Lake Park Restaurant

i have to agree with majority of these reviews.. Breakfast is definitely the way to go.. Tried a dinner option one time, and was disappointed :(

Since moving to Hobart six years ago, we've only stopped here about three times.  I don't know what compelled me to stop in today but I was in the mood for some lemon rice soup and a roasted turkey dinner which is typically available in many Greek dining establishments in our area.

The soup was just ok but it hit the spot for the meantime.  Then the turkey dinner.  It was pretty terrible.  Thin slices of turkey almost none existent.  The dressing, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes were tasteless.  It was all slathered with a bright yellow gravy that wasn't so good.

I left there with a headache and a very uncomfortable feeling in my stomache.  As I'm typing this review, I feel the need to make myself a smoothie full of leafy greans full of fiber to flush this mess out soon!

Oh Lord, why didn't I listen to my own advice? My mother and I went to Lake Park at lunchtime. That was a big mistake; it encouraged me to read the menu and look for a lunch item, instead of eggs.

The menu is about 8 big pages long, and each page is full. If you added up all the items, you'd probably come up with about 300 or more. Math was never my best subject, so I'm not going to say this is an accurate number - 300 may be on the low end. This place might be halfway decent if it eliminated 90% of the menu items and tried to make the 10% actually taste good.

So anyway, here goes. Mom ordered sunny-side up eggs and corned beef hash. Simple. Midwestern. Hard to screw up. She ate all of it, and was very happy.

I, on the other hand, foolishly looked away from the final 2 pages of the menu, which listed the breakfast items.I ordered a vegetarian panini, with grilled vegetables and cheese.

First came the soup. I asked for the tomato rosa angelina or rosa marina or something. My mom said, I should have had the lemon rice soup, since it's a Greek soup, and Greek people own this restaurant. But no, I had to have tomato.

Tomato soup - Campbell's. Thin thin thin. A few small pieces of teeny pasta thrown in. Bad.

Panini - it actually looked good, grilled properly. Appearances can be deceiving. The peppers and mushroom came from a can. Weak, wilted, no flavor. Awful.

French fries - Frozen, from a bag. There were served hot enough, but any kind of flavor they might have had, must have been surgically extracted. Tasteless potato. Salt and ketchup helped a little. At least I could taste the salt. I think I might have eaten six french fries. Left the rest.

A cup of cole slaw - probably not from Jewel, since there aren't many Jewel food stores in NW Indiana. Van Til's, maybe, or Wise Way. Awful. No flavor. Creamy.

Basket of saltinecrackers with one bread roll - the roll had no taste. It was only a little stale. I put on some of the fake butter, wondering if that would add flavor. It didn't.

Coffee - decent.

Service - fine.

Would I go to Lake Park Restaurant if my mother didn't live a few blocks away, or if Lake Park didn't offer Corned Beef Hash? I'd rather be waterboarded than eat here again.

Will I go again?  **heavy sigh**  If Mom wants to, probably. But I'll order eggs, sunny side up, and whole wheat toast. I think Lake Park will get that right. If I stick to simple breakfast items, I may survive any future meals.