Restaurants

Happy Thanksgiving

It started a little early this year. A friend asked the other day where we intend to spend Thanksgiving.

Now from many people, this question means “are you planning to spend the holiday with your goddaughters in the Chicago suburbs or are you heading over to your cousins’ bash in Springfield, Illinois? Or will you join your sister-in-law’s family around the table?” But this particular friend knows one of my darkest secrets: Every so often, my husband and I tell all the different groups that we’ve accepted an invitation to someone else’s house just so we can hang out at our own undetected. You know, sleep in, watch the Macy’s parade, put up the Christmas tree, head out to dinner in a restaurant.

We’re due for that subterfuge.

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Captain D's two-piece fish

Apparently my emergency excursion to Long John Silver’s earlier this month has set off seismic cravings for cheap, greasy fried fish sticks, because this week I found myself in the parking lot at Captain D’s Seafood.

I tried to excuse my new habit by saying it was only fair that I review both competitors in the interest of good journalism technique. The problem with that lie is I’ve never really stopped eating at Captain D’s over the years, especially if they had a coupon. Still, I could objectively compare the chains’ quality and experience just as I did Moe’s and Chipotle, right?

Wrong. You see, to my complete surprise, I have yet to figure out the difference between my meals.

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We figured it was another of those authentic Mexican restaurants, but we were hungry, it was there, and there were a lot of cars in the parking lot. Looked like a recipe for dinner to me.

I was half right: the food that came out of the kitchen at Little Mexico on County Line Road and 135 uses the same wholesale suppliers for their entrees, because, frankly, I’d know that cheese and refried beans on the chips anywhere. But the connection stops there. They didn’t hand us a menu with the same-old, same-old dinner combinations, so someone here has jazzed up the creativity angle. Their salsa was definitely made on site and rates as the best in Indianapolis for my taste buds. They also found a decorator who, although in places still went for the sombrero and pancho nailed to the wall,  created an atmosphere that more resembled a Victorian parlor.

Break out the scones and tea, old chap.

But as refreshingly good as this dinner was, it wouldn’t have made made a blip on our “meals we will never forget” list if it hadn’t been for our fellow diners in the restaurant.

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Restaurant insiders call them LTOs, or limited time offers — those special menu items they haul out for the holidays and hawk the holy heck out of in their advertising. Most of these seasonal treats are not terribly creative, and thus you run into mint- or eggnog-flavored everything in December.

Dairy Queen's fall treat

Which is why I prefer the Halloween LTOs myself. Oh, there are a few clunkers — take Dairy Queen’s Pumpkin Pie Blizzard for starters. It sounds like an awesome idea, but in truth, pumpkin pie blended with vanilla soft serve ice cream and sprinkled with nutmegs is da bomb … and I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean it tastes heavy in your mouth and then explodes in your stomach. Belching pumpkin is not a fall delight at my house.

So not even the direct mail piece with a coupon attached can entice me to try that experience again. I’ll wait for the summer’s Cotton Candy Blizzard roll-out, thank you. But that didn’t stop me from throwing a cup of  Pumpkin Bagel Poppers onto my bill at Einstein Bros. Bagels last weekend.

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It was the worst meal my husband has made in 26 years, and that’s counting the time he poured a Guinness beer into a pot of chili, then proceeded to burn it.

The cure: Long John Silver's

I knew something was wrong the minute we opened the hard shells in the Taco Bell kit and the room suddenly smelled like a Fisher Price factory. Still, that didn’t deter either of us from fixing a taco and taking a crunch out of the end.

I’m still sorry 5 days later. Since we never found an expiration date on the box, I can’t say for sure how out-of-date that seasoning mix was that we stirred into the hamburger, but my educated guess is 12 years. At that moment, all I could fixate on was finding a way to scrub the taste off my tongue.

My husband went with the knee-jerk reaction: Let’s go to Taco Bell and get the real thing. That earned him a smack up the head. The only thing strong enough to counter the putrid tang lingering in my mouth was Yum Brand’s other quick-service franchise: Long John Silvers. Which shows you how desperate I was, because I haven’t set foot in that fried fish shack in five years after enduring horrible customer service twice in a row.

Not to mention their food can overpower a lion’s morning breath, which was, of course, now my only goal.

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Welcome, Monical's Pizza

I hate it when my brother gets something I don’t.

