My wife and I ventured out to Indianapolis for a long weekend to celebrate a combination birthday/retirement party for the husband of my wife's good friend. Since the party was going to be a surprise for him, my wife and I were used as a ruse to keep him off the trail of his surprise that was to happen the next day. Because he knew we were going to be in town, my wife and her friend decided that we all needed to go out to dinner the night before. They had eaten at a Mediterranean restaurant in Indianapolis' Broad Ripple neighborhood on a previous visit my wife had out there and they thought it would be great if we would all meet at Canal Bistro for dinner.
George Hanna is a native of Egypt and was born into an extended family that ran restaurants. Immigrating to the U.S. a number of years ago, George's father ran restaurants and also owned a number of Baskin-Robins ice cream stores in malls around Indiana. Following in his father's footsteps, George bought into the sweetFrog premium frozen yogurt franchise. But it was his wife Mona who convinced him to take a different direction in running a restaurant.
Mona grew up in Lebanon and moved to the U.S when she was 23. She had been around Mediterranean cooking all her life and brought a number of family recipes with her when she came to America. Seeing a need for an authentic Mediterranean restaurant in Indianapolis, they settled on a building in Broad Ripple along the start of the Indiana Central Canal. After months of renovations and redecorating the inside of building, the Hannas opened Canal Bistro in November of 2014.
We were to meet our friends at the restaurant around 7 p.m. on a Friday night. Friday and Saturday night in Broad Ripple - well, actually most nights - can be a pain if you're trying to find parking. Canal Bistro is a block away from a former account that I had in Indianapolis and I contemplated just parking in his lot in front of his building and then walking back through the alley to Canal Bistro. But it turned out that a car was leaving a spot in a parking lot just across Guilford Street from the restaurant, so we ended up taking that space. (see map)
We went into the restaurant and were met by George Hanna at the front desk. The reservations were in our friend's name, but they weren't there yet. The kitchen was just beyond the host stand and you could easily see in to watch the staff do their magic. It was a warm and muggy evening and we contemplated sitting out on the patio they had in front and on the side of the building. But my wife thought it may be two hot for all of us to sit outside. We decided to sit inside and George had a young lady take us back to our table.
The dining room at Canal Bistro is a long, hall-like room with a bar dissecting the two portions of the dining area. Alcoves with paintings and knick-knacks were along the walls on one side while the other side were a series of windows looking out onto the patio. The ceiling was painted a sky blue with billowing clouds so it appeared you were seated outdoors. Wooden slats spaced about 15 inches apart ran the length of the restaurant's ceiling. There was a large gathering of women in the front of the dining room for a surprise 60th birthday party and the place was loud with the women trying to talk over one another before the guest of honor showed up.
The focal point of the bar area in the middle of the room was this colorful Turkish lantern that was directly over the center of the bar. I took a number of pictures of the beautiful globes from different angles trying to get the beauty of the light, but this was the best I could get given the contrast of light and dark in the room.
We were seated in the far back area of the dining room at a table with four wooden chairs. More alcoves were in the back dining area with colorful scenes and figurines were on the lower shelves. It was still pretty warm in there, but we figured it was better than sitting outside.
We weren't seated for more than a minute when our friends showed up. We laughed because he initially thought it was a surprise birthday party for him as he just turned 60, as well. "When I came into the room, I saw all the '60' balloons and thought, 'Surprise party!'", he said. "But then I didn't recognize anybody!"
Our server that evening was the greatest waitress on earth - a smallish young lady by the name of Reema. And when I call her the greatest waitress on earth, she was absolutely the best. She had a great sense of humor, she was on top of any request we had all night long, and had some great suggestions for all of us. Reema dropped off menus for us to go through. She wanted to know what we wanted to drink and my wife ordered an extra dirty martini. Our male friend said, "Hey, that sounds good! I'll have one of those!" His wife ordered an amaretto sour, while I got a Mythos Hellenic Lager.
Reema brought out some pita bread with a bowl of olive oil infused with herbs. The pita was warm and fresh and the olive oil had a wonderful flavor.
My wife thought it would be great to get some hummus. Believe it or not, she has sort of got me going on hummus at home. Canal Bistro makes all their hummus from scratch in-house with pureed chickpeas and tahini with lemon juice. The hummus was topped chopped parsley and diced tomatoes. I'm not certain I've ever had hummus that tasted so good and fresh.
My wife had never had saganaki before - the Greek flaming cheese delicacy that is flambéed at table side. Our male friend thought that was a great idea and we ordered one up from Reema. Not more than a couple minutes later, one of the guys from the kitchen came out with a pan of Greek cheese powdered with flour. He had a small container of the Greek liqueur Ouzo that he poured on the cheese pan and then lit it. "Opa", he shouted the traditional Greek exclamation. My male friend and I followed suit with our own, "Opa!" My wife didn't know what to think.
The saganaki was outstanding. It had just a thin crust on the outside while the warm goodness of the Greek cheese was oozing out from the sides. It was so wonderful, but - oh! - so rich! I was worried that I wouldn't be all that hungry when we finally ordered up our food for the evening.
