Whether we’re singing along in a cozy club or throwing our hands in the air during a hometown music festival, our appreciation for Indy musicians (and the folks who tirelessly promote the city as a concert destination) goes up to 11.
EDITED BY JULIA SPALDING
60
SIREN’S SONG
Tales of true crime are irresistible, exploding in popularity in recent years. These Indiana reporters and investigators share the local cases they just couldn’t shake. Some are still trying to find a way out.
EDITED BY EVE BATEY
Indy’s official unofficial music historian, Kyle Long.
Photograph by Kendall McCargo
PHOTO BY JAY GOLDZ
STEP INTO MOTHERHOOD WITH THE BEST
When the family is about to grow by two feet, you’ve got a whole team ready to help you find your footing. Franciscan Health’s labor and delivery specialists take all the steps to motherhood with you – from prenatal to postnatal, and every step in between, including advanced care for high-risk pregnancies and breastfeeding support services.
Step into your new role as mom with confidence! Connect with our OB Nurse Navigator to choose your provider today.
CIRCLE CITY
Lucas Oil Stadium’s big draw is that it can be transformed to accommodate any kind of event. Here’s how. 14 THE HOOSIERIST
Our Indiana expert tackles small-town pro sports teams. 16 THE BEAT
Exciting changes are coming to The Fashion Mall following Saks Fifth Avenue’s exit.
A letter between Billy the Kid and Lew Wallace discusses a possible pardon for the famous bandit. 20 BEST BETS
Five can’t-miss events in Indy this month. 22 WHIZ KID
Tiny tractor connoisseur Jackson Laux has taken social media by storm.
GOOD LIFE
25 WANTED
Colorful nesting rings at The Mulberry Treehouse are just as much works of art as toys.
26 SHOP TALK
Nora Plaza’s new high-end shop Bluemercury has all the health and beauty goods to pamper yourself.
28 TRENDING
Host in style with these tasteful napkin rings.
30 PET PROJECT
Discover Hoosiers’ favorite pet name, treat your pup, or get comfy at a cat cafe.
32 REALTY CHECK
New owners have big plans for architect J. Parke Randall’s midcentury home.
34 TRAVELER
Key West has options for relaxation, thrills, and sightseeing in a beach paradise.
A tour of the city’s best eats, from fine dining to favorite dives.
Borage’s Fried Cheesy Polenta Cake is a savory delight that puts a new twist on the familiar.
38 FIRST BITE
A restaurant owner gives advice on olive oil, a Fountain Square bar shoots to sudden fame, and the verdict is in for a new Noblesville spot.
40
TASTE TEST
Dogs will flip for these scrumptious pup cups.
42 FOODIE
After working in the music and tech industries, Mark LaFay’s third act, Old Major Market, allows him to share his love of high-quality meats.
44 REVIEW
Chris Evans’ newest trattoria Tre serves up literal 24-karat gold, but the dishes that glitter the most reflect their unassuming Italian origins.
Allison Mansion, once home to IMS cofounder James Allison, is rich with detail.
CELEBRATING
CHRISTEL DEHAAN’S LEGACY
Christel DeHaan was a dedicated and thoughtful philanthropist whose impact in our community lives on today and into the future. Through a strategic and impactful legacy plan, organizations Christel DeHaan cared about during her lifetime will receive ongoing support to carry out their missions in perpetuity. Central Indiana Community Foundation is honored to be her partner in this legacy giving — and can be yours, too. Contact us to begin planning your legacy — no matter the size.
Contact our team to learn how we can help amplify your charitable impact.
Jennifer Turner | Vice President of Philanthropy jennifert@cicf.org CICF.org | 317.634.2423
EDITOR’S NOTE
Full Circle
WAY BACK when I could still count my age in single digits, the best place to dance and listen to music was in the newly paneled, remodeled basement at my parents’ house. As my sister and I spun records on the turntable (or sometimes inserted tapes into an 8-track player), the Bee Gees suggested we should be dancing, and KISS commanded us to rock ’n’ roll all night and party every day. Despite our best attempts, school night bedtimes prevented us from fully living out the rock star lifestyle.
As I grew into my teen years, it became totally uncool (mortifying, really) to continue the basement dance parties at home. And so began my journey into following live music. While I was in high school, I thought it was a big deal to travel from Kokomo to Indy to catch bands at venues like the Arlington and Murat theaters. After I graduated from IU and settled into my first apartment in Broad Ripple, I reveled in the convenience of walking to shows at The Vogue and The Patio. In the years since, my list of favorite local music venues expanded to include the Melody Inn, Hi-Fi, Radio Radio, and White Rabbit Cabaret—all of which made it into this month’s cover feature (p. 46).
These days, I don’t make it out to concerts nearly as often as I used to, but I’m tempted to buy tickets when I see the following event details: doors at 6, show at 7. (Turns out, those school night bedtimes apply in middle age, too.) Last summer, I hosted a house concert, which meant I didn’t even have to leave the comfort of my living room to enjoy a live set by my favorite performer with an intimate crew of 25 other people. Although I now play music via streaming services on a Bluetooth device, I find myself reliving those childhood dance parties of old in my new-to-me wood-paneled family room. It all comes back around eventually.
