First Impressions

Tasty Joe’s resembles a slightly toned-down Pei Wei, with the menu-board on the wall leading to a cashier, an open kitchen, and an informal, ‘pan-asian’ style.  The restaurant is fairly clean, and seemed remarkably not crowded for a lunch party.

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Chicken Cantonese Sweet and Sour Stir Fry with Brown Rice

Prepare yourself for a bright red Sweet and Sour sauce that is more sweet than sour. It matches nicely with a combination of pineapple and green and red pepper dices. Although it is served with onions as well, I prefer to remove them after the meal is served to preserve some flavor derived from them being cooked with the rest of the food. The dish comes with your choice of meat, but I think chicken is the best in this combo. Paired with brown rice it makes for a good meal.

Just make sure your fortune cookie has a fortune in it!

We brought in some pizza from Papa John’s for lunch today.

The size of the pizzas themselves was a bit unimpressive.  Although the toppings were sufficient, I notice a trend towards smaller and smaller portions– there are still places where a large is 18 inches; these appeared to be 16.
While I used to think of their crust as very sweet, they seem to have reformulated to be a bit less sweet.  I tried the ham-pineapple-tomato pie, and found it lacking in ham, but generally well balanced.  The pepperoni pizza, in contrast, had plenty.  The sauce was sufficient to not end up dry, without being soggy.  The overall experience was competent, but it was more a ‘pick it as a local choice’ level, not a ‘come from across town’ special.

I walked into Indigo Joe’s Bar and Grill about noon-thirty for lunch today. Initially I noticed the hundred-something TV’s hanging from the ceiling and crammed into the walls outnumbering other lunch-goers. I look down and saw a modestly sized place with nice waiters/waitresses but nothing about the atmosphere was particularly interesting. For the last 8 or so months I’ve decided to try out being a vegetarian so I ordered the veggie burger (no mayo) and fries. I’m not particularly fond of veggie burger patties but I liked that it had sprouts and avocado. Got my food after a short bit of zoning out and watching baseball. The burger seemed fresh and the fries were crispy and pretty good. Overall I’ve got little to complain about but I’m not really sold on their lunch options. They didn’t have any lunch specials or deals and everything else was just a little overpriced in my opinion. I guess it’s more of a night-time attraction but I don’t really care to go back. I’d say it’s a mediocre restaurant but I did appreciate the veggie burger option!