Happy hour isn’t just about cheap drinks, half-price appetizers and stimulating conversation anymore. Once a month, happy hour is also about purpose. At least it is for the people at Slow Food Indy, the local chapter of Slow Food USA. Sip, Slow Food Indy’s own version of happy hour, aims to bring together like-minded people to discuss good, clean, and fair food at some of the breweries and wineries in Indianapolis that practice those values.
A chilled pint of light, crisp Flying Horse Royal Lager, brewed in India and poured with flourish into ice-slicked mugs at the new Delhi Palace Restaurant (901 Indiana Ave., 317-955-1700) just off the IUPUI campus. Roasted pork loin at Palomino (49 W. Maryland St., 317-974-0400), lightly charred but tender-pink on th
If you’ve driven up Meridian Street lately and wondered about the construction at the once-dingy hotel north of 28th Street, you are in for a tasty surprise. For the past 18 months, with the help of grants by the Lilly Endowment and other entities, Ivy Tech Community College has been quietly, furiously revamping the former Stouffer’s hotel, recently a Christian ministry, and relocating its culinary school classrooms to the 13-story, 196,000-square-foot high rise, now with nine culinary labs, state-of-the-art fixtures, and the potential to accommodate 1,500 budding student chefs. Just as exciting as the impact these students will have on the local restaurant and banquet scene is the opening, at the recent start of the new semester, of Courses (2820 N. Meridian St.), the culinary school’s 140-seat restaurant.
The opening is a coup for Hoosier history buffs as well. The North Meridian address links back to a storied history of baked beans and the King of Rock ’n’ Roll. The school is built on the property that was once the site of the ornate mansion of Frank Van Camp, the famous bean magnate, who built his stately home in the late 1800s, fitting it with ornate wood carvings and leaded glass windows. It wasn’t until 1965 that the location was converted to a hotel by Stouffer’s, the frozen dinner folks, who were expanding their restaurant and hotel empire around the country. Noting the structural riches of the Van Camp estate, Stouffer’s architects preserved many of the windows and integrated various carved archways into the hotel design. Ivy Tech’s designers have kept these historical details in their new culinary institute, creating a refreshed, pristine facility that yet has links to the past. Sadly, the Institute for Basic Life Principles, the building’s most recent tenant, removed the second-floor swimming pool when it moved into the facility in the late 1980’s, but Ivy Tech has converted the Institute’s spacious auditorium into a stunning multipurpose space with soaring windows that will soon host weddings and receptions. As a hotel, the facility saw its share of celebrities and dignitaries. Dolly Parton and Glen Campbell both purportedly stayed here when performing in town, and it’s believed that it was the last hotel Elvis stayed in while he was offering his infamous last concert at Market Square Arena downtown.
Associate professor and culinary arts instructor chef Thom England has had the joy of ordering many of the latest cooking appliances and gadgets to set the school’s high-tech labs and teaching kitchens apart, including built-in sous vide wells, induction burners, even a Swiss Pacojet, which can blend foods at super-fast speeds at sub-zero temperatures. Just this week, Englad was still jogging about the building, making certain that the right smoker was installed in the right kitchen. In addition to the much larger digs, Ivy Tech’s culinary school will be operating as no-waste facility, with extensive composting and machinery for turning waste products into lint. In addition to its labs, the school now houses climate-controlled chocolate work and charcuterie curing rooms, and plans are in the works for herb and vegetable gardens to the west of the building.
Ivy Tech’s culinary program culminates with two hands-on classes where students gain experience that’s as close to restaurant work as possible. Now, that experience is coming at Courses, which is currently serving lunch on Monday and Tuesday and dinner on Wednesday and Thursday. The menu reflects what the students are studying in 8-week courses, currently classic French dishes such as Coquille St. J
Last fall, first-time restaurant owners Michele and David Dessauer quietly sold their adorably located Broad Ripple spot, Fire by the Monon (6523 Ferguson St., 317-252-5920), to seasoned restaurateur Tim Reuter. No stranger to the industry, Reuter, has made a business of resuscitating ailing bars and restaurants (having previously flipped the likes of Bourbon Street Distillery, Tip Top Tavern, Living Room Lounge, and The Stadium Tavern). Once at the helm, Reuter convinced Vicki Higuera, then the director of retail planning at the City Market, to leave her post and act as his co-owner.
