Original

The best blue collar atmosphere for lunch in Indy.

Awesome Stew!!

This is a great "hole in the wall" local place! The stew is awesome! Also, even though this venue is "famous" for its stew, the other food there is amazingly good as well. The pies are killer!

The problem with Indy food.

This place is a great example of the problem with food in Indianapolis. The stew is ok. Barely. The rest of the items are just very cheap bar food. Think cheap white bread, cheap fake cold-cuts. Cheap frozen french fries and cheap potato chips. Think GMO laced, corn and oil and chemical filled crap you can get at hundreds of other places. And YET, people rave about it. Apparently I'm missing something. If this family really wanted to be true to their roots, they would use real ingredients from real local farms, and not just just the cheap crap Sysco is selling them every Monday morning from a truck.

Great Stew, Good for Lunch

I liked the stew there, it was original and pretty down to earth. I grabed some lunch there with my co-workers. Pretty decent to try out. I wouldnt go to far from the stew on the menu cause its not that great otherwise.

Share a Stew

Spun the dial and randomly chose John's Famous for lunch one day. A hole-in-the-wall true to it's name, stepping through the door of this place was like sliding into a pub a'la Urban Cowboy. There was a juke box in the corner and half the diners were triple my age at least. Our waitress was the stereotypical gal: beehived, aproned, pencil tip-licking gossiper who promised to put on a "fresh pot just for ya'll". And a descendant of the namesake napped soundly at the table to our right throughout the lunch hour.

My fellow diner and I each ordered a sandwhich and split a stew (for which you can specify heat levels) I highly recommend the hot. Anything less would have disappointing.

And, as it happens, dessert is a must! Peach cobbler a'la mode was melt-in-your-mouth good.

Spinning a few tracks on the box would have just rounded out the perfect midday time warp/escape from work, but I was hesitant to distub either the layer of dust on top or the perfect page lay of the album listing inside, so I skulked out into the bright sun, making mental note to return with a pocket full of quarters next time.