food

How Hurst’s 15 Bean soup—the nation’s top-selling bag of branded beans—gets from the company’s venerable downtown processing plant to stores worldwide.

“The joke is, my dad always asks me, ‘When are you going to get a real job?’” Fogle says. “I’m like, ‘Hopefully not for a while.’ I love what I do.”

Give thanks for this bountiful compendium of dairy farmers, pierogi makers, brewers, chefs, field hands, and many others on Indiana’s agricultural scene.

These restaurants do the cooking for you.

The bar hummed with Cream Ale–sipping hipsters, those coal-mine canaries of emerging commercial pockets.

Enterprising restaurateurs have revitalized Lafayette Square’s once-closed storefronts, making it our most international culinary destination.

Dawson’s on Main has only been open for a few years, but it feels like an old town favorite.

To Patachou Inc.’s 32-year-old executive chef, Tyler Herald, they’re not just diners seeking sustenance—they’re fans gathering before his live rock concert–esque performance.

From The Libertine to Recess and Oakleys to Bluebeard, Korean to Latin and sushi to steak, our critics chose the cream of Indy’s dining crop,. Who’s at the head of the table? Read on to find out.

At one end of Cerulean, an enclosed birchwood hut called “The Nest” makes for a cozy hideaway.

On a balmy friday night, as the sun sets over the Fashion Mall, a crush of well-heeled 40-somethings crowds the patio of Brewstone Beer Company. Bartenders shake up sticky concoctions with names like Mango Tango and a grove of fruit-flavored mojitos while a guy with a guitar and a fedora provides the poppy Dave Matthews–esque entertainment. This handsome spread looks like what you would get if Tommy Bahama threw a party for Crate & Barrel. “Don’t you love this place?” the singer says into the mic. “This is my favorite new spot.” People raise their cocktail glasses and cheer in a scene that gives true meaning to the term TGIF.  

If you have spent any time at all with an East Coast expat, you’ve probably been apprised of the embarrassing state of pizza in Indianapolis—our dearth of pizzaioli dusted in doppio zero flour, dough spiked with mineral-rich water, and slices that fold neatly down the middle. But when a place like downtown’s Coal Pizza Company comes along, cooking its pies in a 900-degree oven in the big-shouldered tradition of America’s first pizzerias, redemption is served by the slice.

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

Tini’s Raintini is made of Absolut acai berry vodka, violet liqueur, limoncello, lime juice, and muddled blueberries, paired with head-bopping Beyonce vids.

Looks like he ate Recess out of seared Spanish sardines.