Tag Archives: restaurants

Not Put Asunder, 13 Years and Counting

July 17, 2017 By in Indiana, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Aquarium Us!

Ho ho ho, the flimsy Photoshop dolphins think it’s hilarious that we’re miming being trapped in a giant glass tank. THAT’S NOT MIME. WE ARE DROWNING. PLEASE SAVE US, YOU HEARTLESS FLOATING HOT DOGS WITH MUDFLAPS.

Above is a teaser image from our 2017 road trip, courtesy of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, where my lovely wife Anne and I had the pleasure of spending a few days and not getting murdered despite what you hear on TV.

We’ve known each other for nearly thirty years next month. We’ve been married for thirteen years as of this very Monday. Vacation photos and jazz hands are just two of the many cornerstones of our relationship — not the most important ones, mind you, and certainly not the hardest ones to achieve. But when your never-ending process of maintaining and streamlining the critical factors is kept on track, it frees up your mental space to indulge in the happier shared whims. If the process yields fun tangible souvenirs like this one, so much the better and the merrier.

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Birthday 45: The Food So Far

May 18, 2017 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments
Jack's Donuts!

Partial sampling of the flavors and gargantuan portions at Jack’s Donuts.

It’s that time again! This week I turned 45 without entering true Midlife Crisis mode yet, and with only modest physical damage reminding me of the ravages of time. The knee I sprained in Elkhart two months ago has healed and regained more than half its flexibility back. My chronic back pain has left me alone of late. My poor sleeping habits have been slightly less out of control most of this week. The recurring heartburn that’s begun haunting me this year has subsided so far this month. The worst thing going for me at the moment is the giant eyelid pimple that greeted me in the mirror this morning and irritated me most of the day. And you can tell I’m getting old because here’s a short entry about food but the first thing on my mind is all my aches and pains.

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Indy Food Trucks Turn the Whole World on with a Smile (Part 6 in a series)

May 2, 2017 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Gigi's Cupcakes!

Got sugar? Gigi’s Cupcakes has some waiting for you.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: when MCC launched five years ago, one of our recurring habits was keeping tabs on the Indianapolis food truck experience whenever those mighty mobile merchants rocked my world and my lunchtime. (Past entries were here, here, here, here, and here, though a few of the older trucks are sadly no longer with us.) They’re not in my path as often as I’d like, but we see enough of them from time to time that the occasional gallery is warranted as our way of thanking these eminent entrepreneurs for outstanding achievement in the field of edible excellence.

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Our 2017 Super Bowl Deserted Restaurant Getaway

February 5, 2017 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Picanha!

Picanha, a.k.a. garlic sirloin, one of Anne’s favorite bites of the night.

Each year my wife Anne and I have indulged our own special Super Bowl tradition: while the rest of the world is watching football and swapping snacks and beers with best friends and chatting about The Sports, the two of us have dinner at a fancy restaurant we’ve never tried before. Between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m., anyplace without a large-screen TV is usually deserted and totally ours for the taking.

The last few years have also seen Super Bowl Sunday coincide with a local event called Devour Downtown, in which dozens of upscale establishments in downtown Indianapolis offer a limited-time sort of blue-plate special that allows plebes like us to come in and sample their cuisine from a specially selected discount menu. It’s still a bit pricier than five-dollar footlongs, but in our experience the quality has always been immeasurably higher, no matter where we’ve gone. This year the event was merged with several others of its kind, expanded citywide, and renamed Devour Indy. We ended up heading downtown anyway, but it’s nice to know we’ll have more compass options in the years ahead.

Tonight’s feature presentation: Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse with over two dozen American locations in addition to their flagships back home. For one solid price that was more than we would ever dream of paying for non-special occasions, their Devour Indy special offered a buffet of fancy unlimited appetizers, while the waiters approached every table with a few unlimited side dishes and numerous small yet unlimited meat portions all prepared in the Brazilian way, by which I mean they were made of meat. Good enough for us.

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Road Trip Origins Year 2, Part 2 of 3: Trainwreck at the Trainwreck

January 26, 2017 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Trainwreck!

American history! Frontier architecture! Bison tongue appetizer!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: a flashback to our second annual road trip, attending St. Louis’ second and final Gateway Sci-Fi Con in the year 2000. Actors from Mystery Science Theater 3000 were met, autographs were treasured, panels were enjoyed, and dozens of internet peers showed up to put faces with names. But we didn’t limit ourselves to the convention hotel’s property. None of us were from St. Louis; some of us were eager to explore and see what else the city had to offer.

