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
