DJ's Hotdog Co.

***THIS LOCATION IS NOW CLOSED***

Lunch on the weekends with our kids is often a struggle sometimes. There aren’t a lot of great options around our house that we all like. We had a limited amount of time on this particular day, so it had to be close. We decided to give DJ’s a try because, well, we knew it was a hot dog place and the kids would surely be happy.

It’s one of those places where you walk in and order at the counter and they put most of it all together while you’re standing there. There’s a grill in the back for the burgers and Italian beef. 

I ordered a pretzel dog with ketchup, mustard and cheese ($3.59 + .50 for cheese).  A pretzel dog just means a regular hot dog on a pretzel roll, which sounded kind of good. The dog itself was a decent dog, but the guy making it pulled the roll out of a refrigerator/freezer (not sure which it was) and put it in the microwave which gave it a kind of tough, chewy, shriveled texture. I was not a big fan of it. I wished I had just gone with a regular bun because they were fresh. (My son had a regular hot dog and it was better).

My daughter ordered a cheeseburger ($4.95) from the regular menu (this isn’t an option on the kids’ menu) and it was definitely the best thing on the table. The meat is fresh and hand shaped and had a decent taste, even if it is cooked pretty well done. There was a fair amount of cheese on it. The bun was substantial, but didn’t suffer from the weird microwave taste of my pretzel bun. If I were to go back (which is unlikely) I would get the burger.

Hubby ordered the Italian beef (dipped) ($5.79) and it was pretty disappointing mainly because most of the ingredients were cold. Italian beef is a sliced beef sandwich served with sautéed onions and peppers and served on a hoagie-type roll. I am not sure if they just didn’t heat up the peppers and onions, or if the meat was heated up fully or if they dipped the sandwich into coldish broth, but it made for a fairly clammy, unappealing sandwich.

We got a side of fries ($1.69) and they were standard food service crinkle cut fries, which aren’t my favorite. As far as what they were, they were cooked appropriately and were hot and crisp.

This place has a decent looking Chicago style food menu, but it just felt too foodservicey and tasted not very homemade. It’s a small local chain, but it felt too fast food-ish too me. Maybe it was just a bad day, I don't know—I would be curious to hear about other people’s experiences.

DJ’s Hotdog Company

4909 East 82^nd Street

Indy  46250

317/273-1833

www.djshotdogs.com

Tian Fu

This is a restaurant I learned about because the owners have a decent twitter feed. I generally try and follow every Indy restaurant on twitter. I saw them, they interacted with me, I checked out the menu and it looked interesting. So when I was out that way one day I stopped in. It’s amazing what kind of marketing tool twitter can be.

Anyway, that first lunch I was actually surprised I had never noticed this place before. It is in a strip mall near 86^th and Michigan and I have driven by it many times. The interior is nicer than I was expecting and it’s pretty large. The menu features many different Asian cuisines, including sushi, but when I’m alone I don’t like getting rolls because I can’t try very many. So on this visit I decided to go with the Chinese menu, and specifically focused on the “Tian Fu specials.” I liked that they have a nice lunch menu that includes dishes other than the standard Chinese restaurant lunch special fare (which they have as well).

I ordered the Szechwan hot boiled fish dish ($9.95). It came with a choice of soup, rice, and a spring roll and a crab Rangoon on the side.  I had the hot and sour soup and it was one of the better ones I have had in Indy. It had a lot of stuff going on inside, mushrooms, tofu, carrots, and lots of bits of egg. It had just the right consistency, not being over-thickened like some. It also had a nice spicy kick to it as well as the sour taste of vinegar. They got this one right. I do like getting the little fried wontons to crumble in, which they brought with the soup, but these were a tad stale (seems to be a problem for me lately).

