If you think that eating a farm-style omelet with a side of potatoes is a classic hipster brunch, then you obviously have never been on a farm.  Nor have you ever been to Bob Evans, a chain diner that has been specializing in breakfast for over 50 years.  It was originally founded in Columbus, OH - not too far from my dad’s place in Dayton, yet it might as well have been founded on Mars for the amount of difference between a Bob Evans franchise and the original.

Ironically, Bob Evans became popular for their sausages, which were considered to be the best around the Ohio area, which is strange that two vegetarian Indians would go there for breakfast.  In general, if you’re not a lacto-ovo-vegetarian, breakfast is not a good meal for you at most restaurants.  Bob Evans is a perfect example of this.  I was able to order a garden harvest omelet, which was monterey jack cheese, spinach tomatoes, onions and zucchini topped with a hollandaise sauce and a side of homefries.  The homefries weren’t quite fully unfrozen, so they weren’t particularly great, and the hollandaise sauce was an excess that I could not abide by.  There is a reason why Americans are so fat.  An omelet is an acceptable breakfast starter, but dousing it in a creamy egg yolk/butter sauce is ludicrous! 

To counteract my 4000 calorie breakfast, my dad just ordered two biscuits.  He has a very curious ordering habit.  At buffets (which he loves), he goes crazy and eats a ton of food, but at real sit-down restaurants (if that’s what you could call Bob Evans), he orders a side that is barely fit for an anorexic teenage girl.  The biscuits were pretty standard fare, that were obviously generically made and reheated on-site.

The coup de grace - my toast.  Now, you’ll say “Cheese sandwich guy, how could they possible screw up toast???”  Here’s how.  You may notice the bright yellow substance that is coated the lightly toasted substance that they call bread?  Well, you’re probably thinking that that is butter.  Turns out a) it’s margarine and b) that margarine is derived from a chemical waste dump in China.  I didn’t quite measure the melamine quantity in this specimen, but I’m pretty sure it’s above the toxic level for a small child.

There are a lot of crappy generic chain diners across America, and Bob Evans is probably the worst of them, which is saying a lot.  I once went to a T&A (another diner chain associated with gas stations - though not affiliated with Hustler or Playboy, surprisingly), and pretty much observed 1950’s-style racism in the kitchen there.  No racism (overtly) at this Bob Evans, but the quality of food here is far inferior to what I could get, even at a racist T&A.  So, I’ll give Bob Evans one cheese sandwich.

Bob Evans
220 Byers Road
Miamisburg, OH 45342-3615 
(937) 866-4222

Unfortunately, on my visit to Kentucky/Ohio, I didn’t get a chance to go to one of my favorite Mexican restaurants - Jalapeno’s.  If there’s one thing that midwest America does great, it’s making horrible yet delicious Mexican food.  If you’re a regular reader, you’ll be familiar with my complaining about how inauthentic Indian food is in America, so I can appreciate the plight of the Mexican who has to deal with the blight that restaurants serve in middle America.  My dad and I took a lunchtime trip to El Toro to experience their fare.

Like bread at an Italian restaurant, the make or break for any Mexican restaurant is their chips and salsa.  The chips were a hodgepodge of warm fresh chips and chips that had been made from a previous batch.  Fortunately, we were having lunch, so the oldest the batch could be was a few hours.  The salsa wasn’t very fresh, and tasted no different from a store bought salsa (a good store bought salsa, but store bought salsa nonetheless).

I ordered the chile rellenos, or cheese-filled poblano peppers deep fried in an egg batter and covered in cheese and enchilada sauce.  You may recognize this in the above picture as the red gloopy thing.  Generally, when eating Mexican food, it becomes a question of “what color do you want your gloop?”  Next to the red gloopy thing is some rice and a brown gloopy thing (refried beans).  The chile rellenos were pretty spicy, but overall the food was salty and bland, and hardly worth the 2000 calories on the plate.

My dad ordered a bean burrito, which came with refried beans and rice as well.  What you may realize is that this is really just refried beans and rice, with half the beans being covered in a tortilla and red sauce.

If you’re a vegetarian, there are plenty of options at El Toro, and they do a good job of pointing out a vegetarian special section.  As a non-Mexican, I don’t have the same outrage with terrible food as I do for Indian food.  So, I’m sure there is a Mexican somewhere that is reading this, looking at the food and thinking “What the hell is this crap?”  Actually, it would be more like ¿Qué demonios es esta mierda?  While I appreciate the effort to cater to vegetarians, the food at El Toro is pretty average, so I’ll give it two and a half cheese sandwiches.

