Revamp: Tini
Mass Ave’s self-describing cocktail bar, where music videos marry Moscow Mules served up in metal cups, has a new food-and-drink menu just in time for summer.
Drive east on 10th Street out of downtown, and you’ll be greeted by a panorama of colorful storefronts and taverns with cheery names that belie their darkened windows and gritty interiors. These time-honored watering holes make for good hipster fodder when slumming on neighborhood pub crawls, but you might not return without 20 of your friends to stack the deck. Had you stopped in at the Tick Tock Lounge (2602 E. 10th St., 317-631-4182) just a few years ago, you might have done well to get a Bud Light on draught and a cheeseburger cooked up on an electric skillet in the back. But the experience might have left you wanting for decor—and a good dry cleaner to eradicate the smell of smoke from your clothes. Now, after two years of standing vacant, the Tick Tock has been given a facelift by longtime Indianapolis bar owners Wanda Goodpaster and Tammy Jones, who have added a clever pub menu, local brews, and a surprising selection of house-infused vodkas, including pepper, coffee, pineapple, and even a bacon version. Having heard the buzz about the over-the-top garnishes on the Bloody Marys and the mammoth tenderloins, we stopped in to experience the many ways this east-side institution had changed.
Sweet treats get plenty of attention during the spring and summer party circuits. But ask for a gluten-free or dairy-free cupcake, and you’re bound to be let down by dry, fun-free substitutes. Not for long—The Flying Cupcake (TFC) has a plan for Celiac disease sufferers and nondairy doers. Starting May 1st, Indiana-based baking entrepreneur Kate Bova Drury will reopen her Illinois Street spot (5617 N. Illinois St.) as TFC Raw, devoted to gluten-free and dairy-free cupcakes. Using a special blend of flours containing tapioca flour, potato starch, and brown rice flour (and, in some recipes, almond meal), allergy-trained bakers will devote all of the ovens and an entire display case to 5 to 12 varieties of cupcakes (and even a flour-free peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie).
Lick’s creamy root beer vanilla bean ice cream from Eggshell Bistro (51 W. City Center Dr., Carmel, 317-660-1616), served in an old-fashioned parfait glass with tiny, cute spoons. The vanilla beans give the treat a true flavor boost.
Frozen yogurt spots are taking over the city and suburbs, but first-time restaurant owner Matt Meinema believes he’s on the right track to offer something slightly different. Meinema filled us in on what we can expect at PEARings Frozen Yogurt & Beyond (6 W. Washington St., 317-608-6456).
While most of us hit the Monon Greenway with our bikes to enjoy Sunday’s sunshine, Andrew and Amanda Fritz got out there with shovels. The young couple, residents of downtown Carmel, went to work building a trailside community garden near City Center. Called The Gleaning Garden, its purpose is to grow produce for people living in poverty — a type of farming the Bible calls “gleaning,” Andrew says. “Gleaning is leaving food behind so those on the margins of society can take what’s there for themselves.”
The Sedona-red building at the corner of 16th and Alabama streets, a former Herron School of Art and Design classroom, sat empty since the school left its 16th Street campus for IUPUI. Way back then, the low-slung brick building housed the metalworking studio and was known as the Foundry. This Friday, its doors will open again—but the name remains the same, Foundry Provisions (236 E. 16th St., 317-543-7357). Furthering the connection to the place’s past, a student who took classes in the old Foundry, Todd Bracik, is the first featured artist. His scrap-metal collages cover an entire white-brick wall.
Tucked into the quaint but somewhat intermittently desolate heart of old Greenwood on Madison Avenue, the Blind Pig (147 S. Madison Ave., Greenwood, 317-882-7892) draws in a pretty dedicated clientele of regulars for live music and nightly beer quaffing. (And if you can get beyond the now somewhat jarring smell of indoor cigarettes in “smoke-’em-if-you’ve-got-‘em” Johnson County, it’s one of the better places to cheer on IU as it heads into the Sweet 16.)
