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

It 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

Kentucky Fried Chicken
6265 E 500 S
Gas City, IN 46933
http://www.kfc.com/default.asp

I recently dumped off the kids for a weekend with my mother, and she lives in Fort Wayne, so we met halfway for both the drop-off/pick-up. It happened to be at the Gas City exit off I-69. I arrived about a half hour early Sunday for the pick-up in hopes of getting some Cracker Barrel (our meeting spot). Instead, there was a 20-minute wait, so I hopped over to the KFC/Taco Bell combo. And, yes, I realize I didn’t give myself near enough time for Cracker Barrel, but I figured it was worth a shot — and you can’t expect me to not sleep in with the kids away. Anyway, lots of things on the menu seemed appealing at the time, but I love chicken wings. Considering that I love spicy food but I’m also burnt out (yes, pun intended) on buffalo sauce, there seemed to be a great option …

What I Got: KFC Sauceless Hot Wings; 50 cents apiece (I got 10 for $5).

On the box, it said “spicy” and “crunchy.” It was half-correct. The breading had a great crunch and the chicken was cooked to perfection. That’s where the positives stopped.

First of all, they need to clarify. Does “hot” mean that the chicken’s temperature is hot? If so, OK, they aren’t lying — but I’m obviously being sarcastic. The wings are billed as spicy and it’s like they forgot the spice. Considering the wings are sauceless, the spices are supposed to be inside the breading already. I was actually excited — which, in and of itself is sad, I realize — to try these because they would be hot and crunchy. Swing and miss somewhere during the process, though, because these were basically just plain, sauceless wings. No exaggeration, I got zero kick. I actually checked my receipt to make sure there wasn’t a communication breakdown in the ordering process. There wasn’t. It still says “hot” on my receipt.

Secondly, where is the meat? These things were tiny and oddly shaped. Look at the picture where I’m holding that one sideways. That’s a drumstick and it’s flat. How does that even happen? It’s just weird. [Note: Yes, I took the picture on top of a laid out napkin in my car, in the Cracker Barrel parking lot. I'm awesome.]

Would I Buy It Again? No chance. I still love KFC if you want fast-food-type chicken, but I will never waste my time on these things again. I felt like I only had about three plain wings. The concept of sauceless hot wings with the spices baked into the breading still very much appeals to me, but I can’t take the chance on a wasted meal at KFC again. I guess at 50 cents a pop you truly do get what you pay for.

-Show

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

Jason’s Deli
4130 East 82nd Street
Indianapolis, Indiana  46250
http://www.jasonsdeli.com

Jason’s is still relatively new to the capital city and I was slow to try it.  The menu online was kind of boring, so I decided to wait for a while.   I was going to the Nordstrom Rack to find some sweet threads for cheap and I can’t shop for anything on an empty stomach, so I had to make a pit stop.  Plus, they have free ice cream.  The only thing better than free ice cream is free love.  Depending on who’s giving the love, I might even take ice cream.

What I Ate: Half New York Yankee and salad bar.  Cost, with a soda was around $9.00

Anytime that I want a salad bar, my body is begging for some greens.  The salad bar was pretty decent looking.   I didn’t get the all you can eat option, so I loaded it up with the one trip that I had.   The bread was horrible and quickly discarded.  The produce was relatively fresh, but the ingredients seemed pretty cheap.  Bacon and cheese were definitely lacking in quality and I didn’t like the Italian dressing.   I didn’t hate it, but I would never come here for the salad bar alone.

I had to get past the idea that the sandwich is called the New York Yankee, as it is named after the most BS baseball team ever.   I see my Google stats and I don’t think that I am losing any fans saying that.    The New York Yankee is made up of hot corned beef, pastrami, Swiss cheese and mustard or mayonnaise, all served on rye bread.  The rye and the meat were the quality that I would expect from a chain.  It didn’t offend me, but definitely not the real good stuff.  I prefer for the cheese to be a little melty, but that was not the case here.   The good news about this sandwich is…huge!  This was a half sandwich and I could barely knock it down after my salad.

After my meal, I decided to gorge myself and make a kick ass root beer float with the free ice cream.  Well played and it hit the spot.

Would I Buy It Again?   Sure, why not?    I didn’t love what I had, but I didn’t hate it.   Considering that I had a salad, huge sandwich, chips, pickle and a root beer float for under $10, I thought it was a good value.    I like to think about what I would compare it to and if you like McAlister’s, Paradise or Panera, you will probably be fond of Jason’s.   However, at Paradise, you get an awesome cookie and here you get ice cream.  Kind of a toss up.