The fish was very good. My server told me it was spicy and she wasn’t kidding. She also told me upon delivering it, to be sure and mix it up before I ate it. There was a lot of crushed garlic and ginger sitting on top and the fish and broth had been placed on top of veggies—mainly cabbage leaves—and she was right, mixing it all up was important. It softened the leaves and more evenly distributed the seasonings. I love garlic and ginger so I appreciated visually being able to see it quite clearly. The broth that they poach the flounder in is a red pepper broth. It had heat and a lot of flavor. The fish was plentiful and was very tender. I thought it was a large portion, particularly with all the other things you got with it, even if it was one of the more expensive lunch items. I didn’t care for the spring roll, which was full of just shredded cabbage and carrots and kind of hit you in the chin when you bit into it. The crab Rangoon wasn’t bad—a thicker wonton and just folded in half and fried. It made for a nice texture and slightly sweet flavor variation from the two spicy broth-based dishes.

Since I really wanted to try the sushi too, I met my friend Suzanne there for lunch about a week after the first visit to get a couple of rolls. She ordered a green salad to start ($3.95) and we also ordered the fried tofu appetizer ($3.95).  The salad was larger than Japanese salads usually are, so we shared it. It was mainly large pieces of iceberg lettuce (so large it was nearly impossible to eat with chopsticks) with a ginger dressing. Because it was on a plate and not in a bowl, the dressing kind of separated leaving the gingery bits on top and kind of a watery pool on the bottom. The tofu was good—I liked that the pieces were cut into thinner pieces so you could get some crispy outside with each bite. Initially they did not bring any sauce though (and there was none on the plate). We weren’t sure if this was an oversight or not, but our server did bring us out a sauce for dipping. It was lightly sweet (fish sauce and a bit of soy maybe) with some scallions. 

For sushi, we had the black dragon roll ($12.95) and the tobiko rainbow roll ($12.95). The black dragon roll was supposed to have tempura shrimp and cucumber inside although I didn’t taste any cucumber (which is fine with me, it is one of my least favorite sushi roll ingredients besides cream cheese). It was topped with eel, avocado, eel sauce and black tobiko (fish eggs). It wasn’t bad, but the eel part tasted a little fishy to me, and I am normally a fan.  I liked the other roll better—it was filled with spicy tuna and a little bit of tempura crunch, and was topped with lots of avocado and various colors of tobiko. The tuna was still decent quality and I always like a little crunch. The avocado was perfect. The rolls were artfully presented, and a pretty good sized—maybe slightly larger than a mouthful though.  I would rate the quality in the middle of Indy sushi places. It wasn’t bad, but there are several places I like better. 

Our service on the second trip was a little more difficult too—it was our server’s first day and she didn’t speak a lot of English and didn’t know a lot about the menu. It was a pretty dramatic departure from the server I had the first time. 

All in all, I think Tian Fu is a decent lunch place. I think I would stick to the Chinese side of the menu and skip the sushi. It wasn’t bad, but the first lunch I had was more unique, and tasted better. It seems to do a decent business at lunch, and I would be curious if any of you guys have been there.

Tian Fu Asian Bistro

3508 West 86^th Street

Indy  46268

317/872-6888

www.tianfuasianbistro.com 

Ripple Bagel Deli

I met my favorite Pilates instructor for lunch the other day at Ripple Bagel Deli—we were trying to find a place in Broad Ripple (she’s working there now) that I haven’t been and she really likes this place (and so do some other friends). She was very enthusiastic about going when I mentioned it.

So the menu at this place is enormous. You can pretty much get any combo of deli meat/cream cheese/cheese /veggies that you can imagine. I ended up with the “Sarah’s Secret” without sprouts and on a garlic bagel ($5.60). Sarah’s Secret is a bagel topped with very thin sliced turkey, mustard (think brown mustard here), cream cheese, and avocado.

Ok, I had my doubts about how good a bagel could really be just topped with ordinary sandwich ingredients, but this was pretty darn good. The secret here is that they steam the sandwich after they put all the ingredients together. This makes for a warm, and somewhat squishy, sandwich that just tastes really good. It also makes for an extremely messy sandwich that requires many, many napkins to keep your hands clean (I seriously wonder how much they spend on napkins in this place).  The avocado was ripe, the turkey didn’t taste overly processed, and it had a fair amount of a mustard kick. 

