Amy and I both had the day off on Monday, so instead of going down to Bloomington for a good lunch, we popped in at Peppy Grill in Fountain Square on our way over to the State Museum, which Amy had heard was offering free admission yesterday (though that turned out not to be the case). It looked like a grungy diner should look, with the grill in pride of place when you walk in the door, and down-home signs hanging everywhere. Example: “Our Credit Manager is Helen Waite. If You Need Credit. Go to Helen Waite.” Not only is it flea market humor, it’s also grammatically incorrect. There should have been an ashtray at every table, preferably with one or two crushed Marlboros left from the people who were there before us; and the whole thing should have been attached to a bowling alley.
Which is not to say that places like that automatically suck. They don’t. Diners often have really good food, and they tend to treat the customer both professionally and efficiently. Your order is going to be correct, and they definitely won’t dally over bringing you the check. Amy and I went out to Scranton once, many years ago now, to visit her parents; and there was a diner not too far from their apartment, one of those places that actually had the shiny metal exterior, like the whole place might actually have been a trailer that could just pick up stakes and move on down the road at a moment’s notice. I don’t remember the service at all, but the reuben was quite good.
Peppy Grill is one of those places that has a reputation around town of being a good, solid place to eat, for what it is—which is a 24-hour greasy-spoon diner. I had always heard that the hamburgers were really good, and had formed in my mind an image of the kind of place that has about three things on the menu, all of which are amazing and cannot be had anywhere else on earth. (But even that reputation never got me there to eat, because I’m almost never in the mood for a hamburger anymore.) And then Ryan at work mentioned that he liked to sup at the Peppy Grill from time to time, and this little nugget of information gave me cause to re-evaluate my impression of the place. Ryan is a vegetarian, and not at all bashful about pointing out the fact that a restaurant’s non-meat offerings are not up to snuff, if that be the case. When he complimented their omelettes, the Peppy Grill took on a whole new dynamic of interest for me.
I should maybe have followed Ryan’s recommendation and chosen an omelette for my lunch yesterday. Instead, I was swayed by one of three specials for the day, Boston clam chowder, with grilled cheese, for $6.75. My eyes tend to be bigger than my stomach, especially the first time I try a place—so I added an order of onion rings for $3.75. The other two specials were Swiss steak with mixed vegetables and bread and butter, and beef and noodles with mixed vegetables and bread and butter. I don’t remember how much they were, but they were within shouting distance of the $6.75 they wanted for the clam chowder and grilled cheese combo. Amy had the pattie melt with fries instead of chips, and Jackson had safari buddies (fried chicken bits, roughly in the shape of dinosaurs, I think) with fries in place of tater tots.
The clam chowder was perfectly serviceable, despite being entirely indistinguishable from clam chowder out of a can. The grilled cheese was one or two slices of something like Kraft singles between two pieces of plain white bread, but it was adequately grilled—crispy and delicious, with just a little bit of carbon scoring, to indicate that the grill had not been properly cleaned off between my sandwich and whatever came before it. The onion rings, also indistinguishable from those out of a bag, were perfectly adequate (except that $3.75 for seven or eight foodservice onion rings is pretty close to larceny) and not at all remarkable.
Amy’s pattie melt looked like the best thing that came to our table. It was two ground beef patties with cheese and onion, grilled between two slices of marble rye. One of the best ways to tell whether the guy on the grill knows how to do his job or not is how well the cheese on your sandwich is melted. Cooking meat to the preferred state of doneness can be easily taught, but knowing the exact moment when cheese has reached the perfect state of meltiness is a gift. Amy’s pattie melt looked like the cheese had been melted by someone who knew what they were doing. Unfortunately, the fries on both Amy’s and Jackson’s plates were another story entirely.
The fries on both plates were limp and greasy, a sure sign that they had been cooked in oil that was not hot enough for the task at hand. Frying oil has to be at a certain temperature in order to cook the food and not soak into it; and the temperature has to be checked and adjusted between batches of food, too. If this isn’t accomplished properly, you wind up with limp, greasy food. I hope that they were just having an off day, because I would like to go back at some point and try one of those omelettes. I just don’t know when that might take place. Amy was sufficiently dissatisfied that I could tell from the way she talked afterward that she will never eat there again ever. I won’t be going in for takeout, since there is a 10% surcharge for carry-out; and my days of going out drinking and stopping on the way home for something to eat are probably over, so that option is off the table, too.
I’m not sure I had what you would call “high hopes” for the place when we went in, but the Peppy Grill failed to meet even the lowest of expectations (except that I did not die or contract an illness). It did not match the level of culinary ineptitude I encountered when we got takeout fish and chips from the Steer- In about a year ago, but it was maybe the most disappointing meal since. (All of that said, though, I would still be interested in seeing what the place looks like—and how the food is—at two or three in the morning. Night brings out a different element of disclosure.)
1004 Virginia Avenue
637-1158
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