If the idea of tropical drinks brings to mind kitschy brightly colored liquors poured from spinning slushie machines, take note: Hyper-serious drink fanatics Zach Wilks and Greg Wilson of Wilks & Wilson (212 W. 10th St., 317-294-2890, wilksandwilson.com) have launched a line of syrups that pay these beachfront classics their due. Their six organic infused elixirs can make any home mixologist feel confident enough to jump behind the bar and shake it like Tom Cruise in Cocktail.
On Sept. 10, Carmel gets Indiana’s first Matt the Miller’s Tavern (11 City Center Dr.), an Ohio-based chain whose tagline, “Life is short. Enjoy family, friends, and good times,” pretty much sums up its cargo-shorts business model. The 5,300-square-foot restaurant will seat about 170 inside and as many as 100 on the patio. Its menu is a mix of burgers, sandwiches, and big-plate entrees such as roasted salmon and flat-iron steak. Bar snacks (including deep-fried pretzel bites and $5 appetizers during happy hour) complement the 26 draft beers on tap, extensive wine list, and pretty-pretty martini list. And a roster of flatbreads ranges from chicken-avocado to wild mushroom. “The crux of what we do is the flatbreads,” says the chain’s Columbus, Ohio-based president, Craig L. Barnum, who runs two Matt the Miller’s Taverns in Ohio as well as a more upscale restaurant, Tucci’s California Bistro, in Dublin, Ohio. “We have a few items on the menu that you don’t see in every casual restaurant, like ahi tuna wontons, shrimp and grits, edamame,” Barnum says. “We are not ultra-casual, but we are not fine dining either. We are somewhere in the middle. This is a very approachable concept.”
The banana split pie, included with your entree at Ralph’s Great Divide (743 E. New York St., 317-637-2192), composed of fresh, ripe bananas, whipped topping, and layers of chocolate and strawberry filling propped up by a crumbly crust. The platter of spicy feta, hummus, and tapenade at
We were smitten the moment we walked through the door of Bloomington newcomer Topo’s 403 (403 N. Walnut St., 812-676-8676). The grand entry of this restored 1870s townhouse has the kind of amber, Art Deco glow that could put Instagram out of business, for starters. Then there is the high clustered chandelier illuminating deep-blue wallpaper festooned with stylized jellyfish and the whitewashed spindles of the stairway, and the hallway that opens onto high-ceilinged dining rooms with white tablecloths, tall windows, and refurbished fireplace mantels. It’s an elegant entry point for a restaurant that seems to have put just as much meticulous thought into its Mediterranean-inspired dishes. Dave Tallent, of Bloomington’s Restaurant Tallent fame, helped craft the menu, which takes some creative liberties with Greek favorites such as spanakopita (done inside a filleted rainbow trout) and skewered meat (pork souvlaki plated with plump, creamy gigante beans). Even the little gratis dish of house-marinated olives—tender and oily—are herb-flecked gems.
Construction on the downtown mixed-use complex CityWay is still in its hard-hat–and–yellow-tape phase. But look closely through the jackhammer dust, and you will notice that some of the key components of the eight-block project are starting to take form. Most notably, we can see the outline of the restaurant Cerulean, slated to open as early as November at the corner of South and Delaware streets. The 6,000-square-foot space bears little resemblance to its Winona Lake flagship, a wood-shingled cottage with a surprisingly hip decor—where diners settle into baby-blue Eames chairs to eat locally sourced meals served in lacquered bento boxes. Co-owner Caleb France, who opened the northern-Indiana restaurant six years ago with wife Courtney, gave us a preview of the Indianapolis outpost, which the 30-year-old self-taught chef sees as an extension (but not a duplicate) of the original.