I was hopeful to try the potato salad but they hadn’t yet made it the day I was there, so I just went with a bag of chips. My fitness-obsessed friend insisted on the fancy rice crispy treat though that involved a rice-crispy-based bottom (with some peanut butter mixed in) and a chocolate layer on top. It was pretty tasty, although tasted like it had probably been made several days prior. I did notice that probably 75% of the people coming in picked one up though, so there must be something slightly addictive about them.

The people are nice here, but the ordering system is kind of random. I am assuming it is because the menu is so big, a lot of people take some time to figure out what they want. But they just sort of shout out, "who's ready?"and if you are, you go and tell them what you want. But for a cheap, filling meal, this was a great deal. The bagel was really good and it is the first time I have had a bagel sandwich made quite this way. Something about it made me have to keep eating it after I was pretty full. I can certainly see how this place has built a substantial following of late night partiers on the Broad Ripple strip. It tasted good when I was sober, I can imagine how good it would taste after a few too many drinks. 

Ripple Bagel Deli

850 Broad Ripple Ave

Indy 46220

317/257-8326

www.ripplebageldeli.com 

Cerulean - Revisit

Ok, it was the buffalo fried chicken skins that lured me back to Cerulean.  I have never had a bad meal there, but the last one was a little lacking service-wise (and the food hadn't been as good as the first time). This time we decided to just go with one other couple and avoid any potential auto-gratuity issues. Also, my friend really wanted the buffalo fried chicken skins too.

The first thing we got was a really good table (something we did not as a party of 8) right in front of the main window. Lovely. We also had a very attentive server, stemmed wine glasses, and no hassle with our wine.

Cheese and Fried Bread with Preserves

Melon

Tart Amuse 

These are our drunken sailor friends, who will order willy-nilly a ton of food and share it all. The best kind of friends to dine with. We started with the Indiana cheese board ($21), the fried bread ($7), the buffalo chicken skins (natch)($6), and the compressed melon salad ($8). All of it was fairly spectacular I have to say, even though we probably over-ordered. The cheeses were great—there were four different cheeses ranging from a blue to a soft mild goat and it was served with wonderful salty housemade crackers, apple mostarda and preserved figs. It was a great combo with the fried bread which was good on its own, but also came with house preserves including a strawberry jam, a plum jam, a jalapeno cream and a mushroom custard—all served in cute little jars, even if they were a little challenging to get the stuff out of with the slightly too large spoons served with them. I think we all agreed we loved the mushroom one a lot spread on the fried bread, and I also really enjoyed putting a little of the jams on top of the cheese as well. Sometimes I used the crackers and sometimes I used the bread. All of it was delicious, but I think I would really want to order both again in the future to mix and match which certainly necessitates more than just hubby and me because it’s a lot of food.

Buffalo Chicken Skins

One Chicken Skin

The fried chicken skins were very tasty too. They didn’t have a strong buffalo flavor, more of just a more heavily seasoned fried chicken, but they were extremely rich and decadent. The Gorgonzola mayo underneath could have used a bit more blue cheese flavor, but I enjoyed having something rich to dip into. A very cool take on some classic flavors. The melon was also a refreshing variation from what were some very rich appetizers—and it was a smaller size for sure. The only thing I didn’t like at this stage of the meal was the amuse bouche they served—it was a slice of pickled apple that was so tart, it almost choked a person. Small bits of these would have probably been lovely with the cheese, but on its own (well, with a bit of caramel corn) was a bit much.

As far as the size of the plates, I guess Cerulean had decided to move away from the very small plates into a more standard kind of menu. The first page of the menu is larger, more shareable items now. The second page is more of a classic appetizer and the third page classic entrées.

The three second courses we had were the Mangalitsa pork ($16), the summer squash ($12) and the lamb sweetbreads ($14). Again, everything was very good. The pork dish was very large—it had an herby biscuit underneath, lots of shredded pork, some mushrooms and tomatoes and a light, slightly maple vinaigrette underneath—and of course, the thing that sold me, a beautiful sunny side up egg on top. This was clearly big enough to be a main dish.  The meat had a lot of flavor and I liked the yolk making the thin sauce a little thicker and richer.