Andrea Ratcliff Editor-in-Chief
PUBLISHER
Ivy Bayer
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Andrea Ratcliff SALES DIRECTOR Holly Whitney DESIGN DIRECTOR Margo Wininger
FEATURES EDITOR
Julia Spalding
LIFESTYLE EDITOR
Christina Vercelletto
FOOD & DINING EDITOR Eve Batey
MANAGING EDITOR
Camille Graves
EDITORIAL INTERNS
Natalie Fitzgibbons, Javon Manning, Edie Schwarb
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Vu Luong
EDITORIAL ART DIRECTOR
Maura Broderson
ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR
Christiana Bertsch
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Tony Valainis
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Megan Fernandez, Stephen Garstang, Jeana Harris, Terry Kirts, Amy Lynch, Sam Stall
Writer Marc D. Allan reported about music for the Indianapolis Star from 1990 to 1998 and thought he knew a lot about local talent. That was before he met Kyle Long. After a conversation with Long about Hoosier music history—during which Allan realized he had heard of none of the artists—he wondered: How does Long know what he knows? The story in our cover feature (p. 46) hopefully gets at the answer.
Sarah D. Bunting
Considering how much Unsolved Mysteries she watched as a kid, it’s no surprise writer Sarah D. Bunting ended up owning a true crime bookshop, Exhibit B. Books. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, two cats, and a dog named Bear—and thousands of tales of murder and mayhem, of which she has a catalog of knowledge that she loves to share (p. 60). Her grandparents met at a barn dance in Vincennes.
Daniel Church
Known as Porch or Porchmoon, Daniel Church is a photographer, videographer, graphic designer, and artist with a passion for design and marketing and over two decades of experience based in Fort Wayne—not far from where this month’s Whiz Kid subject Jackson Laux obsesses over his farm equipment (p. 22). When not on the job, Porch volunteers at animal shelters and enjoys movie nights at home with his wife and dogs.
OCTOBER
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTIONS
67 // TRAVEL
At these Midwest museums, gardens, architectural wonders, and heritage sites, you’ll venture through time, culture, space, and more. 75 // HEALTH WATCH:
CANCER
CARE Prevention measures, early detection, and effective therapies can help protect against cancer diagnoses and promote successful treatment.
HOUSE GUIDE
Local schools welcome parents and prospective students to tour their campuses, get to know staff and faculty members, and ask questions.
STAR WEALTH MANAGERS
Meet award-winning financial professionals recognized by Five Star Professional for high levels of competence, performance, and service.
HOLIDAY CHEER
The Circle City lights up in wintertime with seasonal activities for all ages and interests. We’ll give readers a rundown of joyous happenings to fill the holidays with fun and festivity.
TOP DOCTOR PROFILES
In conjunction with our annual Top Doctors list, we include provider bios that go into deeper detail about practice specialties, career achievements, and treatment innovations.
Custom Solutions Driving Financial Success
Shape Shifter
The city’s NFL venue serves many more purposes than just giving the Indianapolis Colts a place to play, as illustrated by the roughly 75 other events it hosts in a year. And most of those are nothing like a football game, ranging from gaming conventions, to mega-star concerts, to major marching band competitions. Lucas Oil Stadium director Eric Neuburger says the hulking facility can transform to handle just about anything with enough notice.
PLANNING FOR MOST OF THE STADIUM’S BIG EVENTS STARTS FAR, FAR IN ADVANCE. NCAA men’s and women’s basketball Final Four hosting privileges are awarded years before the jump ball, and the Lucas Oil folks start strategizing right away. “When a show moves from a prospect to an actual booking, that’s when the planning really begins,” Neuburger says. “And the bigger the event, the further out they tend to be booked.”
EACH MUST SLIDE SEAMLESSLY INTO A TINY WINDOW. One of the trickiest issues is figuring out when an event can start setting up at the stadium and how long they have to break things down and clear out before the Next Big Thing rolls into town. “We have more than 200 days a year of high-quality events that are booked sometimes 10, 12 years out,” Neuburger says. “Availability is our biggest challenge in deciding which events we can have and which we can’t.”
IF AN EVENT ISN’T OVERLY COMPLICATED, THE STADIUM CAN BE FLIPPED WITH SURPRISING SPEED. For instance, when Lucas Oil hosted the 2024 Drum Corps International World Championship Finals, which concluded at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 10, it took until after 2 a.m. on Sunday, August 11, to break down its gear and clear it out. Yet the facility was reconfigured by 8 a.m. that morning for a Colts preseason game.
SETTING UP FOR A COLTS GAME IS DIALED IN.
While each year brings some new elements, the stadium crew typically faces exactly the same setup procedures all season. That said, the recent five-hour turnover after the Drum Corps finals is as close as they care to cut it.
“WE HAVE MORE THAN 200 DAYS A YEAR OF HIGHQUALITY EVENTS THAT ARE BOOKED SOMETIMES 10, 12 YEARS OUT. AVAILABILITY IS OUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE IN DECIDING WHICH EVENTS WE CAN HAVE AND WHICH WE CAN’T.”
THE MOST COMPLEX RECURRING EVENT IS THE MEN’S FINAL FOUR. It lasts for weeks, features a long list of ancillary activities that changes with each rendition, and requires the placement of 22,000 additional seats and a special, raised court. “We also build additional media tables throughout the stands,” Neuburger says. “There’s a lot going on.”