We started out with salads and my wife got the Tabouli salad - finely chopped parsley with diced tomatoes, chopped onions, mint and bulgar wheat instead of rice. I thought it was a somewhat odd choice, but she seemed to like it. She offered me a bite and I just thought it was way too much parsley for my liking.
At first, I ordered a dinner salad and just before Reema left the table, I said, "Man, what am I thinking? I'll take the Greek salad." She kind of laughed and said that she thought I was more of a Greek salad kind-of-guy rather than a regular house salad. The Greek salad featured fresh romaine greens, chunked tomatoes, chopped onions, cucumber wedges and kalamata olives topped with feta cheese and a wonderful balsamic vinegar that pulled it all together.
After the pita bread with hummus, the saganaki and the Greek salad, I wasn't certain I was going to be all that hungry. But along with our lady friend, I got the gyros platter. It featured large chunks of rotisserie lamb meat with a block of rice, some lettuce greens and tzatziki sauce. Reema came out after our food was delivered to the table with additional tubs of the tzatziki sauce. "I figured you would want more," she said as she put them on our table. The gyro meat was tender and flavorful with the right amount of seasoning on the meat. But, man - there was a lot of gyro meat on my plate. I knew there was going to be no way I could eat all of it. But I have to tell you - it was so good that I just sort of kept picking up a chunk or two from time to time well after I knew I should have stopped.
Our other friend got something that I thought about getting - the moussaka. My wife asked what moussaka was when he ordered it and I said, "It's like a Greek lasagna." Our friend said that was a pretty fair description. It's layers of eggplant in between ground beef in a tomato sauce - like lasagna, only with no pasta. My wife said that she would have to try that at some point down the road. He said the moussaka at the Canal Bistro was outstanding. And I could tell as he ate the whole thing!
My wife wanted a kabab, but was torn between the chicken kabab or the lamb kabab. Reema said, "You can get a mix, if you want." And that's what my wife ended up ordering. The only problem was is that she didn't care for it. The chicken was overcooked and hard to chew, while the lamb meat didn't have much flavor, something I confirmed by taking a couple chunks of both. I let her have some of my gyro meat as I knew I wasn't going to be able to finish it.
Now, by this time, I was full. And I mean stuffed! Satiated! Had I been wearing a belt, I would have unbuckled it. But Reema came out with a dessert menu and my wife saw that they had tiramisu. She asked Reema if they made it in house. "We do, yes," she replied. Then she said, "It's the best in the state of Indiana." Well, that was enough for my wife. She ordered up the tiramisu with two forks.
When Reema brought out the tiramisu, my eyes widened. It was a huge piece of tiramisu, basically a double cut the size of a normal portion of tiramisu with a chocolate sauce drizzle. I just shook my head. Reema said, "C'mon, now. You can do it."
From the first bite, I knew my wife hadn't made a mistake in ordering the tiramisu. It was tremendous, some of the best tiramisu I've ever had. It was moist, tasty and very rich. Even though I was full past the point of feeling somewhat ill, I still ate my fair share of the tiramisu.
When Reema came back to see how we liked it, I said, "I'm not certain that I've even had tiramisu in the state of Indiana before, but I doubt I'd be able to find any better if I were to try."
Next to Canal Bistro, George Hanna put in a gourmet ice cream parlor - Canal Creamery. And some of the items on the dessert menu that Reema brought us were ice cream dishes from Canal Creamery. They ordered up something that I was sort of interested to see, the baklava sundae. They take baklava, put it in a bowl, top it with a couple big dips of vanilla ice cream, then top that with whipped cream, then drizzle hot fudge over the top of all that, then sprinkle nuts on to the whole thing before finishing it off with a couple cherries. Now, THIS was a huge sundae! More than once they offered us a chance to take a bite of the sundae, but we declined each offer. I mean, I was miserable - but in a good way - after finishing the last bite of the tiramisu. But that didn't matter as our friends killed the whole thing! Our man friend kept saying, "I'm so full, but I can't stop eating this!"
Reema allowed us to take our time to digest everything and to finish up visiting with our friends. When she came over to give us our check for the meal (which our friends graciously picked up), she asked if there was anything else she could get us. I said, "Do you have a two-wheeled cart to take me out to my car?"
She laughed and said, "We do have big portions here. And you guys had a lot of food."
Reema may have been the highlight to our visit to the Canal Bistro. She was one of the best servers I've ever encountered. She was funny, yet professional. She was helpful with her suggestions, and we loved the playful banter back and forth with her. About the only thing that wasn't very good to great at Canal Bistro was my wife's lamb and chicken kababs where the meat was woefully overcooked. But I had enough of a large portion of gyro meat on my plate that she was able to eat some of that to help her get filled up. As we were headed back to the hotel that evening, I told my wife that I needed to seek out more Greek/Mediterranean restaurants when I'm on the road. My wife lamented that she just wished we had something like Canal Bistro back home.
Comments