-wibia

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

De Cero Taqueria
814 West Randolph Street
Chicago, Illinois  60607
http://decerotaqueria.com/

I was in Chicago on business and I wanted to try something new.  As much as I would like to say that the expense account is a blank check for prime steakhouses, I like to fly under the radar a bit and not seem too eccentric.

Eater 38 is usually a dependable list.  Sometimes I think that it should be called, If I were a hipster, where would I like to eat.   The big names are on the other lists and I always think of it as an insiders guide.  I was in a mood where I didn’t want a ton of food (patting myself on the back for that rhyme) and Indianapolis is without a fancy taco place, so I thought that I would give it a try.

What I Ate:  Duck Confit, Chipotle Chicken and Tilapia tacos; $3.95 each.  Chips and Pico; $2.95.

The duck confit was served with corn salsa and that is it.  The duck desperately needed salt and I thought that this was a great idea, but poorly executed.   The Chipotle Chicken was grilled chicken, lettuce, crema, cilantro and pinto beans with bacon.  I liked this on a lot better, but it had a strange smell to it.  It had a smoky smell to it, like you just light a firework.  The beans were a non-factor.   The tilapia was topped with a Mexican slaw.  I love a good fish taco (no jokes please), but this was not one of them.  The tilapia was tasted more like smelt fries and it didn’t taste freshly fried.

Chips and pico were the standard adaptation.   A little spicy than normal, but again, nothing special.

Would I Buy It Again?  No, definitely not.   What a wasted dinner in one of our best culinary cities in the US of A.  Maybe the bar was set too high.  After all, did I really expected tortillas, meat and beans to taste that differently than what I can get in Indy?  My bad.

I think that I am done with fancy tacos.  I have tried a few different takes on tacos and I am always happiest with the simple ones done well.  I’d rather replace duck confit with slightly chewy, cheap carne asada and call it a day.

Long story short, it might be best to leave tacos alone – they are perfect how they are.

-wibia

The Roost
7371 East 116th Street
Fishers, Indiana  46038
http://www.sahms.com/index.php?cID=74

Some of my friends and I have started a tradition within the past couple years where we take it easy on New Year’s Eve and do our partying on New Year’s Day while watching football.  This past New Year’s Day was the second year that we have done that, so naturally after a day of adult beverages, I was feeling the need for a nice, greasy breakfast and that led me to meet my mom and her husband at The Roost in Fishers (part of the local Sahm’s restaurant group).  EatHSE has previously reviewed The Roost, so I felt that I should order something different from what he got so that we can get some blog review variety and that led me to…

What I Got:  Jose Salsa Skillet; $7.69.  ”Two poached eggs served over chorizo sausage, hash browns, fresh salsa, and topped with mozzarella and cheddar cheese.  Served with warm flour tortillas.”

You can’t really tell in my picture because of my expert photography skills and also the way the dish was constructed with everything piled in a skillet (I would estimate it was roughly eight inches in diameter), but I can confirm that all the ingredients listed in the menu description were in fact present.

In terms of taste, a lot of the ingredients were difficult to distinguish (the two different types of cheese, for example), but when all added together this was a tasty dish.  With my tortillas (think one large tortilla cut in half to make two), I made two breakfast “burritos” by scooping the contents of my skillet into each one.  When I bit into my homemade burrito, I immediately tasted the spice of the chorizo and being that spicy food does not affect me in the slightest bit most of the time, I rather enjoyed this little kick.  My next immediate taste was the salsa and I can’t confirm for sure, but I do believe The Roost’s claims that it was fresh because the tomatoes had a nice firmness to them and it felt like they added a little onion and cilantro into the salsa to add a little extra zing.  This was all topped off by the mix of eggs and potatoes and then topped by two gluttonous melted cheeses.  Basically, this was a comfort food classic treat with a hint of Mexican flair and after a long night of consumption, this is a nice mix.  My only complaint is that somehow this dish lacked a bit of salt (I’ve come to like my potato products to be extra salty), but a few shakes of the salt shaker quickly solved that problem.

Would I Buy It Again?  Yes, I would.  A lot of times breakfast can just be a compilation of bland foods thrown together and without the chorizo and salsa, I think this skillet would have fallen victim to that.  But, when you add in those two key components to bring an extra spice and zing to the dish, you really end up with a winner that I would recommend to anyone that can handle a little spice in their life.

-IndianapolisEater