THE 2021 MEN’S FINAL FOUR WAS BY FAR THE WEIRDEST. Neuburger, who calls it the Covid Final Four, keeps a unique souvenir in his office: a cardboard cutout of himself. It, along with hundreds of similar cutouts—all pictures of stadium staffers and regular civilians in sports attire—were stuck in the empty seats surrounding the relatively anemic crowd of human fans, who were kept apart for the sake of social distancing. “A paper version of myself got to watch part of March Madness,” he says.
SOMEWHERE IN INDY IS A HILL OF DIRT.
THE U.S. OLYMPIC SWIMMING TRIALS EVENT WAS THE MOST NOVEL UNDERTAKING. Nothing about it was simple. Workers had to install a massive, Italian-built, Olympic-caliber competition pool, plus an auxiliary pool, then supply them with 2 million gallons of water, and inside a facility designed to accommodate pro football. Neuburger gives it an 8 or 9 on the difficulty scale. “It was a complex build that took place with the world watching,” he adds.
INSTALLATION OF EVENT-SPECIFIC PROPS AND EQUIPMENT IS ACCOMPLISHED BY A MIX OF LOCAL AND IMPORTED WORKERS. Events typically send in a “brain trust” of organizers who oversee the necessary tweaks the stadium needs to accommodate its shows. But most of the work is done by a trusted cadre of local tradespeople with experience setting up special events. “Many of them are contractors who we use regularly, though sometimes specialty workers are brought in by the client,” Neuburger says. Even concerts are typically handled not by hordes of sweating roadies but by locals.
LUCAS OIL HAS BEEN THE SETTING FOR ALL KINDS OF BIG EVENTS. EXCEPT FOR ... baseball, mostly because of all the glass windows and fragile electronics that wouldn’t mix with high-speed baseball impacts. “There are ways to work around that, but they end up being so expensive that the client doesn’t want to undertake them,” Neuburger says. Also, he can’t recall a rodeo or a circus.
Two monster truck shows and a motorcycle extravaganza sit more-or-less permanently on Lucas Oil’s annual schedule. To stage them, the stadium’s athletic field is covered with heavy plastic sheeting and two layers of 0.75-inch-thick plywood. Then 400 dump trucks worth of dirt is layered on the stadium floor. “The client brings in their dirt artists, as I call them, to design the track and carve it up exactly the way it needs to be,” Neuburger says. Afterward, the dirt is trucked back and piled once more into a giant mound until next year. During dirt-intensive gatherings, the soil is kept moist to fight dust, but it still gets everywhere. “We have to wipe down every surface in the building afterward,” Neuburger says.
IT’S TYPICALLY EASIER TO TEAR DOWN A SHOW THAN TO INSTALL IT. “We’re taking three or four days to set up for Taylor Swift in November, but it’ll be gone in one day,” Neuburger says.
THE PERMANENT FOOTBALL GAME SURFACE IS COVERED UP DURING OTHER EVENTS BUT ALMOST NEVER REMOVED. The turf was pulled up for the swimming trials because the weight of the pools might have damaged its appearance. When 2 million gallons of water isn’t involved, the turf is adequately protected by a covering called Omni Deck, which can handle the weight of anything from large crowds to semis.
A LAST-MINUTE ISSUE HASN’T THREATENED TO DELAY AN EVENT—EXCEPT ONCE. An automated confetti cannon randomly went off an hour before Lucas Oil Stadium opened for the 2021 Final Four. “We had to scramble to clean up the place,” Neuburger says. “You never know what’s going to happen, but we’ve been lucky to not have had anything that was an actual showstopper.” —SAM STALL ( SPEED READ CONTINUED )
Team Spirit
Q : FORT WAYNE HAS THREE MINOR LEAGUE SPORTS FRANCHISES. IS THAT UNUSUAL FOR A CITY SO SMALL? A: Plenty of Indiana towns sport minor-minor-league baseball, soccer, hockey, and basketball teams. Sports Business Journal reporter Bret McCormick says municipalities use them to anchor tax-generating districts. “If a town can offer live pro sports at a venue that also draws concerts and other things, it makes a smaller city feel like a bigger deal,” he asserts. Which is likely why Gary has the SouthShore RailCats (baseball), and Evansville hosts the Thunderbolts (hockey) and the Otters (baseball). Towns in Indy’s doughnut counties are also getting in on the act. Fishers plays home to the Indy Fuel (hockey), and in 2023, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA’s G League decamped to Noblesville, where this season they’ll play at a new 3,400-seat arena—and retire the name Mad Ants in favor of something more Noblesville-ish, whatever that may be. —SAM STALL
( UNSPOKEN RULES )
Harvest Nights
A MANNER-FESTO FOR NEWFIELDS’ SEPTEMBER 29–NOVEMBER 2 SPOOKY SPECTACULAR
Check out which local artist designed each Garden Monster. Try a Night Owl Pumpkin Ale, back by demand. Take the kids. No jump scares or creepy characters, only fun. Wear a costume—just not a mask, which isn’t allowed. Don’t miss the new projection show at Mischief Manor. Premier ticket? Head to the second-floor speakeasy, also debuting. Spend Halloween at another first: 21+ night with a DJ and signature cocktails. Glow cups go fast. Snag one early. It’s open in the rain, so grab that umbrella. Buy ticket insurance if you won’t go in wet weather. Take photos on the Pumpkin Path of Peril.
