Rick's Cafe Boatyard-Brunch

It was Sunday, it was sunny, so we decided to try brunch at Rick’s Café Boatyard with the kids and the Grandparents. They’re on opentable, so we made a reservation online (I recommend a reservation here) and headed over. (If you haven’t checked out opentable.com, it is a great way to get online reservations at most Indy restaurants and even other cities like Chicago and San Francisco—where I started using it). This is one of the few true waterside restaurants in town, and by that I mean, one of the few situated on a decent sized body of water (i.e. Eagle Creek). Definitely a large portion of the draw for me is the ambiance, and not as much the food.

One of the things I like about this place for brunch is that they do have a brunch menu with breakfast-y type items, but you can also order off the regular menu if you aren’t in the mood for breakfast items. But in the interest of reviewing something different, I decided to go for it and try the one of the brunch items, the Eggs Chesapeake. This is a version of Eggs Benedict served on top of crab cakes instead of English Muffins and Canadian bacon. I ordered this at the recommendation of our server (he said it was his favorite brunch item). It wasn’t bad, and the crab cakes had a fair amount of crab in them, but the seasoning was a little heavy handed I thought. The eggs were perfectly poached and the hollandaise pretty good as well. They were served with “breakfast potatoes” which were home fries. Home fries have to be really special to excite me (I am a hash brown girl for breakfast) and these weren’t really doing anything for me. I did have some of my Mom’s Seafood frittata as well which is basically a round omelette with shrimp and crab in it and a Mornay sauce on top. It was not bad either, the shrimps, when you came across them, were tasty. But nothing that made you want to run back and order it again. I don’t know, maybe my Dad was right; maybe seafood and breakfast don’t go together. He ordered the regular eggs benedict and seemed to enjoy them (again, they seem to have egg poaching down).

Hubby had the blackened catfish (from the regular menu) and thought it had sat under a heat lamp a bit and was a bit dry. The kids seemed to enjoy their meals, and except for somewhat slow service near the end, a decent meal was had by all. Again, I think the main draw here is the atmosphere and not the food. You feel like you’re at one of those seafood places you go when you’re on vacation with a great view. They have a nice deck and I would like to go eat out there one of these days when the weather gets nicer.

Rick’s Café Boatyard
Eagle Creek Reservoir
4050 Dandy Trail
Indy, 46204
317-290-9300
www.rickscafeboatyard.com