El Toro
4448 Indian Ripple Road
Dayton, OH 45440-3264 
(937) 427-8420

I have stated hundreds of times before that I cannot stand two things: buffets and Indian food. Buffets are terrible for vegetarians, as they are rife for meat contamination (as well as Salmonella, E. coli, and noroviruses). So if you have any common sense and value the sanctity of your digestive tract, you probably would want to avoid a buffet. Speaking of diarrhea, one of the reasons I hate Indian food in America is that it is usually poor quality and in buffet format. Unfortunately, two things that my dad loves the most is Indian food and buffets. So, when we had to agree on where to eat lunch, we made a compromise – Indian Chaat Café.

Indian Chaat Café is actually quite refreshing for an Indian restaurant – it is more of a throwback to the roadsite hotels of India (in India a “hotel” is a restaurant and a “restaurant” is a place where rich white people eat). Food is served rapidly and in plastic trays or styrofoam plates (although in India, they’d be served in metal plates or banana leafs). Slightly disconcerting but also adding to the charm – if you go to the bathroom, you have to walk past the kitchen, where you will probably see a guy stirring a giant bucket of daal on the floor. Probably a health code violation, but as long as the floor is clean and the daal is delicious, I’ve got no truck with that.

My dad and I are both vegetarians, and Indian Chaat Café serves primarily vegetarian food (with the occasional non-veg option). He ordered the paav bhajji, which is basically potatoes and some vegetables (peas, carrots, green beans) served extra spicy with two buttered buns.

I decided to splurge and get the vegetarian thali, a bargain at $9.99. With a giant mound of rice, you also get naan, papad, one samosa, one pakora, tarka daal, channa marsala, muttar paneer, raita, and two gulab jamuns. Inordinate amounts of food for a very low price. That explains why the place was crammed with Indians who left Lexis Nexis to have lunch here. Unlike other ethnic restaurants, seeing large groups of Indians in an Indian restaurant does not guarantee quality. Nevertheless, Indian Chaat Café is a pretty solid Indian food experience in the Dayton area, and the best part – no buffet! Three and a half cheese sandwiches.

Indian Chaat Cafe
984 Centreville Rd.
Centreville, Ohio,45459 
(937) 435-3557

If you ever have the misfortune of finding yourself in Dayton, OH, there are only a handful of decent restaurants that you can go to that aren’t the Olive Garden or Taco Bell*.  My dad has been living in Dayton the past few years, and every time I would go to visit him, we would sample the strip mall restaurants of Anytown, USA. One gem of the strip mall is a Papa John’s clone called Marco’s Pizza.

You’re probably wondering why I would bother reviewing a midwest pizza franchise, but since I was going to be spending some time in Dayton, I figured I should at least review the few good edible places, even if they were chain restaurants.  Marco’s Pizza is somewhat special for me (Dayton-wise), as I would usually drive to Dayton at night, and my dad, being a hospitable person would usually buy pizza. Typically this will be a Marco’s Garden Pizza, a veggie pizza topped with olives, feta, tomatoes, mushrooms and onions. Unfortunately, on this occasion, when I arrived to visit my dad, he purchased a mushroom and olive pizza. The pizza was pretty standard fare that you would expect from a generic version of Papa John’s. 

If you want cheap pizzas at a reasonable quality, then Marco’s is a good option, especially if you don’t want to support larger chains such as Papa John’s or Little Caesars.  It is quite disappointing that these Papa John’s or Little Caesars succeed when smaller chains fail.  There used to be a chain pizza place in Lexington called Pizza Magia, and I loved their pizzas.  The sauce was tangy and very garlicky, the toppings were great, and there used to be a spiced olive oil dipping sauce, which was a million times better than the plastic garlic sauce that other chain pizza places provide.  Unfortunately, they went under, likely due to poor business management (not quality of pizza), and were actually purchased by Marco’s Pizza.  So, in a way, by going to Marco’s I am still showing my support for Pizza Magia, even though they don’t give the delicious olive oil dipping sauce.  So, I’ll give Marco’s three cheese sandwiches.

*I make no claims that Olive Garden or Taco Bell are good restaurants.

Marco’s Pizza
2076 South Alex Road
Dayton, OH 45449-2491
(937) 865-5200