Spoiled.

It's time for me to face the uncomfortable truth: Living in Broad Ripple has turned me into a pretentious hipster foodie douchebag. The restaurant game here in my corner of Indianapolis is so strong that I'm just generally ruined for mediocre food.

There's a small-town restaurant in New Hampshire I used to visit every time I went out. Starting in 2010 and running up to the present, I thought their food was getting worse. It wasn't; I was just getting less tolerant in my tastes.

This last trip, I figured I'd visit on Friday night, which is prime rib night. Prime rib and a salad is pretty much the definition of low-carb, and prime rib is pretty hard to screw up, right?

Wow.

The salad was about what you'd expect; edible, but you could do as good from the salad bar at the local grocery store or Wendy's drive-thru window. Iceberg lettuce, Kraft shredded cheddar, and oil & vinegar is what it is.

The prime rib was... Look, I describe prime rib from O'Charley's or Texas Roadhouse as pretty much the baseline. It's edible, it's prime-rib-flavored, and creamy horseradish and a cup of salty jus can cover for a multitude of sins.

This was not anywhere near as good a cut of meat as you'd get at O'Charley's, let alone Texas Hohouse.

Further, the waitress plopped down the accoutrements: A big squirt bottle full of white stuff that I think was supposed to be creamy horseradish but which was full of what I'm pretty sure was tartar sauce, and a little bowl full of what they usually bring you as "French Onion Soup", only without the couple of soggy croutons and dash of Kraft Parmesan cheese that usually comes with it. (I'd made the mistake of ordering "French Onion Soup" in this establishment on a previous visit.) I believe this was intended to be taken for jus.

I ate half the slab of prime rib. The remainder was mostly fat and, further, had taken on a hue that made me wonder if I was slated for an uncomfortable evening near the loo. The friendly server asked if I wanted a to-go box, but I demurred politely.

I looked around the room, and folks were laying to with a will. Was the problem me? Have I become such a pretentious hipster foodie douchebag that I won't cheerfully tear into school cafeteria food (for which I'm charged school tuition prices) and enjoy it?

Oh, well.
 
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