ISO: John's Famous Stew - description

John's Famous Stew description -

John's Famous Stew dishes it out since 1911
Source: Anne Laker

It starts with a tomato base with a tangy Slavic flair, melted through with black angus beef, slow cooked till tender. Peasant-like veggies include cabbage, tomatoes, broad green beans, celery, carrot coins as big as frisbees and skin-on red potatoes that look like they were cut with a hacksaw. These ingredients taste like they've been together for a while. John's stew is the taste of time.

You can get it in mild, medium and spicy (all $6.45). The spicy makes your nose run and warms your whole ribcage. It's all served with three slices of Klosterman's snow-white, super-yeasty bread and three pats of Land O' Lakes butter. This plush bread is born for sopping stew. A very Hoosier thing to do.

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Source: Steve Slosarek
"John's Famous Stew is hot spot when menu's complete."
The popular dish comes in mild, medium and hot. by

....

An oversized stew bowl ($6.45) contained cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, green beans, celery and huge rounds of potatoes. Slow-cooked beef chunks were so tender that they broke apart at the touch of a spoon. All the ingredients swam in a rich, superb tomato- and beef-based broth, to be sopped up by three slices of white bread. What an old-world treat.

Pick your zing

The large potatoes represented the stew's only weakness. Smaller ones would have been flavored more by the broth and easier to eat. But far be it from me to rewrite history. Mother Strangeff, who lived to be 99, knew what she was doing.

John's offers the stew mild, medium or hot. Hot is the house specialty. Matter of fact, some folks -- including the phone book -- call the restaurant John's Hot Stew. Crushed red peppers and seasonings give the stew an extra zing.

Other variations include a goulash stew (choice of stew with butter beans and mixed vegetables) and hot minced pit (hot stew with butter beans and hot peppers).