I only had a bite of the squash but it was very tender and was well seasoned—there was tarragon as well as some fruit preserves underneath.  Probably my favorite second course was the lamb sweetbreads. They were little pieces that were fried very crisp (they know how to fry things up here). There was a creamy yogurt sauce and a very thin agrodolce (sweet and sour) sauce flavored slightly with rosemary. A great combination of sweet, tangy and completely over the top decadent with the fried bits of sweetbread. I could easily eat a whole plate of these I think.

Squash

Sweetbreads

For my main dish I ordered the vegetarian option which was heirloom tomato confit ($24) and hubby ordered the ribeye ($34)—we planned on sharing. Again both were very good, although I don’t think the tomatoes would have been enough on their own for an entrée, it tasted more like a heavy appetizer. I liked the way they had cooked the tomatoes whole though, and that it was a hot dish. There was also some formage blanc (sort of like cream cheese) underneath and a lemony vinaigrette on the whole thing. I could have used a little more of the cheese to go with all the tomatoes.  I liked the fresh arugula for a nice texture variation. It was good but I would have been disappointed if I weren’t sharing with hubby. His ribeye was delicious—it was a thin cut style and had a wonderful homemade vinegar steak sauce and large mushrooms and soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside, cheddar bacon croquettes. Even though the steak was very thin, it was cooked appropriately. I also had a bit of my friend’s salmon –it had great bright flavors with pineapple on top (there were some hot slices of chili pepper as well which I skipped.

Tomatoes

Ribeye

Salmon

I have been impressed with pastry chef Pete Schmutte since I first had his desserts way back at the City Market dinner I organized awhile back.  He does a lovely job of presenting them and coming up with flavors you don’t see on every menu in town. Our friends ordered the stewed cherries with angel food cake, buttermilk Amaretto cream, sarsaparilla ice cream and black pepper ($9). I had a little bite, and it was tasty. I also loved my simpler trio of sorbets ($8)(exactly what I wanted after all that food). And when they told me passion fruit was one of the flavors, I was sold. There was also pineapple mango and a strawberry. All were light, bright, and delicious. The little macaroon on the side was a nice thing to eat along with, although I would have loved a couple more.

This was our best meal at Cerulean yet, and top to bottom, one of the best I have had in Indy for a while. I continue to hear mixed thoughts about the restaurant, but this meal made me appreciate how lucky we are to have such a modern, artistic space with wonderful food. It’s a nice counter-balance to a lot of the more casual, bar-centered restaurants that have become so prevalent in Indy. 

Cerulean

339 South Delaware Street

Indy  46225

317/870-1320

www.ceruleanrestaurant.com 

Amber Indian

So Indian food—you might have noticed I don’t have a ton of posts about it. It is a cuisine that I haven’t explored as in depth as I have a lot of others. But friends of ours have suggested to us to go to Amber Indian for a while so we wrangled our gaggle of kids and checked it out together. It was nice being with them because they are regulars at the place and really know what they like. They also were willing to order a ton of stuff (always my favorite way to go) so we got to try lots of things.

They served us some papadum to start—these are thin, crispy cracker-like discs that are sort of like the chips and salsa of Indian food. There was a sweet, slightly tart, thick brownish/purple sauce, a green cilantro-based sauce and a red spicy chili sauce. I enjoyed a bit of all of them. We also had an order of onion pakora ($3), which were little bits of onion battered with chickpea flour and other spices and deep-fried. I liked them because they had an interesting, almost nutty flavor. My son loved these and finished off everything that everyone else didn’t.

