at some point, right?  LOL.  On a side note, if you manage to sneak up to the carving station while the carver is away, you can cut yourself your own piece of beef so that can get a little extra juice/thickness and not get the shaft like you would from the regular carver.

The Sunday Brunch also had a make-your-own station for waffles and French Toast (the slices are absurdly thick) as well, so you can hit those as well (I have on other trips for the brunch) and the toppings for those include, various jams, syrups, whipped creams, candy toppings (chips, Heath bars, M&M’s, etc.) and it’s definitely a good thing to have for kids or the little kid hiding inside of you.  They also have various other items on their buffet such as sausage links (enormous), pastas, vegetables, pastries, fruits, soups, etc.  Basically, if you attempted to try some of everything, there is no doubt you’d gain fifteen pounds before you exited.

Would I Buy It Again?  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.  At $14.99 for a lot high quality food, you really are getting one of the best brunch buffet options that I’ve ever seen (keep in mind that I’ve never been to Las Vegas).  The prime rib may be substandard at best, but the quality of everything else more than makes up for the low quality beef.  Heck, I might even spend $14.99 just to eat one of those sinful caramel rolls again.  Dear lord, I’m drooling on my keyboard now…

FYI, Granite City also offers a Saturday brunch with some different menu items.  It’s more of a stripped down version of Sunday’s and I think it costs less too.  Saturday’s brunch menu has a make-your-own omelet station and that is the primary attraction.  All you need to know though is that they have the caramel rolls and the hash browns on Saturday too, so you’d be more than set no matter what day you choose.

-IndianapolisEater