Monday night I took some of my family to Galvan's Restaurant, 2220 E Northland Ave. by the Superbowl bowling alley. Galvan's is a family diner that has been praised for their gyros. They also offer basic sandwiches, soups, pies, etc. Fairly inexpensive and generally OK basic food is my take, but there were a couple glitches. I started with an order of their soup of the day, seafood gumbo - but they were all out of that. This was a bit late, around 8 PM, but still, that's a real shame. They also offered white chicken chili and regular red chili, or so the waitress claimed, so I ordered a bowl of the red chili. What was served me was a version of refried bean soup, similar to a recipe that my wife has used, but far less appetizing because this version had a lot of cream in it. I think the ingredients were cream, pureed refried beans, tomato chunks, chicken, and chili spices. It was an awkward combination with a coarse, almost gritty texture and did not seem to fit into any chili category that I was familiar with. I couldn't finish it.

The gyro was good, except that the white sauce was based on sour cream instead of yoghurt used with "real" gyro dishes. I'm sure many people prefer the fattier sauce, though. Others had a basic hamburger (looked OK) and a Reuben sandwich that was good but was inadequate when it comes to the sauce that should be inside on the bread - just not enough or not tasty enough to enhance the sandwich.

By the way, the nearby Superbowl is one of Appleton's more popular bowling alleys with several dozen alleys.