Food & Drinks

Nestled in the former Bazbeaux space downtown, Bakersfield Mass Ave. promises Mexican fare, late-night dining, and a country-rock soundtrack this spring. Expect the Prada-gonia set camped out at the bar picking on pretty little handmade corn-tortilla tacos with achiote-braised pork, pickled red onions, habanero salsa, and cilantro and washing them down with Mason jars filled with fresh-squeezed margaritas. The menu will offer seven different street-style tacos, two tortas, two salads, and a few appetizers and soups. But Bakersfield will be as much a bar as a restaurant: This rustic-style joint will also offer 100 tequila and bourbon choices and vintage cocktails alongside $2 PBRs (served in a glass boot). If the second location of Bakersfield is anything like the original Cincinnati spot, anticipate crowds and long waits. 334 Massachusetts Ave., bakersfieldmassave.com

Hunky strips of General Tso’s Pork Belly laid atop a gingery stir-fry at Late Harvest Kitchen (8605 River Crossing, 317-663-8063). DIY blackened fish tacos at City Cafe (443 N. Pennsylvania St., 317-833-2233), served with

Nick Davidson is not a robot, but he branded his brewery with one as a mascot. “As a kid, I was obsessed with robots,” he says. “It didn’t have anything to do with The Wizard of Oz.” As his fledgling brewery came to fruition, ideas fermented in Davidson’s mind as to what to label his brews: “’Robot’ didn’t sound very good. Tin Man sounded good, like a retro robot I had as a kid.” His friend Matt Wagner helped him design the logo, and the rest is history. Davidson opened Tin Man Brewing Co. (1430 W. Franklin St., Evansville, 812-618-3227) the day after Thanksgiving—Black Friday 2012—and his robot mascot has been seeing red ever since. Irish red, that is. On the heels of his successful turn at Indy’s Winterfest in late January, we caught up with the entrepreneur who has brought craft beer back to Evansville.

Bakersfield Mass Ave (334 Massachusetts Ave., 317-635-6962, bakersfieldmassave.com) officially opens at 4 p.m. today, and hosted preview parties on Friday and Saturday nights. Housing their taco-tequila-whiskey haven in the former Bazbeaux spot on the business end of Mass Ave, the owners smartly knocked out the walls that separated three rooms on the main floor, implementing steel beams to prop up the room and thus opening the space, letting it breathe. This is a mini-chain with just two stores so far, the first abiding in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine district. The owners were thrilled to be able to do so much to this building, as the original location is more than 200 years old, with updates to the historic building either forbidden or impossible.

Considering its hot SoBro location, inventive Latin-inspired food and drinks, and gorgeous (yet comfortable) interiors, Delicia (5215 N. College Ave., 317-925-0677) will have no problem filling its 125 seats on Friday and Saturday nights. Was this really the former Movie Gallery space we were talking about months ago? We were impressed from the moment we entered: Delicia packs plenty of panache. Sure, it’s on board with the reclaimed-wood trend. But here, the exposed wood beams are mixed in with ambient lighting, a curved partial wooden ceiling, glass arched accents, and white-glazed brick walls. It definitely works.

Over a month ago, we reported that Martha Hoover, the owner of Napolese, was cool as a cucumber while preparing for yet another opening. Yesterday, she opened her new downtown Napolese (30 S. Meridian St., 317-635-0765) in the stunning Deco-style skyscraper that originally housed the L.S. Ayres men’s shop.

If the old rule about eating only at international restaurants where the natives eat is true, then Sichuan Chinese Restaurant (11588 Westfield Blvd., Carmel, 317-844-7559) must be one of the most authentic ethnic eateries in central Indiana. Stopping in on a recent weeknight at this storefront eatery in a slightly timeworn Carmel strip mall, we were the only people not chattering away in Chinese or some other Asian language. Clearly this is a favorite among immigrants longing for a true taste of home.

But even if you do not speak Cantonese or Mandarin, you can get a pretty inspired array of stir-fries and noodle dishes with plenty of chili oil, that ubiquitous Sichuan staple, to wake the palate. Feel like some “rabbit dices” or the “pork kidney stir fry”? Then ask for the Chinese menu, and you will have over double the choices, some of which are translated into English and many more of which are written out in Chinese on the back of the menu.

Having come to love Dan Dan noodles from other area Sichuan restaurants, we ordered them as a starter, along with more ubiquitous crab Rangoon, no doubt a popular item on Sichuan’s lunchtime buffet. The noodles looked like so much dry spaghetti until we stirred up the dark, rich, sinus-clearing sauce from the bottom. The crab Rangoon were generous, not-too-greasy wontons stuffed with a fresh-tasting filling that actually did seem to contain a little crab.

