Jim Dandy Family Restaurant
2301 Conner Street
Noblesville, IN 46060
http://www.jdrest.com/

I love breakfast.  It is my favorite meal of the day and I am always on the hunt for places that offer something out of the ordinary.  I have driven by the retro looking Jim Dandy in Noblesville countless times and decided to take my family to give it a try.  I am 35 years old and on this morning, I was at least twenty years younger than the rest of the customers.  A busy breakfast on a weekday morning is usually a good sign.  As I sat and observed the surroundings, it was clear that many of the retired customers were on a first name basis with the waitstaff giving the environment the welcoming small-town feel.  Service was outstanding throughout the visit with my coffee never getting less than half full.

A breakfast bar?  Yes, for $5.00, you could have eggs, bacon, pancakes, biscuits and gravy and a variety of other choices.  Although perfect for evaluating a lot of food, we arrived near the end of the breakfast bar hours and fresh food was no longer coming out so I passed and went to the menu.

What We Got:

Denver Omelet $5.99 + $1 for Hash Browns

The Denver is one of just a few specialty omelets on the menu and all omelets come with a choice of pancakes or an English muffin.  I did not want either and would much rather hash browns be one of the options for $5.99 but chose the English muffin in this case.  The English muffin was clearly toasted on the griddle to perfection and went well with my coffee.  In comparison to most breakfast restaurants, the hash brown serving size was small but was thin and had the perfect crispy like crust that make hash browns one of my favorite breakfast foods.  The omelet was also thin the way I like it and had plenty of green pepper but not so much that it overpowered everything else.  The ham used seemed of lunch meat quality, yet it still worked.  I like how Jim Dandy puts some of the ingredients on top of your omelet to sort of dress it.

The only big problem I had with the food was the cheese used.  It is clear from the squares on top that Velveeta-like American processed cheese was used both on the top and on the inside.  I quit eating that kind of cheese years ago and the amount inside made my omelet taste like a Velveeta green pepper omelet and that is not a good thing.

Bacon and Cheese Omelet $5.99

My wife chose her own combination which allows for up to two ingredients that she enjoyed and would buy again.  Of particular note, this omelet had complete strips of bacon placed inside the omelet.  I like this much better than the bacon bits that become hard or crunchy like you sometimes experience at other restaurants.

Pancakes with Syrup and 5 strips of Bacon $3.99

The pancakes were huge, came out steaming hot and were grilled well with a nicely browned on the outside.  The syrup must be the cheapest stuff they can buy and I would have gladly paid an extra fifty cents for thicker syrup that did not taste watered down.  I am not sure I have been anywhere where you get four-to-five strips of bacon in a meal for $3.99.  An excellent value and my two young daughters demolished this meal with delight.

Would I Buy It Again?  Yes, we will be going back to Jim Dandy. If no cheese alternative is available for the omelet, I will go for some of the other well priced menu items or hit the breakfast bar.  Yes, they even have a loyalty card that gets you a stamp for every $5 you spend getting a free meal after $50.  I have also heard the fried chicken is good and would like to give it a try.  Overall, service was excellent and the value was high for a small family to have an affordable breakfast.  I am fearful that as their aging customer base passes away, so will the remaining few local diners in favor of chains that lack character and that small-town local appeal that Jim Dandy still maintains long after the end of its drive-in years many years ago.

-EatHSE

Ruby Tuesday
http://www.rubytuesday.com/menu.asp

Recently, as a way of differentiating themselves in the fast casual market, Ruby Tuesday has started serving brunch.  In this brunch, you get four courses:

1.  Made from scratch biscuits.
2.  Berry Good Yogurt Parfait (you can substitute the Fresh Garden Bar for 99 cents).
3.  Entree of your choice (options include omelets, eggs benedict, etc.) served with brunch potatoes.
4.  Gourmet Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies (you can change the cookies to a slice of cheesecake for $2.99).

Since I was feeling like a little something different, I decided to check it out.

What I Got:  Spinach & Mushroom Omelet with Fresh Garden Bar substituted for Berry Good Yogurt Parfait $11.98.

Let’s just address these in order.

1.  Biscuits:  I’ve never been a huge fan of biscuits because you rarely go to a place where they are done correctly, so I’ve basically just given up on them.  Usually you end up with something that is hard or overly dry and flaky.  Ruby Tuesday’s biscuits were the latter and really unappealing.  I tried putting butter on them to make them a little bit more palatable and they just crumbled in my hands as I was trying to spread the butter.  Not cool.

2.  Fresh Garden Bar (substitute for Yogurt Parfait):  I love the Fresh Garden Bar.  Lettuce salads, pasta salads, potato salads, etc.  In all honesty, it is one of the few reasons to go to Ruby Tuesday and every time I go, which isn’t often, I end up just gorging myself with multiple trips up there since it has so many delicious items.

3.  Spinach & Mushroom Omelet:  This omelet included spinach and mushrooms (obviously) along with feta cheese (MMMM…).  There’s not really you can say about an omelet unless it is overly bad or overly good.  This one was just middle of the road and if it didn’t have the saltiness of the feta cheese to add a little flavor, it probably would have been a bad omelet.  It was cooked fine, but was just mostly bland.  As you can see from my picture though, that didn’t stop me from devouring it and nearly forgetting to take a picture of it.  Hey, what can I say, I was very hungry and it’s one of the perils of being a food blogger…sometimes you eat too much before you remember to get the camera out (I had already devoured the potatoes).  As for the brunch potatoes (think fried potatoes in a cube shape), they were actually pretty good and had more flavor than the omelet.  They were crunchy, salty and delicious.