We ordered a ton of things like I said, but my favorite things were the chicken tikka masala (13.99) and the chana masala ($8.99).  The chicken in the tikka masala was super tender (it was seasoned and cooked in the tandoori oven) and the creamy sauce had a great complex flavor. There was certainly a cream type of base, and there was some tomato as well as a bit of coconut in this one. I really enjoyed it. The chana masala has chickpeas as a main ingredient. This one wasn’t cream-based and had more of a garlic and ginger flavor to it. It had a bit of heat as well. There were also bits of tomato and peppers and cilantro as a seasoning. The chickpeas were very tender and made it seem like a fairly meaty dish even though it was veggie.

We also had the chicken legs from the tandoori oven (they call them kebab chicken) ($7.99). These were also good and were popular with the kids. The meat had a nice flavor from being marinated with herbs and spices and was pretty tender—but not like the chicken tikka masala (maybe the sauce is what made it seem so tender). 

There was also a very spicy dish called vegetable jalfrezi ($8.99) as well. These were large pieces of lots and lots of kinds of veggies—things like cauliflower, carrots, peppers, green beans and corn. This was probably the spiciest dish we had and wasn’t my favorite just because it was so spicy. I did like that this dish had a lot more texture than much of the other dishes, which are a creamier, soft consistency.

We had the palak paneer ($9.99) as well which is like a creamed spinach dish with a few chunks of cheese mixed in. The creaminess in the spinach had a slight curry taste as well. You certainly need to like spinach to like this dish, which I do, but it was hard to eat a lot of it—better as a kind of side dish. There wasn't a lot of the cheese. Finally, we had the daal curry ($8.99), which is a lentil based curry with tomatoes and cilantro. This had more of a straight up yellow curry flavor which is my least favorite of the Indian flavors—must be the turmeric. 

The naan, which came included with everything (as well as white rice) was really, really good. Naan is a type of bread that is cooked in the tandoori oven until it is slightly blistered. A little similar to pita bread, but way better. You could get garlic or plain and we had half and half. I really liked the garlic one best myself, but I can’t see how you can’t improve almost anything with garlic. Honestly just dipping the Naan in all the dishes is what makes this cuisine. The rice is good to add a little texture, but the Naan, well, it was delicious.

I really enjoyed my meal and was really happy to try lots of different things. I think that is the key for me to get to know Indian food better. I am not sure if I would have ordered the chana masala if it had just been me, or just hubby and I, and I was really glad we did.

Now, since I am trying to delve a little deeper here, tell me where you like to get Indian in Indy, and what are your favorite dishes?

Amber Indian

12510 North Meridian

Carmel, In 46032

317/580-0828

www.amberindianrestaurant.com  

K & T Deli

I found myself on the west side the other day looking for a restaurant near 79^th and Georgetown. I didn’t seem to have any luck in that area, so I decided to just go ahead and drive over to Lafayette Road and try K&T Deli. I keep hearing about it from various sources.

It’s a little place, and the exterior doesn’t give much of a hint of the inside. It is actually a cute little place (not fancy at all, but not divey either). The guy who was working behind the counter (and waiting on me) could not have been more polite and accommodating.

The menu is actually pretty extensive, and honestly, a lot of the stuff looks really good (pho and other noodle dishes as well as stir fry plates and some interesting sounding rice flour crepes, which I love.) They also have lots of drinks and smoothies.  I was on a quest to try the bánh mì though, so that’s what I ordered. There are lots of flavor options here as well (various forms of pork as well as chicken and even sardine) and it was kind of hard to decide. I decided to go with a pork roll and pork belly version ($3.75). I also ordered some fried shrimp and pork egg rolls ($3.50).

The egg rolls came out first and they were quite tasty. They are smallish and wrapped in rice paper before they are fried making them really crunchy. I found them to be filled mainly with pork, and tasted less shrimp, but they were pretty addicting. They came with nice fresh pieces of romaine lettuce that I wrapped around them and dipped the whole lot into the accompanying sauce (slightly sweet, fish sauce-based sauce). 

