Stop #19: Emerson at 465, Indianapolis (#164)

On May 21, the quest brought me to the Steak 'n' Shake on Emerson at 465 on the south side of Indy.


It also brought some friends I don't see near often enough, as two of them live in St. Louis and the other two ... well, honestly, probably have better things to do than go to every Steak 'n' Shake in Indiana.

For the record, it is the friend from St. Louis who is mostly responsible for the sign for this trip.


Jen helped, too, but not before working on an anagram with her boyfriend, Joe.


Jen, who was once-upon-a-time an English major in college, said I was wrong about the anagram. It's the same one its always been, but she wouldn't listen to me when I tried to tell her that

LAL UYO NCA TEA KENPCAAS

most certainly does not spell

ALL YOU CAN EAT PANCAKES.

If they're not teaching English majors how to do anagrams properly these days, I don't know what they're teaching them. And then I wonder who is going to fill the pages of Word Ways in the future. Which is a sad wonder to have, indeed.

Thanks to the email shared in the last post, I decided to give the California Double Steakburger (and fries) a try. I also figured the Key Lime milkshake sounded tasty, and got one of those.

Verdict: Tasty. At least on the shake. So tasty that I will have to try it again.

On the California Double Steakburger, I have just one thing to say: messy. It didn't taste half bad, but wasn't worth the mess it caused, in my opinion.

And there you have it, one of the few times this blog will ever be used to review the food.

More often, I do silly things like review the differences I see from one Steak 'n' Shake to the next. Such as the table extension we had on this trip.


We were seated at a booth, but had six people. Normally, I would think this just meant that you push a table on the end, and that's actually what this looked like to me at first. But if that's what you thought, too, then you are sorely mistaken, as was I. Well, without the "sorely" part.


The table actually extended out. I know, coolest thing ever, right?

Okay, maybe not ever, but until I see another Steak 'n' Shake with a semi-circle booth like the one we saw on 96th at Keystone, I don't think I'll get truly excited about furnishings ever again.

What was really the coolest thing ever was our server, Jason. Well, I suppose he's not really a thing. He's a he. And what makes him so cool is that we filled him in a bit on the quest and he listened. Anne even added that he should Google it ("Around the State in 70 Steaks and Shakes! Google it!"). And then, before we left, he did. On his smartphone. As we were each paying our portions of the check, he came out brandishing a phone displaying something that looked strikingly similar to my Mishawaka post.

"Is this your blog?" he asked.
"Um ... yes! It is! You rock!" I answered, after looking more closely. I left, of course, with a ginormous grin, because now people who don't know me might be looking at this thing.

And so, Jason, you are now my favorite server. Or at least tied with Waiter Tim (the saga of whom will be shared at a later point -- I'm thinking August), which puts you pretty damn high on the list. I do hope you come back and check out my blog again, in part so that you can read this span of paragraphs dedicated to you, in part because it will drive my page view stats up and will make me at least believe that more people are reading my blog.

For all this excitingness that happened, there was only one sad part to the trip: that Brett could not join us.

So Anne decided to make him be with us in spirit. Or at least in pixels.


Also, if you're here to play Catch Caragher, that one doesn't count. I'm far too proud of my sub-par photoshopping skills to let that slide. You'll have to look elsewhere.