Saturday night, seven of us piled into two cars and drove out to LaClede’s Landing, a district on the banks of the Mississippi River and down the street from the world-famous Gateway Arch. LaClede’s Landing is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with warehouses and facades dating back to the mid-19th century that were renovated circa 1975-1976. Not so renovated: the solid cobblestone streets we navigated at 2 MPH, feeling bump after bump after bump after bump after bump after bump as we crawled the blocks looking for sustenance and wishing someone would make the bumping stop.

Fate brought us to a saloon called Trainwreck on the Landing. Other Trainwrecks have existed in the 314 since the 1890s, but we knew nothing about any of them. We figured why not and gave it a whirl.

Hated it. We hated it so much, I wrote a skit about it four days later.

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Cooking with Alex Guarnaschelli at Indy’s 2nd Fantastic Food Fest

January 22, 2017 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Alex Guarnaschelli!

True story: Chef Alex is the first person we’ve ever met at a show who mentioned jazz hands in a Q&A before we even had the chance to ask.

Last year my wife Anne and I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural Fantastic Food Fest at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, planned by its creators at Circle City Expos as an annual event bringing together the best and brightest providers from numerous restaurants, markets, farms, caterers, bakeries, and other tremendous sources of locally sourced ingredients and cuisine under one roof for foodies to gather and escape winter doldrums. Year One’s big show brought in a headliner we loved to meet, Chopped host and hometown hero Ted Allen. If the show was successful, we figured we’d return regardless of the guest list.

As Chopped fans, we weren’t disappointed. Year 2 brought in a related special guest all the way from New York City, Iron Chef Alex Guarnaschelli, the Chopped judge most likely to deliver a ruling composed entirely of clever metaphors. Alex summed up the order of the day as she opened her 1:30 cooking demo: “It’s time to eat and cook and forget about a whole lotta other things for a while.”

Right this way for a photo gallery of amazing colossal foodstuffs!

Cincinnati 2016 Overnighter Photos, Part 6 of 6

December 16, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cincinnati!

Our hotel room’s view of downtown Cincinnati high above the nightlife.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s convention time yet again! This weekend my wife Anne and I have driven two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend a show we’ve never done before, the seventh annual Cincinnati Comic Expo. With her birthday coming up in a few weeks, which usually means a one-day road trip somewhere, we agreed this would count as her early celebration.

Growing up in Indiana, we Hoosiers rarely had reasons to visit next-door Ohio until and unless it was time for another one-day family road trip to Kings Island Amusement Park, a few miles north of Cincinnati. If you believe the movie Anomalisa, the only two reasons to visit Cincinnati itself are the Cincinnati Zoo and Skyline Chili. After we wrapped up our Cincinnati Comic Expo experience, we did none of those things and found a few reasons not to be bored anyway.

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Farewell, Milano Inn. We Just Barely Knew Ye.

December 10, 2016 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Milano Inn!

At the time we were excited to be there and had no idea the stop sign was deep, clever foreshadowing.

When it’s time to pay respects and say goodbye to a cherished person, place, or thing, sometimes it’s good not to wait till the last minute. Better still, keeping in touch and enjoying their presence while things are going well means you don’t have to feel quite so lousy if they depart without you orchestrating a proper sendoff.

Today my wife and I had fun plans in downtown Indianapolis in the morning, a nephew’s birthday party out in Brownsburg in the afternoon, and a gap between them that might fit a nice lunch. Our schedule filled itself out when we learned this week that the Milano Inn, a renowned Italian restaurant serving the Circle City since 1934, would be closing its doors for good at the end of 2016, a year that just won’t stop racking up casualties. A husband-and-wife date before their farewell seemed in order.

Key word: “seemed”.

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2016 NYC Trip Photos #28: The Last Manhattan Mealtimes

December 1, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Junior's pastry!

Mini-pastry appetizer at Junior’s, one of the better experiences from the second half of our week.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…

On our vacations the meals trend in the same direction throughout our week: at first tentative while we’re exploring new territory. After a day or two we’re emboldened enough to experiment with places more imaginative or just more expensive. After peaking midweek with the greatest meals of the year, our dinners then begin to descend in either quality or excitement level as we reach the far end of our budget and tap into our last reserves of energy just to finish out the trip. We try to keep finding gems among the dross, whether the results impress our friends back home or not.

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2016 NYC Trip Photos #19: Ultimate Manhattan Mealtime

November 5, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Grill!