It’s too early to know how much Snickers are going up this year, but it’s expected that the bump won’t be fun sized. Just be glad you’re not handing out peanut butter cups in Maryland, where prices went up a nation-leading 13.56 percent.
ask THE HOOSIERIST
Shopping Spree
DEFYING THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF ITS KIND, THE FASHION MALL IS NOT ONLY SURVIVING BUT MORPHING INTO DESTINATION COOL. BY MARY MILZ
CONSIDERED by many to be the go-to luxury shopping destination for the entire state of Indiana,
The Fashion Mall at Keystone is being transformed. Saks Fifth Avenue closed its doors for good in July, with Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group set to break ground on a mixed-use addition in the space where the luxury retailer had operated for 21 years—second only to Nordstrom in square footage—early next year. (In case you were wondering, ease of parking and shopping during the impending holiday season won’t be affected by these plans.) It’ll be fully completed by the end of 2026. Asked about the
overall financial investment in the mall, Simon’s president of development Mark Silvestri would only say “tens of millions of dollars.”
Some shoppers were no doubt stunned at Saks’ seemingly sudden departure. But it turns out that behind the scenes, it was far from abrupt. Silvestri says Saks’ lease “was coming to an end, with no further term, so we’ve known about it for a while.” That’s how Simon was able to almost simultaneously announce the departure and the plans for the new addition, which will cover 170,000 square feet in and around the southeast end of the mall.
“The reason Saks left had nothing to do with the performance of the mall. Actually, it was so good that
Saks couldn’t afford to stay,” says John S. Talbott, a senior lecturer of marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. “That space is so much more valuable to Simon without Saks. If Saks could pay the $500-a-square-foot to be there, I’m sure they would have.” Talbott has firsthand experience with Simon. He spent 36 years in retail, including four years as CEO of a Western lifestyles store “on the other side of the table negotiating with them.” He knew Saks “faced headwinds or a challenging business model.”
According to Retail Brew, which covers the retail industry, Saks had apparently struggled with liquidity, with many vendors accusing the chain of not paying them on time or at all. In April, however, Saks “landed up to $60 million in incremental liquidity” from a lender to help pay those debts. So, well before the store locked up and left, Simon was finalizing plans for the addition. There was no shortage of hopeful new tenants, which is not surprising. Silvestri says the property ranks among the top 50 of its 90-plus U.S. malls when it comes to productivity. “Especially given that Indiana is a modest-size market,” he says, “it’s a super strong property for us.” The Fashion Mall’s occupancy hovers around 97 percent, housing 60-plus brands unique to Indiana or only available in that location. It doesn’t hurt that those include the most sought-after luxury labels.
Think Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Tory Burch, and Tiffany & Co., with a David Yurman jewelry store soon joining the mix.
Although West Elm recently departed The Fashion Mall for Nora Plaza, other in-demand retailers arrived, including trendy activewear boutiques Alo and Vuori, Gorjana with its California-cool jewelry, and Aritzia, a Canadian retailer selling “luxury lifestyle apparel” that’s soaring in popularity. Even Daniel’s Vineyard of McCordsville is getting in on the action,
THE BEAT
launching a pop-up across from Levi’s where they hold wine tastings Fridays through Sundays, with the space serving as an art gallery during the rest of the week.
Silvestri says Simon’s secondquarter earnings this year were record-setting, “the highest-net operating income ever.” At a time when malls seem all but doomed to obsolescence in an online-shopping world, our very own Fashion Mall is, in a word, “over-performing.” Silvestri says that to be able to do that, “you have to have great real estate, and it has to be well-located.” The Fashion Mall nails it on both counts.
But Talbott insists there’s more to it than that. He says Simon, which is the largest mall owner in the United States, is usually a step ahead of the curve. In this case, they’re leading the way in what Talbott calls experience centers. “They bring together these mixed-use communities, almost, which is at the forefront of what shoppers, and people in general, now want in their lives.” Those include not just the right mix of stores but also new dining and entertainment options—which is what we’re getting in this next iteration of the mall.
Silvestri says Simon will keep a third of the Saks building because it’s “cost-effective, has good bones, and we can utilize that.” The rest, the exterior not attached to the mall, will be demolished. Plans for the site include a standalone home furnishings store, a handful of new retailers, some sit-down and quick-serve dining, an outdoor plaza with green space, and, at the eastern end, up to 100,000 square feet of upscale office space with possibly as many as four large tenants. “We’ve heard from brokers and others that there’s a real need for this, so we think it’s something that will enhance the property,” Silvestri says.
Talbott calls that a smart move. “Say there’s a Merrill Lynch office in one of those spaces,” he explains. “Maybe while one member of the household meets with a financial advisor, another one goes shopping. Then those financial advisors need to eat, so they meet clients at a nice restaurant there. Those people not
“THE REASON SAKS LEFT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PERFORMANCE OF THE MALL. ACTUALLY, IT WAS SO GOOD THAT SAKS COULDN’T AFFORD TO STAY.”
only pay rent, but they patronize the facilities at the retail center.”
Also in the works? An entertainment venue, which Silvestri declined to specifically identify as of press time. But he did provide a clue, noting that while the entity will be new to Indianapolis, it is already successful elsewhere. So it may be worth noting that in June 2024, Simon announced a partnership with Camp, which bills itself as a “family experience company.” A news release describes it as “part toy store, part activity destination, all good vibes” and further says it “delivers immersive fun for the whole family.” There are currently three Camp locations at Simon malls in Philadelphia, Houston, and Burlington, Vermont. The press release also noted, “This expansion initiative reinforces Camp’s and Simon’s commitment to bringing delightful experiences and exclusive retail offerings to families across the country.”
