I blame "Mad Men."
My friend and I had planned on a sandwich — maybe soup — when we went to Lindsey's Family Restaurant last week for a late lunch. But I had just watched three episodes of the TV show "Mad Men," about advertising executives in the '50s, and I must have had power lunch on my mind.
The 62-year-old Cranberry Highway restaurant — a good meeting place if you're seeing off-Cape friends — offers the same menu daily from 11:30 a.m.That means before noon you can have a $7.99 "Half-Pound Black Angus Burger" or a $24.99 10-ounce filet mignon.
Our indulgence, in both time and money, was somewhere in between.
My friend had the Yankee Pot Roast ($13.99) with a pan-style gravy that was, as advertised, "fork tender and delicious." It came with a choice of potato and vegetable. For me, this is where it got good. No canned peas here. The offerings were seasonal and homey — Eastham turnip, baked sweet potatoes, butternut squash, asparagus with homemade cheese sauce. I wasn't surprised to see local specialties, since a sign on the front door identifies the restaurant as part of the Southeastern Massachusetts "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" program. And the restaurant's motto is "Home Cookin' for Folks Who Can't Be Home Cookin'."
Baked with butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar, the sweet potatoes were nature's candy. The snowy white turnip was cooked perfectly and mashed lightly so it was still chunky and a little fibrous, as root vegetables should be. I was put off by white sugar in the turnip, probably added late in the cooking because it tasted overly sweet and somewhat processed.
The asparagus was delicious, dribbled across the middle with an old-fashioned cheese sauce that was just enough to accent, rather than drown, the vegetable. Excess tends to be commonplace when cheese sauce meets vegetables.
If you're too old to order from the $5.99 to $7.99 kids' menu, "Lil' Lindsey's" is a nice option. You can get a lighter portion of baked stuffed shrimp ($7.99), lobster bake ($12.99) or, my choice, baked sea scallops, which were $8.99 plus $3.59 for the potato and veggie. So the mini version was $12.58 rather than $18.99 and there were still enough tender, sweet scallops for leftovers.
In another nice, homey touch, Lindsey's dessert list had two gluten-free offerings and a sugar-free one.
So here's the bad news: The "lunch" bill, with one glass of house chardonnay, came to $45.65 before tip.
The good news? We both had leftovers for the next day's lunch. And the meal, with just about everything homemade by someone other than me, was what I would consider a power lunch even though no one downed a martini or manhattan.
LINDSEY'S FAMILY RESTAURANT
3138 Cranberry Highway,
East Wareham
508-759-5544
www.lindseysfamilyrestaurant.com
By Gwenn Friss
