The 25 Essential Eats Of Indy
The quintessential classics that should be required eating for all Hoosiers. This is your eat sheet: A rollout of Indy’s 25 essential dishes, ranked.
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.