Again, there’s no confirmation that a Camp location is coming to The Fashion Mall, but that certainly seems to be a logical possibility, since those appear to be both popular and profitable for the Simon malls that have already landed one. Also, it fits the “shop, dine, play” evolution of “experience centers.” A second possible contender is a chain of venues represented at a half dozen Simon Malls, Round1—a group of sprawling amusement facilities aimed at pleasing just about every member of the family with arcade games, billiards, karaoke, pingpong, darts, trampolining, roller skating, children’s play zones, and more.
We also know housing and hotels are big parts of Simon’s portfolio, with some connected to malls. In May 2024, the company announced plans for a “luxury lifestyle mixeduse development” at San Diego’s
Fashion Valley mall. A news release at the time promised the addition will be “a vibrant, diverse and exclusive residential enclave … mere steps away from their favorite Fashion Valley boutiques.”
Although Simon hasn’t yet gone that route in Indiana, the plans underway in San Diego may foretell things to come. After all, it’s hard not to notice the Sheraton Hotel and connected 12-story apartment tower, called Vitra, on the north side of The Fashion Mall. While neither is owned by Simon, a skybridge conveniently links them to the mall. The new attractions ahead will only enhance the appeal of these locations and lure more residents and travelers to stroll over to spend their money.
One might wonder what, if anything, The Fashion Mall’s follow-up act could possibly be after all of this. When asked if there will still be space to expand again down the line, Silvestri acknowledges, “There are always ways to do that. You could go vertical or do parking garages. But not now.”
Those nostalgic for their high school days when they kicked around the mall for hours with friends, browsing and sipping an Orange Julius, may get to relive their youth. At least a little, anyway. Dana Olsen, who worked in the corporate office of Bloomingdale’s in New York City before joining Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business where she teaches retail marketing, agrees that retailers must learn to adapt to survive. “I believe [Simon] is doing what they need to do, which is transitioning malls. They’re listening to the customer.” She pauses, then adds, “It’s kind of getting back to what malls were when people would spend all day there.”
THIS FRAGILE , two-page March 20, 1879, letter is one of eight sent between Lew Wallace and Billy the Kid during the Lincoln County War, an Old West conflict during which rival gangs competed for domination of the dry goods trade in the New Mexico Territory. Billy was a participant, while Wallace was New Mexico’s territorial governor. In a previous letter, Wallace offered Billy a pardon for murder if he’d testify against his allies. This letter expresses Billy’s agreement to surrender, as well as his fear of being killed afterward. Billy was born Henry McCarty in New York City in 1859, moving with his mother to Massachusetts Avenue in Indianapolis. He eventually landed in New Mexico, where he was orphaned at 15 and took up his brief but notorious life of crime. Wallace was born in Brookville, Indiana, growing up to practice law and have a storied military career before becoming a politician. Wallace’s family donated the letters to the Indiana Historical Society, where they can be viewed digitally. —NATALIE FITZGIBBONS
Letter by Billy the Kid VINTAGE: 1879
Resides within the Indiana Historical Society
ARTIFACT
PHOTOS BY TONY VALAINIS
(1) Jim Gaffigan: Barely Alive Tour
October 3–6
Clowes Memorial Hall welcomes fellow Hoosier and seven-time Grammy nominated comedian Jim Gaffigan. A recent co-headliner with Jerry Seinfeld, he’s beloved as a clean comic with relatable, everyday-life sets. butlerartscenter.org
(2) Riley Festival
October 3–6
They take the birthday of their native son, poet James Whitcomb Riley, pretty seriously in Greenfield. The theme of this year’s four-day party with parades and scores of exhibitors is the poem “A Barefoot Boy.” rileyfestival.com
(3) Headless Horseman Festival
October 3–27
Gather the family and hop on a hayride to come faceto-face with Washington Irving’s legendary phantom. Keep the fun going by dashing through a corn maze, playing midway-style games, taking in a magic show, and more at Conner Prairie connerprairie.org
(4) Heartland International Film Festival
October 10–20
Our own Heartland was named one of the 25 coolest film festivals in the world. It’s back for its 33rd year at Indianapolisarea theaters. Expect documentaries and narrative films, as well as red carpet events and parties with filmmakers. heartlandfilm.org/festival
(5) No Ruff “Dog” Days
October 13
Wine and dogs in disguise? We’ll see you at Daniel’s Vineyard in McCordsville for their pup costume contest. Enjoy live music and pet-related vendors. Ticket proceeds benefit the Hamilton County Humane Society. danielsvineyard.com
Bet the Farm
A SMALL-TOWN INDIANA GRADE SCHOOLER IS CHARMING HIS WAY TO FAME WITH INFECTIOUS ENTHUSIASM FOR RURAL LIFE. BY SAM STALL
JACKSON Laux— aka Jackson Farmer—isn’t your typical TikTok star.
On an app famous for dancing and makeup tutorials, the 9-year-old entertains some 900,000 followers on a channel called Just a Jackson Thing, comprised mostly of videos in which he shows off agricultural vehicles and his toy collection and opines about the splendors of farm life. He and his parents, Jessica and Joe Laux, live surrounded by land his uncles and grandfather work in the microscopic Northern Indiana town of South Whitley. His fame came out of nowhere after he was a bit player in a video his cousin made in November 2023. For reasons only the algorithm understands, the video promptly blew up.
