We travel the world in search of great bacon. We search high and low for meals that charge the senses and tease the taste buds with mouth-watering anticipation.
Sometimes, we’re early for a flight and we’re just plain hungry. Such was the case on a recent trip through Indianapolis. We found ourselves about an hour ahead of schedule and plenty ready for a hearty breakfast if one was to be found at the Indianapolis airport (IND).
There was a small coffee shop of the corporate-infused-latte variety and a chain restaurant called Champps. We opted for the chain restaurant as the baristas over at coffee central didn’t look like the proud servers of bacony goodness.
We sat down and ordered our meal. A good old-fashioned American breakfast. Two eggs, two pieces of toast, two strips of bacon, a fruit cup, and fried potatoes. Sounded like just what we needed to kick start the last leg of our journey.
We couldn’t have been more wrong. The eggs were bland, the toast was stale, the fruit not fresh, the potatoes tasteless, and the bacon…awful. We could have put up with the poor taste of all the items on our plate but not the bacon. The poor pork was the consistency of cardboard left out to dry on a hot summer day after being soaked the previous night in a tub of stale bathwater. What had the potential of being salty, tasty meat candy was now more like red garden clay. So sad, so tragic, and no where near the happy breakfast we had hoped would guide us through the rest of our day.
This waste of a meal earns a Smaste™ rating of 2.0. That’s right, two. and the two is for the butter. At least that was good. We ate it with a spoon.
Don’t give up on IND yet. If you’d gone out to the civic plaza (outside of security) you could have eaten one of my favorite things ever – cinnamon toast at Cafe Patachou! Ggranted, it’s their airport outpost, not quite as good as one of their actual restaurants in Indy, where it’s sublime, but it’s still quite good, as is the rest of the menu. They also have excellent bacon. I went through Indy in the week they changed to the new airport – flew in to one and out of the other! (thank goodness I checked online, no one warned me) I was thrilled to find Patachou listed as we eat there at least once whenever we do a weekend in Indy.
http://www.cafepatachou.com
Thanks for the tip MJ. I’ll likely be flying to IND again in February. I’ll be sure to check out Cafe Patachou’s cinnamon toast & bacon!
If you want bacon and plenty of it: English Ivy’s weekend breakfast. 4 slices of love cooked to order (from chewy to shatter). Yeah I know the owners but I’m not just blowing smoke. For alternate pork product folks love their Biscuits and Gravy or their tenderloins.