The bánh mì was definitely the star though. And of all the ingredients, the bread was amazing. It was so soft, yet the crust so flakey that just biting into it covered the general region with bread crumb snow.  The sandwich had a smear of liver pâté, and then the pork roll (sort of like a sliced ham in texture) and thin slices of pork belly and was topped with fairly large spears of cucumber and the lightly pickled strings of radish and carrot and a bit of cilantro. The whole sandwich had a smear of mayo as well. It was really very good. I loved the smear of the pâté on one side of the bread so that you got that salty, earthy taste in each bite. The cucumbers were a little big for me and seemed to dominate the flavors of the other veggie toppings, so I just took most of them out. I loved the light acidic flavor of the julienned carrots and radish. And for the price, you can’t really beat it. And that bread…that bread is great (he told me they get it from Chicago).

For fun, I also ordered a salted limeade just because it sounded like something I might like. I was imagining a tart and slightly salty taste, but the limeade was very sweet. I didn’t really care for it because it was so sweet, but I did like the slightly salty edge to it, which made it interesting.

The whole experience was a pleasant one. The people working there were very nice, the food was very good, and the prices are right.  I look forward to trying it again soon and getting some other menu items. If you have suggestions, please let me know! (Just an FYI, they are closed on Mondays.)

K&T Deli

3738 Lafayette Road

Indy  46222

317/602-2416

Plum's Upper Room

I had high hopes for this one. The chef has some fairly impressive credentials and the online (sample) menu was intriguing. Online reviews were very mixed both high and low, but I was anxious to try it myself and was hoping for the highs to be our experience.

First thing, I love the interior—it is upstairs in a building in downtown Zionsville and is full of lots of wood, twinkly lights, and art. We had a lovely table for two in front of one of the windows overlooking the street. In the beginning, our server was very attentive. We had our wine quickly and perused the rest of the menu (which is strangely set out in reverse order—entrées first, then apps, then soups and salads). Sadly, the server, while very friendly, didn’t know much about the menu items which made it difficult to decide what to order. It’s too bad the servers are more versed in the menu.

We started out with the soup du jour, which was a corn puree with a bit of crispy bacon ($7). This was easily the best thing we had all night. The soup tasted wonderfully of fresh corn and was drizzled with a bit of what I think was basil oil giving it an even fresher summery taste. The soup was very smooth, and when you got a bite of the bacon with it, it was perfect. 

The other appetizer we ordered, the fried green tomatoes ($10) were not as successful, although they weren’t bad. I liked the super crispy fried exterior—it was nicely seasoned with peppercorns—but it could have used some sort of sauce with it other than the flavored oil underneath.  Also, they were a little thickly cut for me—a little too much tomato to crust ratio, particularly without anything to dip it into. Hubby and I resorted to dipping them in the soup and they were tasty that way. 

It was about this point of the meal where things started going south. The restaurant began really filling up (good for them), including a party of 10-12 people that our server was also waiting on (as well as many other tables). There were only 2 servers I could see in the entire place. Let’s just say, it was a struggle to get anyone’s attention for the rest of the night. Luckily, we had placed our order just before the large party was seated, so we knew we were at least ahead of them.

Hubby had the salmon pasta special ($30) and I had the mussels ($12) with a side of frites ($7). First of all, the salmon special was on a blackboard and no price was mentioned.  When he got the food, due to the size, hubby thought he had ordered an appetizer. Which would be fine, as we often do that purposefully, but the $30 price tag we saw when we got the bill was a little steep. And sadly, it was not very good. Again, much like the tomatoes, there seemed to be something missing—moisture. These angnolotti were more like dumplings than they were stuffed pasta—and the ramp butter that was listed on the menu was not really evident in any quantity. One thing I did really like were the ground cherries, which are a type of little fruit that looks (and tastes) a bit like a teeny tiny tomato. I can’t remember ever having them before. Honestly, I thought the menu listing meant “ground” cherries as in, ground up cherries, when I read it, which sounded a bit weird, and was happy to find these instead.

My mussels were fine—the mariniere broth they were cooked in had a great flavor—wine, shallots and herbs. Sadly, there was not enough of it, and it seemed that the mussels had not been steamed with enough of it either, because they seemed a bit chewy and overcooked as well.  The thing that really annoyed with this part of the meal was the “frites” though. They were food service fries that were barely dusted with salt (and of course there was no salt on the table, and no way we were ever going to get someone’s attention to get any). And they were $7. I don’t complain about prices very often, but this and the salmon were out of line. 

