Peek Inside Bluebeard’s Invitation-Only Dinners
Long after most customers have settled their bills and headed home to bed, an exuberant crew of Bluebeard groupies gathers once a month for a multicourse meal that lasts well into the wee hours. These are the restaurant’s midnight dinners, where some of Indy’s most dedicated foodies crowd into a sweeping banquette under shelves fit with vintage typewriters to let the bar backs and line cooks—ordinarily the backup performers—show off their culinary luster. Here is a sample of one night’s (or, rather, morning’s) spread.
Quencher: For a refresher, Bluebeard’s bartenders bottled their own spin on root beer concocted from sassafras, ginger, and Demerara sugar. Some diners mixed it with shots of herbal amaro liqueur.
Amuse: Crisp potato pancakes topped with herbs, bacon vinaigrette, and soft egg-yolk croquettes come together in breakfast reimagined as a sophisticated first taste.
Second Course: Cooks Bryan Kanne and Andrew Whitmoyer grill medallions of beef-tongue bacon to layer between pickled hard-boiled eggs on planks of brioche.
Sipper: Bartenders pipe the smoke of Imperial Balkan tobacco from Hardwicke’s into a mixture of rye whiskey, botanicals, and Indiana maple syrup, which they then trap in recycled Traders Point yogurt jars.
Dessert: A torch flame finishes the clever Inverted S’more, a stack of dark ganache and “anti-graham crackers” made from coconut and hazelnut, crowned with a caramel-vanilla marshmallow.