Never mind that we’re both in our 40s, adults with professional careers, mortgage payments and all those life balance questions middle-age Americans struggle with. He had a Monical’s Pizza on his side of Indianapolis and I didn’t. And he was always waving it in our face, saying things like, “Hey, you guys want to go over to Monical’s for dinner? The kids love that place.”

See what I mean? That kind of superiority from the kid brother eats at you over time.

Well, nana nana boo boo. Guess who just opened their doors in Greenwood? Yep, now I, too, can enjoy their thin and pan crust pizzas whenever I want to, and I don’t even have to drag along kids. But don’t tell my sibling this secret: I failed to notice this new addition to our restaurant families until last week.

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That's just wrong!

Boston Market and I got off on the wrong foot years ago. That’s my husband’s fault, as he mistook what this new building was on the south side of Indianapolis and had me get dressed up for a special dinner out.

Believe me, rotisserie chicken you order at the counter does not require a skirt, high heels and make-up.

Since that fateful night, they had the bad luck to be the restaurant my family chose to stop at when we were  within a few minutes of Hollywood Beach, my special corner of the world. I’ve managed to knock my full drink into my lap in their booth. It’s where my friend’s son started complaining about an ear ache after a day of swimming, which led to my misdiagnosing the situation and dropping alcohol onto an infected eardrum, bursting it immediately.

Boston Market: Wrong place, wrong time.

So tonight I decided it was time to bury the hatchet, go in and have a nice, normal meal at this fast casual restaurant. They serve healthy food (at least by my “Poptart for lunch” standards). They just announced a “Two Kids Eat Free” that allows a family to get two kids’ meals  free with purchase of an adult entree. (That’s a heck of a deal at the cash register.) They have an awesome crust on their chicken pot pies. I really want to like them.

Sigh. But I don’t.

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It’s not especially fun to be female when your birthday rolls around. Oh, I couldn’t give a fin flip about my age — but as the organizer, scheduler and event planner in this house, it means I have to coordinate my own party.

Mouth-watering salmon at Bonefish

The calls usually start at the beginning of the week: “So, where are we going to celebrate your birthday on Friday?” Now this is a tricky proposition, because you never want to name something out of your guests’ budget comfort zone. On the other hand, they looked rather aghast when I threw out the idea of ordering some pizzas and whooping it up in the back room at Donatos. After all, since my teen-age friend landed a job there, we’ve done that on plenty of ordinary nights.

I had already eaten at On the Border this week (uh, twice), and I spent a few minutes considering Famous Daves, because nothing says happy birthday like BBQ stains on your jeans. Still, the fact that we were looking for dinner at 6:30 in Indianapolis on a Friday all but required me to choose a restaurant that takes reservations. Once I realized that, the dilemma was over. We were heading to Bonefish Grill.

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I love to attend seminars at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis. For starters, they are connected to Circle Centre Mall, so you can park a bit more cheaply and walk over regardless of the weather. I think the flowing water fountains and glass elevator are cool. And my friend is a concierge there, so I can always count on a friendly face to say hello to on my breaks.

Best chili in Indy

Of course, there’s also the fact that they turn the meeting rooms down to 50 degrees so even those wearing sweaters are huddled up in their chairs trying to conserve body heat.

But escaping the man-made Antarctica is only the first reason to anticipate your lunch break: Charlie & Barney’s Bar and Grill is among the restaurants choices at the ground floor level. Good old C&B on Indy’s north side was a big favorite of mine back in the days when I put on a suit every day and sat in an office chair, mainly because you can’t beat their chili with spaghetti.

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Heine's corn dog

Even with all the restaurants within a 10-minute drive of my neighborhood, I get bored with my choices. It says more about me than the restaurants, I realize, but nevertheless I was in a cranky mood yesterday at dinner time.

This never bodes well for my husband.

He started throwing out possibilities, and I shot them down:  Too greasy. Ate there yesterday. Too expensive. And his favorite: “Yuck. You know I hate that place.” It landed me exactly where I didn’t want to be, which was in charge of dinner. Talk about feeling even more peevish…

So I turned to my Upromise account to see where I could earn a few cents for the niece and nephew’s college funds, and read a review for Heine’s World Famous Roast Beef. I’d never heard of it and I still wasn’t convinced until they mentioned this restaurant specializes in fair food — it seems the owner started in 2003 as concession venture selling a roast beef recipe his father inherited when he bought a tavern in Glendale, Ohio, in the 1960s. 

If there were ever two words (outside of “kinky sex”) destined to put a sparkle in my husband’s eyes, it’s fair food. 

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