“We talked to Jackson about whether he wanted to keep doing
it, and he did,” Jessica says. “It just went on from there.” Dressed in his standard jeans, farm shirt, and red trucker cap, Jackson has an authoritative, grandfatherly tone in his videos, incongruous with someone barely old enough to drive a riding mower, let alone the hulking combines he moons over. It’s that wise-beyond-his-years vibe that anchors his appeal.
His bemused parents are willing, for now, to let his fame play out. It’s so far earned him a spot on Today, a meetand-greet at the Indiana State Fair, and, perhaps inevitably, interest from agricultural outfits like Stine Seed Company, which flew Jackson to its Iowa headquarters via private jet. “We don’t really have any future plans for it,” Jessica says. “It’s him having fun. We’re blown away by the love that he’s been shown. We just hope it continues to be a positive place for him to share and teach others about farming.”
Indianapolis Monthly staffers are among Jackson’s fans, and we couldn’t wait to chat with the pintsized sodbuster.
What do you want your followers to learn about country life and farming?
I hope that they enjoy the videos, first off. In some of the comments people have left, they said it cheers up their day. So besides teaching people about farm life, that’s the other thing I try to do. I want them to like what I do, and I want to like doing what I do.
Do you get recognized a lot?
When I was at the Indiana State Fair, I was riding on the Skyride and got recognized by a guy in another chair going in the opposite direction. We live in a small town, but the other day I walked into a Dollar General and was recognized by another kid. I also got recognized while I was in a women’s clothing store with my mama. But it’s not a usual thing.
Why do you think you’ve gotten so popular?
I really don’t know. I’m just going to go with it.
When did you realize tractors were your thing?
They’ve just been a part of my life from the very beginning. I think I always kind of loved them.
So do you work on the farm equipment yourself?
I’m getting there. I haven’t torn a complete motor down, but I’ve torn a weed eater motor down.
We have to assume you plan to be a farmer one day ... ?
Yeah. I’m already trying to get started at this moment in time. I’m trying right now to save up for the right equipment. Maybe a combine, but that’s going to be a little hard to come by. They can cost a lot, but one for my size would probably be around $2,500.
How long do you think you’ll stay on TikTok?
Probably until I’m in my teens. After that, I just want to be a full-time farmer and live my life out in the country.
whiz kid
Founders Day
Thursday, October 17, 7 p.m.
These two award-winning authors will share the importance of IHS’s collections in illuminating Indiana’s rich history by showcasing their research on Madam C.J. Walker and her impact on Indiana.
Purchase tickets for these events and more by scanning the QR code. Join IHS for this year’s in downtown Indianapolis
Immerse yourself in a murder mystery with this Clue-inspired evening. Interview witnesses, law enforcement, and cagey suspects and attempt to solve this real-life Indiana murder.
Friday, October 18, 7 p.m. A MURDER HAS BEEN COMMITTED!
Win prizes for best costumes and for solving the mystery.
Are you up for the challenge? Act quickly as tickets are limited.
Tyrone McKinley Freeman Author and Glenn Family Chair in Philanthropy, IU Lilly School of Philanthropy
A’Lelia Bundles Madam C.J. Walker’s great-greatgranddaughter and biographer
WANTED
Ring Leader
When Furkan Amonett saw the dramatic effect open-ended toys had on her children’s development, she left a marketing career to create a shop specializing in heirloom-quality playthings that encourage imagination. Today, The Mulberry Treehouse, run out of her home near Eagle Creek Park, stocks more than 30 such brands from around the world. The Grapat Rainbow Nesting Rings are handmade in Spain under European toy safety standards, which are more stringent than in the U.S. The set breaks out into six subsets by color, each consisting of wooden rings in varying sizes and shades. Play options are nearly endless: Stack! Roll! Sort! Group! Count! We see this repurposed as a cheery piece of art, imbued with memories. $93. themulberrytreehouse.com —CHRISTINA VERCELLETTO
Photo
( SHOP TALK )
Thing of Beauty
A LUXE NEW YORK CITY–BASED BOUTIQUE IS SITTING PRETTY IN NORA. BY
CHRISTINA VERCELLETTO
Bluemercury
OF ALL the changes wrought at 65-year-old Nora Plaza, the debut of the first Indiana Bluemercury between Bagel Fair and Whole Foods cements its reputation as upscale. Guests are welcomed into the bijou storefront by attentive staff clad in cobalt, under white light fixtures reminiscent of big roses. The immaculate shop focuses on posh cosmetics, including skincare forged by dermatologists and plastic surgeons. But candles, aromatherapy atomizers, and bubble bath can also be found. Flip up the information panels attached to shelves to peek at prices—but you may need to brace yourself. The selection includes the likes of the $940 Sisley-Paris Supremÿa anti-aging cream and La Mer’s Genaissance Serum at $860. But more down-to-earth favorites are here too, like Bobbi Brown, Clinique, and Bumble and Bumble. According to head of stores Jenna Goldberg, Bluemercury seeks locations with residential, commercial, and recreational properties in the mix. Of the new Nora shop, Goldberg notes “what we have available is unlike anything nearby.”
YOUR SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN SENIOR COLLECTION, SILVER LINING, WAS JUST FEATURED IN VOGUE . WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION?
Several women in their 70s I encountered who were embracing fashion with elegance and poise. Their confidence and style … drove me to create a tribute to the beauty and empowerment of women in their golden years.