If you’ve ever gone to Benihana but resented those showy chefs as superfluous middlemen in your tableside cooking experience, have we got a restaurant for you.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…

Visiting two museums along Manhattan’s Museum Mile seemed insufficient, but we’d already seen the Metropolitan Museum of Art on our 2011 trip, and we were running out of time. We had restaurant reservations at the end of Day Four that would prove to be the best meal we’ve ever had in New York City, possibly a contender for Top 5 Meals of All Time.

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2016 NYC Trip Photos #12: Manhattan Mealtimes II

October 17, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Cake boss cakes!

Sweet, sweet New York City cakes by way of New Jersey. As Seen on TV!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…

Day Three in Manhattan brought us more interesting adventures in the fabulous field of food — twice in Times Square, twice in Chinatown. One was a recommendation, but the rest were discoveries on the go, this time with no flawed assistance from Google Maps.

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2016 NYC Trip Photos #7: Manhattan Mealtimes

October 2, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Halal Carts!

Our Day Two lunchtime architect panicked at the idea of being on camera, but graciously invited us to photograph his workspace where the magic happens.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…

Upon our return to Manhattan we hoped for interesting adventures in the fabulous field of food. Results varied more than we expected as we did our best to accommodate all tastes and hopes within our little trio — sometimes venturing into businesses unknown, occasionally settling for familiar logos for the sake of party unity. We learned that independent ownership is no guarantee of a successful meal, nor is corporate franchising presumptive of automatic culinary failure.

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2016 NYC Trip Photos #2: The Kitchen and the Kitchen

September 12, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cesar Chavez Quote!

…and the people who charge you for their food would rather things stay “just business” between you. Nothing personal, of course . It’s not you, it’s them.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…

Our hotel of choice for the week was on West 44th Street, squished between larger buildings, on the east edge of the notorious Hell’s Kitchen. On Netflix’s Marvel’s Daredevil it’s a crime-infested urban blight magnet that muggers, robbers, and gangsters of various ethnicities wage war on each other for control because everyone among them knows Hell’s Kitchen is the place to be when you’re on the negative end of the Dungeons & Dragons alignment scale. You never see gangs taking over the shiny, upscale neighborhoods that would be a better fit for their expensive cars and even more expensive suits. The Triads and the Black Stereotypes and the Irishmen of Irishness never claim the Upper West Side as their turf or hold their knife fights in front of those fancy Madison Avenue stores.

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Indy Food Trucks Turn Every Summer Transcendental (Part 5 of 3)

September 2, 2016 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
El Venezolano!

El Venezolano is one of many Indianapolis food trucks proving there’s more to streetside food than just Mexican tacos. For example: artisan super-tacos from Not-Mexico.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: when we launched four years ago, one of our first miniseries was an ongoing look at the then-burgeoning food truck craze that was sweeping downtown Indianapolis, improving quality of life and giving me viable lunch options besides middling pizza and Subway. (Past entries were here, here, here, and here, though I know a few of those trucks have left the road since then.) The reviews stopped when all that food-truck food exceeded my restricted work-lunch budget, and when they stopped showing up within convenient walking distance.

This summer my wife and I attended multiple events here in town, which we’ve talked about here at length over the past four months. Food trucks showed up to save us on most of these occasions, but I withheld their pics for some future, separate group gallery rather than sandwiching them between photos of parade floats and cosplayers. I was planning to share these within the next two weeks anyway, but with the politically endearing hashtag #tacostrucksoneverycorner now justly trending on Twitter, now’s as good a time as any to catch the mobile-foodie wave, especially since Labor Day is coming up and your fall wardrobe and your precious pumpkin-spiced everything may clash with a few of these.

Right this way for great moments in summer 2016 food trucks!

Indiana State Fair 2016 Photos #1: Our Year in Food

August 9, 2016 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Double Barrel Burger!

We called it the “Goodbye Cruel World Burger”.

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians that other people love, and farm animals competing for cash prizes and herd bragging rights. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. At least 70% of our quest is always food.

Right this way for a look at this year’s “Taste of the Fair” contestants!

Not Put Asunder, 12 Years and Counting

July 17, 2016 By in Indiana, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Midlife Crisis Crossover!

The writer with his primary collaborator, his #1 fan, and his most vocal fact-checker.

Usually we’re out of town on one of our road trips when our anniversary passes, but today was the first time in years that we were in-state for the occasion. We appreciate the inventors of the calendar finally working out the timing in our favor. It was nice to mark the occasion with a nice meal and greeting cards exchanged on our own turf for a change.