At this point, hubby was ready to get out of there. The server was obviously completely overwhelmed (as was the rest of the staff). I had intended to try dessert because I had read several people say that is was worthwhile here, but when we finally got our server’s attention to ask for the menu, she said they were written on the blackboard and maybe we could just get up and go read them ourselves. To be fair, she did say if she had more time, she would’ve gone over them with us. We decided to cut our losses and leave. 

So all in all, it was a bit of a disaster. I felt bad for our server though, because honestly none of it was her fault. They were sorely understaffed. Obviously they knew they had a fair number of reservations (the tables were marked with the last names, which I thought was kind of nice), but there weren’t enough people there to take care of everyone. I also think the servers should be more trained on the

food.

It’s really too bad too, because I really loved the ambiance and the menu sounded appealing and there was some creativity in the food. But sadly, between the service and a lot of the food we were served, there was nothing that gave us a reason to go back. I really hope it was just an off night, but it will take a lot to lure me back in. Maybe one of you guys have had a great meal here and can tell me about it? 

Plum’s Upper Room

112 South Main Street

Zionsville, IN 46077

317/873-5577

www.plumsupperroom.com

Rosie's Place - Revisit

I wrote about Rosie’s awhile back, but I had not been there with the family, so one Sunday we felt like a drive and headed up to Noblesville. I think Noblesville has done a nice job with their old town center—keeping the historical buildings intact as well as supporting pretty much only locally owned businesses. I think that’s pretty impressive these days.

Anyway, we only had to wait a couple of minutes, even though the place was doing a hustling business. They have a pretty large menu (breakfast and lunch available) but all of us but my son were lured in by specials on this day.

I had a special breakfast sandwich with eggs that were scrambled with fresh chives, gouda cheese, fresh spinach and bacon all on challah bread. There were breakfast potatoes served with it. My favorite part of the sandwich was the perfectly toasty bread—a slightly sweet, eggy bread sliced just the right thickness. It was so light and buttery, it almost fell apart as you ate it. The eggs were nicely done as well. They weren’t overcooked and had a nice lightness to them that is often hard to find in a busy breakfast place—and they were lightly seasoned as well. The other ingredients were fine. The bacon had good flavor, although it was little tiny pieces of bacon scattered on top which maybe easier to sort of portion over the sandwich, but they fell off when you were eating them ad I never got a good 

bacon-y bite. I preferred the bites of my son’s full pieces of bacon. The spinach was fresh and plentiful. The potatoes were just too soft and weren't really anything special.

Hubby had a special—the shrimp and grits (of course he did). Unfortunately, this dish was not very good. There was a large lump of the grits in the middle—and they were quite firm and not the slightly soupy, looser grits he prefers. There were several seasoned shrimps scattered around, but sadly, they were also a little on the firm side. Actually, now that I think of it, the eggs on top were also pretty darn firm with little runny yolk on them.  They were also sprinkled with bits of bacon. So yeah, this one sort of got the thumbs down. Just too firm and dry.

My daughter had another special—the "Samoas" pancakes. That’s right, Samoas like the girl scout cookies. Talk about decadent. There were three pancakes with chocolate ganache between each one, and more on top. Then, they also topped the chocolate on the top with a mound of caramelly coconut. This was pretty darn tasty. Ok, if I ate this for breakfast, I would be in a sugar coma for hours, but the chocolately bites I had were really good (the chocolate ganache is very good). My kids, on the other hand, were happy to finish it off. 

Rosie’s is a solid, friendly neighborhood place. This meal had its ups and downs for sure, but if it were my neighborhood, I am sure it would be a fairly frequent stop. The menu is very accessible, it’s family friendly and the ingredients are fresh.

Rosie’s Place

68 North 9^th Street

Noblesville, IN 46060

317/770-3322

http://rosiesplace.net/