WHERE DO YOU SHOP?
The Fashion Mall and the cool shops on Mass Ave or in Fountain Square.
WHO’S YOUR INFLUENCE?
Many people from all walks of life, from my mother, to Carolina Herrera, to notable Nigerian designers like Nkwo and Lisa Folawiyo. —C.V.
(1) Ogee Tinted Sculpted Lip Oil, $32 (2) Jack Black Face Buff Energizing Scrub, $30 (3) Hourglass Ambient
Lighting Blush, $46 (4) L’Eau
Rêvée eau de toilette, $120
(5) Jane Iredale HydroPure Tinted Serum, $58
Yemisi Sanni
Costume Designer PHOTOS
Experience fall colors like never before in St. Pete-Clearwater. Dive into the emerald-green waters of the Gulf from islands ringed in white-sand beaches. Encounter the kaleidoscopic colors of the Chihuly Collection and the genius of The Dalí Museum. And enjoy fiery red sunsets, night after night. Let’s shine.
ADD FLOURISH TO YOUR FALL TABLE WITH EMBELLISHED NAPKINS. BY STEPHEN GARSTANG
(2) Kim Seybert Flare napkin ring handmade of gold-painted brass and a quartz-replica stone. $42. Parkside Linen (3) Etched Bangle napkin wrap in antique nickel. $59/set of four. Pottery Barn, The Fashion Mall, 317-815-3740 (4) Charlie Sprout Berry napkin rings handwoven from African sisal. $25 each, assorted colors. Parkside Linen (5) Deborah Rhodes NY contrast-border napkin woven in Lithuania of flax grown in France. $30. Parkside Linen (6) Ivory, brown, and black faux horn napkin ring made in India. $4. Exclusive to World Market, 2200
Carmel, 317-706-0400 (7) Design Imports wood ring rustic napkin holder. $29/set of four. The Accent Shop, 1472 W. 86th St., 317-844-4150 (8) Turquoise napkin cylinders handcrafted in India of steel and resin with an oxidized silver finish. $48/set of four. Pottery Barn
THIS CAT CAFE IS SO MUCH FUN, THE KITTIES (ALMOST) DON’T WANT TO LEAVE. BY CHRISTINA
VERCELLETTO
“WE’VE won the lottery!” mewls every shelter cat who steps out of a cage to roam the pristine, Scandi-chic Smitten Kitten. Well, that’s how owner Holly Moss and many of her guests put it, based on the felines’ pleasantly surprised expressions as they arrive. The cat cafe, serving Noble Coffee beverages and sweet treats from local bakers, takes reservations to hang out with a clowder in its spacious lounge, which is complete with a realistic—size and all—climbing tree (kitties only; sorry). On a recent Sunday, residents included a portly tabby comically fixated on a water bowl; a bouncy, sleek black kitten; and a supercilious tortie. The latter, when the petting petered out, fixed a gaze invoking Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, as if to say, “By all means move at a glacial pace.” More than 80 percent are adopted in less than two weeks.
Moss was inspired to open the cafe by her cat-lover son, Collin, who is autistic. He helps out, with hopes of running things one day. Moss has only one cat at home (Rue graces a mural at the back of the cafe), though that is not for lack of Collin’s efforts to take in more. Aside from chilling with cats, visitors can also do yoga, paint, and craft with them. A calendar of events is at smittenkittencatcafe.com.
Who Wants a Treat?
CELEBRATE your doggo’s birthday, gotcha day, or just best behavior with a stop at Three Dog Bakery (multiple locations; three dogindy.com). The display case is brimming with fancy, freshly made “pastries,” often seasonal. They’re clones of human versions but are healthy for your fur baby. Put more pep in his fetch with ingredients like eggs, milk, spinach, carrots, berries, peanut butter, sweet potatoes, cheese, honey, molasses, and carob chips. $2.25–$6.50 each —C.V.
No, we’re not giving you a seasonal salutation. Boo happens to be the most popular cat name in Indiana, according to Catster magazine. While the commonest mouser monikers nationwide are, by far, Luna and Milo, our neighboring kitty parents buck those trends with us. Kentucky favors Lucy; Ohio, Poppy; and Illinois goes with Alfie. —C.V.
( DROOL )
Rare Find
A J. PARKE RANDALL MIDCENTURY “MUSEUM” IN DEVINGTON WAS SNAPPED UP IN A FLASH. BY
JEANA HARRIS
FOR THE FIRST time since its construction in 1954, the home of the late architect J. Parke Randall has new owners. A time capsule of midcentury design, its fabulous features were perfectly preserved. Sitting on nearly an acre, the wooded lot is decidedly serene. When a house this unique hits the market, interest is likely to explode into fierce competition.
It did: Nearly 350 appointments were booked in eight days. Among the eager were Tommy Reddicks and Jess Monk. They were relaxing after dinner one Thursday evening when Reddicks saw the listing on Facebook. He recalls showing it to Monk, exclaiming, “Wow. This looks cool!” Even though they weren’t house hunting, nor did
they have any plans to move, it took only a quick glance through the photos for Monk to start to fall in love. They toured it that Saturday and were both “enamored” within minutes. “It felt like home the moment we were in it, and that was exciting,” Monk says. With the couple in agreement that it felt like it was meant to be, a rather big problem stood in the way: They didn’t have mortgage pre-approval, and the deadline for offers was five days away. Amazingly, they made it just in time, submitting at 4:58 p.m. for a 5:00 p.m. cutoff. Though not
the highest above the $275,000 asking price, their offer was otherwise robust, with inclusions like appraisal gap coverage and an escalation clause. The phone call informing them that they got the house was a “magical moment,” Monk recalls.