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Big Burgers and Other Bites at My Birthday Bonanza

June 3, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 7 Comments
New Jack City!

This boy’s big ballyhooed birthday burger banquet at The B Spot.

My wife and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. My 2016 birthday destination of choice: the northern Indiana city of Elkhart, with a bonus stopover in South Bend, both some 100+ miles north of here. Elkhart was regrettably cut a little short because the weather was miserable and tried to freeze us in our tracks, but we had enough fun to fill out another four-part miniseries starring a candy factory tour, a super-hero roadside attraction, and a selection of the “art” in Elkhart. Also, food.

Part Four of Four: that food! It wouldn’t have been my birthday without it. Only one of our three meals was in Elkhart, and it wasn’t a full meal, but I do hope you’ll forgive the aging birthday guy his occasional off-topic digressions. I hear it’ll get worse as I get older.

Right this way for random acts of meat!

Birthday 44: A Festival of Food, Flavor, and Fire

May 18, 2016 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Opa!

Now THAT is a birthday candle. Why spend an hour lighting forty-four individual wax sticks when you can just set a piece of cheese on fire for twice the lumens and three times the wow factor?

It’s that time of year again! As of today I’m now 44 years old, not dead yet, and still not entering true Midlife Crisis mode with a fancy sports car or a mistress my son’s age. I’m fine with skipping that phase if everyone else is cool with it.

Most of my birthday was frittered away at work, serving others and digging into spreadsheets and doubling my caffeine intake so I could stay awake enough to get to the good parts of the day, while keeping myself too busy to ponder mortality or dwell on the never-ending internal debate over whether I’m truly applying myself toward fulfilling my life’s true purpose(s) here on this imperfect ball of dirt, dust, and Drumpf.

I continued tabling that potential pontification after work and went out to dinner at a promising restaurant that recently opened on our side of Indianapolis. Whenever a nice restaurant opens within five miles of our house, that’s reason enough for us to celebrate, birthday or no birthday.

Right this way for our big fat Greek dinner!

The Springs in Fall — 2015 Photos #26: Mission in Manitou Springs

April 22, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Manitou Springs!

One last time in the shadow of Pikes Peak.

The week was winding down before we knew it. Anne got off work so late on Thursday that we had time only for dinner and an all-new Sleepy Hollow before she faced one last earl bedtime and one last shift in Colorado Springs. Friday is usually a time for rejoicing in the work week’s end, but this one would prove bittersweet. We loved the mountains and the culinary forays, but we missed our home and our dog, and I’d crossed all the high-ranking attractions off my to-do list. The remaining options ranged in curiosity level from “maybe” to “meh”. Colorado Springs and the surrounding areas have a lot to see and do for a variety of interests and tourists. Not all of them were for me, but I tried to keep an open mind.

I spent the morning of Day Six as a lot of normal travelers might: I lounged around the hotel room for a few hours and did virtually nothing. I procrastinated the MCC Sleepy Hollow recap in favor of reading, relaxing, and catching reruns of Supernatural on TNT. I’d never watched a single episode before, and perhaps it was a bizarre choice to begin my viewership with the season-7 finale and the season-8 premiere, but that’s the beauty of vacation: you get to have fun and break some rules no matter what kind of looks people give you for it.

Eventually I snapped out of my lazy doldrums and came up with a plan. I checked out of the hotel, leaving behind ten of the twenty-four bottled waters that I’d picked up on my way to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and taking three with me for the road. Just as the previous guests had left us a fresh half-gallon of milk and a box of breakfast Hot Pockets that neither of us could bear to touch, so did we pay it forward to the next guests in our own way.

Then I launched myself on a side quest of sorts to cross a few items off Anne’s own to-do list. This wouldn’t just be a time-killer or selfish indulgence: it would be an act of service for someone I loved, frivolous though the targeted treasures might be.

And that’s how I wound up once again in Manitou Springs for my final close-ups of the Rocky Mountains.

Right this way for one last walkabout before heading home!

Jimmy John’s Offers One. One Dollar. One Dollar Four-Hour Eight-Inch.

April 21, 2016 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Jimmy John's Vito!

For today only, the cookie cost me more than the sub did.

Today in one-time wacky sales gimmicks: American submarine sandwich chain Jimmy John’s announced a Customer Appreciation day in which they’re selling eight-inch sub sandwiches from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. And I was there. I wasn’t even supposed to be here today.

Right this way for limited-time-only details!