Terry Kirts

The restaurant will showcase an extensive raw bar, along with a menu heavy on seafood and local produce, with selected meat dishes, beers, and wines. It will also be open for lunch, offering sandwiches, appetizers, and elegant small plates.

The menu of pan-Latin street-food favorites offers a variety of soups, salads, and tacos at lunch but shrinks at night to a host of sliders and small-plate highlights.

“President Obama and Vice President Biden stood up to shake my hand,” says Blanco. “It was a true sign of respect for my work as a poet. I thought, ‘These guys have my back.'”

“Most bars cover up bad corned beef with sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing,” Steve Wechter laments, “but I wanted the meat to shine.”

Owner Jorge Chalgub and his daughter Dayana Mireles (who took a year off as an engineering student at IUPUI to help her father run the business) press sandwiches and bake fresh-fruit pastries in the tradition of their island heritage.

Shawn and Tammy Miller welcome crowds to their ambitious new cocktail spot. Promising “approachable New American” cuisine and both classic and contemporary cocktails, the bar mingles upscale mixology with surprisingly hearty dishes.

LocalFolks’s farmstead-inspired salsa lets the bright flavors of bell pepper and cider vinegar shine through so you won’t overheat when the game goes into overtime.

Anyone who’s dined with me knows I’m not an especially dainty eater, but this artfully plated toss of red oak leaf lettuce, frisée, and other delicate greens hits on every textural.

Avoiding Friday and Saturday nights not only ups your odds of a table, but can also mean less harried service and more attention to dishes. And Sundays can be great nights to dine out—Bluebeard, for instance, stays open until 10 p.m. with a special, scaled-down menu of dishes you might not get the rest of the week.

Given that the same people who brought burnt-cheese cheeseburgers in adorable wire baskets to Punch Burger conceived the place, we weren’t surprised that Labor District wears a similar mod-but-approachable style.

We asked some of Indy’s top chefs, bartenders, and restaurateurs to look into their crystal balls and predict some trends for 2014 that are either on their way or that they dream of seeing in the Circle City.

“We’re really here to educate about the types and uses of hot sauces,” Michael Siemer says, as he pours samples of a few varieties.

Ember Urban Eatery, opened with little fanfare just before Thanksgiving, is now offering classic American eats in the soaring Villagio at Page Pointe building.

“We didn’t even know it had been a bar until we started uncovering the old Thunderbird sign,” Gonzales says.

With juice blends such as the “Mender Blender,” you can detox at Georgetown Market and head off to work without anyone knowing of your night’s indiscretions.