One little gripe here though:  I LOVE ketchup on my eggs (I even scraped some off for the picture so that you could see that there was actually an omelet under there) and also on potatoes and all they brought me was a little side of ketchup.  I asked for them to just bring me the bottle of ketchup so that I could slather my food in it, but all they brought me was a little side again.  Seriously?!  Is there a ketchup shortage or something that is making Ruby Tuesday ration ketchup?  Losers.

4.  Chocolate Chip Cookies:  I have a bit of a problem with chocolate chip cookies or cookies in general.  Specifically, I can’t stop eating them because I love them too much (I gave them up for Lent because I have a bit of a problem when I’m around them and had gotten out of control recently).  So, when they nearly forgot to bring these to me (I had to flag down a different server), they nearly had a riot on their hands.

Anyway, personal preferences aside, I refuse to refer to them as “gourmet” because I really don’t know why they would be classified as that.  I’ll never complain when someone gives them to me, but calling these gourmet was like putting lipstick on a pig…it’s still a pig, no matter how much you dress it up.  Regardless of calling them gourmet or not, these cookies were small but fairly tasty.  The chocolate chips on the inside were still gooey, so they were obviously fresh, but the cookie batter was slightly overcooked and they were a bit crunchier than I’m sure they would have intended.  Still, anytime anyone brings me a cookie, I’m a happy man.

Would I Buy It Again?  At these prices, no way.  The omelet was the cheapest thing on the menu and when you add in the garden bar extra charge and a drink ($2.29 for a watered down Diet Coke!  Unreal.), this meal was well over $15.50 (without tip) and that is way too much to spend at a fast casual restaurant where you are just going to get a middle of the road meal.  It’s not like the meal was bad, it just wasn’t notable in any way (not including the garden bar) and that is prohibitive in my mind.  I just wish they would allow you to substitute the garden bar for the biscuits because I saw the Parfait at other tables and it looked delicious.

In the future when going to Ruby Tuesday and for the sake of my wallet, I’ll just stick to the the Turkey Minis (see my prior review, there are things there that are actually tasty) or the fresh garden bar…

-IndianapolisEater

A few months back, I was in a Subway and saw that they had breakfast items on the menu.  I thought that was interesting because I had never seen that before, but I just figured they had been serving breakfast for a while and didn’t think anything of it.  Apparently, I should have thought something of it because within the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen several articles out there, including this one, that say that Subway is rolling out their breakfast menu nationally on April 5th.  So, I guess Indianapolis is a test market for foods yet again.  Odd.

Anyway, being the dedicated food blogger that I am, I was compelled to try this out and here are my results.

What I Got:  Western Omelet Sandwich Combo (comes with coffee) for $2.50 and the Black Forest Ham Omelet Sandwich for $3.00

First up was the Western Omelet Sandwich.  Subway offers you the opportunity to have the sandwich served on an english muffin, flatbread or their traditional sub rolls.  Since I at least wanted to pretend I was eating something similar to breakfast, I chose to get mine on an english muffin.  The sandwich does include egg omelet and you can get the “omelet” as an egg white omelet or a traditional omelet (using the whole egg).  I chose to be semi-healthy and get the egg white omelet.  Also included on the sandwich was their traditional black forest ham, green peppers, red onions, your choice of cheese (I chose pepper jack) and your option of the other traditional Subway vegetable options (I added a couple slices of tomato).

Basically, just like all Subway sandwiches, they give you the base of the food item and then you build this yourself.  As far as taste was concerned, my english muffin was slightly stale but the eggs were actually not that bad compared to my expecations.  I fully expected them to be rubbery since the SANDWICH ARTIST (so stupid, Subway) just pulled pre-made “omelets” out of a warmer box and threw it onto my muffin but they were somewhat soft and fluffy instead.  Even though I was surprised that the eggs were not awful, they were also not good either.  The melted cheese (they place the muffin in the toaster prior to serving it to you) was nice but everything else on this sucked.

Next up was the Black Forest Ham & Cheese.  Since I wanted to try for some variety, I got this one on flatbread.  Also included on the sandwich was the egg white omelet and I elected to have them add tomato and banana peppers as well.

For this one, I would classify this as an epic failure.  The only thing that made this even remotely resemble breakfast was that it had the omelet on it.  Everything else was just a normal Subway sandwich on a piece of flatbread.  Boring, stupid, tasteless, etc.  I’m not going to waste any more time describing this one because it isn’t worth it.

Would I Buy It Again?  No way.  Unlike WIBIA, I generally like Subway and am not biased against it, but I don’t know why they felt the need to get involved in the breakfast battle with all the fast food joints.  They should seriously re-consider either getting out of the breakfast business by April 6th or completely re-tool what they are offering because this was stuff was just bad.  Not only that, but it was overpriced as well.  If you really want fast food breakfast, stick with McDonald’s, Burger King or Hardee’s where you can get more variety and also better value.

Oh yeah, one more quick note.  Subway serves Seattle’s Best coffee in their restaurants.  It was the first time I’ve had Seattle’s Best coffee and it was just awful.  I have had gas station coffee at Village Pantry or Circle K that was light years better than this.

This meal actually ruined my next few hours because I couldn’t get the taste of the coffee or the crappy Subway breakfast out of my mouth.

-IndianapolisEater