For entrees, we went for one of the house specialties, scallops in garlic sauce (which promised that no garlic would linger in the customer’s mouth), as well as Mongolian chicken and an eggplant dish our waitress recommended from the Chinese menu. The big, meaty scallops did indeed have a spicy sweet sauce that, while redolent of garlic, lacked the bitter pungency of other Asian dishes we had eaten. Slices of white-meat chicken in a drier sauce with crisp slices of sweet onion made for a nice contrast, and the delectable, not-too-viscous sauce on tender strips of eggplant drew the two dishes together deliciously with plenty of white rice. With a short selection of Asian beers and a friendly staff standing by to tend to your needs (and not look askance when you ask for a dish that natives might eat,) Sichuan is definitely worth forsaking your neighborhood takeout for the drive north to Carmel.

The crabcake was an inauspicious start. Ensconced as we were in the dark-paneled Fireplace Room of Dunaway’s Palazzo Ossigeno, with gentle flames licking the intricately carved hearth and the candelabra twinkling, we were looking for some evidence that this shrine to Indy’s industrial past—which made a splash when former St. Elmo co-owner Jeff Dunaway opened the sleek eatery in 1998—still had some culinary chops. The appetizer did little to restore our faith: a flat puck of over-mixed crab, its too-smooth exterior wearing an insipid remoulade. At $13, it almost seemed a crime.

Latitude 39, a rambling family-entertainment center laid out in the gutted multiplex at Clearwater Crossing, contains not only a large dining room built around an open kitchen and a ceramic-tiled pizza hearth, but also a dine-in cinema, a dinner theater, and a sports theater with full food-and-beverage service. Not that you would notice any of these. The fact that you can eat here gets lost somewhere between the row of Skee-ball ramps and the 20-lane luxury bowling alley with disco balls and white leather sofas.

Seven of Indiana’s top culinary dogs are strutting their stuff as 2013 James Beard Foundation nominees, selected from more than 44,000 online entries in 20 categories. Last week, the foundation unveiled its “long list” (421) of the year’s semifinalists—which will be cut down to the final list of nominees on March 18 during a press brunch in Charleston, SC. (NOTE: nominations will also be announced live via the Foundation’s Twitter feed.)

Cerulean’s (339 S. Delaware St., 317-870-1320) pitch-perfect pair of vanilla-bean macarons—one big and one little—on a plate artfully balance with freeze-dried raspberries. Tiny pan-fried bluegill filets atop stone-ground grits at

The only sign on its exterior simply says “Open.” And “humble” may not begin to describe the barebones storefront for what is becoming a cult favorite pizza takeout and delivery in the Holy Rosary neighborhood. But Humble Pie (1039 S. East St., 317-686-0900) is indeed back in business after a brief hiatus earlier this year. Based in Greencastle, where DePauw students in the know have been getting stromboli, pepperjack breadsticks, and custom pies for their late-night study fix since November of  2009, Humble Pie quietly opened its Indianapolis outpost in December of 2011. It is the brainchild of David and Damien Gibson, father-and-son Greencastle natives with decades of experience in the pizza industry (David has owned a Domino’s Pizza in Greencastle). The Indianapolis location, which the Gibsons hope to expand (or offer in-store dining at a nearby location), had to close in late December when a fire destroyed the family home. But the Gibsons more than met their promise to open in the spring, coming back online on January 25.

We figured it was time to check it out. Currently, Humble Pie’s delivery area is small, so we ordered ours for pickup and headed south of downtown. We didn’t get out a ruler, but the 14-inch Greek pie, to which we added slightly spicy “Chicago” sausage, certainly seemed bigger, loaded as it was with artichokes hearts, real-deal Kalamata olives, baby spinach, Roma tomatoes, and tons of feta. A fairly sturdy, flavorful crust might have been a bit crispier, but this was worlds beyond the average neighborhood pizza takeout. But what impressed the most? The generous house dinner salad with spring mix heavy on mizuna and chard, topped with portabella mushrooms, tomatoes, olives, red onions, green peppers, and Monterrey jack cheese. At $6, it was something the Gibsons could brag about, but these humble owners are more about providing their customers with a quality meal.

The Mile-High Club at Rock-Cola ’50s Cafe (5730 Brookville Rd., 317-357-2233), held together with a steak knife instead of a toothpick. The Russian Mule at