Carmel dining

Osteria by Fabio Viviani plans a grand opening by early next year, joining a family of several dozen restaurants under the former Top Chef contestant’s brand.

Flix Brewhouse serves dinner and a movie in style.

The restaurant might have gotten serious about the food, but eating it—in a dining room that looks like Alice in Wonderland’s SoHo loft—is still seriously fun.

The Neapolitan-style pizzas are straightforward, with only five red-sauce varieties, each one garnished with Smoking Goose proteins and hand-pulled mozzarella.

Other gilded bistros were working their magpie charms long before Eggshell Bistro made its debut. Petite Chou (14390 Clay Terrace Blvd., Carmel, 566-0765; 823 Westfield Blvd., 259-0765; cafepatachou.com) sparks a craving for crepes and broken yolk sandwiches in a dining room that looks like Martha Hoover’s Pinterest board > The brunch crowd gravitates to Good Morning Mama’s (1001 E. 54th St., 255-3800, goodmorningmamas.com) for innovative breakfast-to-brunch fair in a brightly refurbished car repair shop. We love the Hoosierfied Hawaiian Loco Moco with cheesy grits and sausage gravy, and the blueberry pancakes.

Small-plate dining has taken off in Indy, but people have been sharing plates for a while here. They just called it “ordering off of the bar menu.” Meridian Restaurant & Bar (5694 N. Meridian St., 466-1111, meridianonmeridian.com) has an intriguing lineup of nibbles such as roasted beets and spiced popcorn > The happy hour menu at The Oceanaire (30 S. Meridian St., 955-2277, theoceanaire.com) ranges from crab cake bites to luscious shrimp and grits > The wafer-thin flatbreads at Palomino Restaurant & Bar (49 W. Maryland St., 974-0400, palomino.com) pair nicely with GNO beverages.

The egg came first. And, oh mon dieu, what an egg this was.

The first thing you notice at Divvy, after you have strolled by packed communal tables in the bar and passed under raw-wood lampshades curved like Mobius strips, are the menus. Long, horizontal, and leather-bound like an old-timey razor strop, they contain sections upon subsections with suggestive monikers such as “Motion in the Ocean” and “Grazers Galore,” spanning more than 20 pages. You could dine here five nights a week, as some have, and never conquer the dozens of “Tidbits,” “Liquid Goods,” and “Mini Morsels” offered by this new foodie oasis in the shadow of Carmel’s Palladium. “The fun part was coming up with the names of the dishes,” says owner Kevin “Woody” Rider, the restaurateur who also brought Woody’s Library Restaurant to northside diners and helped open Bonge’s Tavern in Perkinsville.