A testament to Randall’s impeccable design, the home is still in good shape. “The detail and strength of the structure is amazing,” Reddicks observes. “They don’t build houses like this anymore.” While mechanical updates are needed, the pair is enthusiastically embracing the home’s restoration.
They plan to make use of every inch of the home’s 4,400 square feet. What was once the drafting room will become a throwback arcade, to the delight of Monk’s son, Drew. The darkroom (where Randall developed his famous photo of the 1960 Indy 500 scaffold disaster) will become fromager Reddicks’ “cheese cave.” Other updates include replacing the floors, fresh paint throughout, and adding several amazing vintage 1950s appliances in the kitchen. Their long-term goal? Listing the home on the National Register of Historic Places to give it the recognition it rightfully deserves.
REALTY CHECK
PHOTOS
Lazy Daze
LOCATION IS KEY FOR EXPLORING FLORIDA’S BEST-KNOWN ISLAND.
BY CHRISTINA VERCELLETTO
THOUGH ONLY 4 square miles, Key West is renowned—thanks partly to Jimmy Buffett and his Margaritaville— for its laid-back, carefree escapes. The Gulf-front Hyatt Centric Key West Resort & Spa (601 Front St., hyatt.com) sits just off the famed Duval Street in Old Town, an ideal spot for touring on foot. The resort rents both bikes and golf carts if you want to venture farther than your trott ers can carry you. Perhaps Key West’s best-known establishment, Sloppy Joe’s Bar (201 Duval St., sloppyjoes.com), is a five-minute walk away at Duval and Greene streets. That intersection has transformed since Ernest Hemingway was among its rakish regulars, but much about the establishment would be familiar to him. The ceiling fans still hum knowingly; the bell at the long, curved bar is still rung at a
Key West, FL DISTANCE
1,353
big tip; and the jalousie doors continue to swing open to a lively, off beat crowd. About 15 minutes farther is Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park (601 Howard England Way, floridastateparks.org). The pre–Civil War fort sits alongside a beach popular for swimming and snorkeling. A champagne sunset cruise, jet ski and parasailing tours, and fi shing charters leave right from the Hyatt ’s dock. Join the latt er, and your catch will be prepared at elegant on-site restaurant Four Flamingos (fourflamingoskeywest.com). With Richard Blais, the fi rst winner of Bravo’s Top Chef: All-Stars, at the helm, the menu is inventive, from crabmeat White Lasagna to the Island Espresso cocktail with a coconut-bubble dome. After dinner, grab a Centric Aperol Spritz at the Blue Mojito Pool Bar & Grill, newly renovated in Mediterranean chic, and sip it on the swing at the end of the pier as the sun sets.
IF YOU GO
POSE The buoy at the southernmost point in the continental U.S. (South and Whitehead streets) sits 90 miles from Cuba. The line moves fast as visitors take each other’s photo in turns.
LEARN Guided tours of the Hemingway Home & Museum (hemingwayhome .com) include the writing studio of the larger-thanlife novelist and the lush grounds, home to dozens of polydactyl cats.
STROLL Marvel at tropical flowers, waterfalls, rosy flamingos, and 50 species of butterflies at The Key West Butterfly & Nature Conservatory (keywest butterfly.com).
Find your own Great Pumpkin at DOUGHERTY ORCHARDS in Cambridge City, family-run since 1883. Besides gourds galore, you can take home treats even Linus didn’t imagine: any of 33 types of apples, as well as pears, honey, and apple cider doughnuts. Consider a stop in their winery for a glass of apple vino. doughertyorchards.com —C.V.
TRAVELER
True Grits
If there’s a through line in the menu at Josh Kline and Zoë Taylor’s new restaurant, Borage, it’s “taking something that is super familiar and then putting a little bit of a different twist on it,” Kline says. For example, their Fried Cheesy Polenta Cake evokes cheese grits gone wild with a polenta patty served on a generous layer of housemade pimento cheese, topped by a sunny egg. Bread-andbutter pickles, fermented inhouse, cut the richness. The dish’s components are sold at Borage’s attached market, making it “really easy” to recreate the meal at home, Kline notes. “Or you can let us do it, and do the dishes, too.” 1609 N. Lynhurst Dr., 317-7343958, borageeats.com —EVE BATEY
SWOON
( CHEERS )
In the Spotlight
FOUNTAIN SQUARE DIVE BAR SAM’S SILVER CIRCLE JUST BECAME A NATIONAL ATTRACTION. BY EVE BATEY
SINCE 1938, Sam’s Silver Circle has served thirsty patrons from a character-laden building just off Shelby Street, pouring beer and shots through a world war, a pandemic, and the transformation of Fountain Square. One of its biggest upheavals happened this summer, when national newspaper USA Today put Sam’s on its Bars of the Year list.
“People started calling from out of state and asking where we’re located, because they want to visit,” manager Raeann Eakle says. “We’ve always had a really good, loyal group of locals that come here and hang out.” But when the bars list was announced, she adds, “We got extra busy the next day, and it’s been that way ever since.”
Eakle has enjoyed introducing a new wave of patrons to the longstanding bar. “We don’t know how long this is going to last,” she says of the sudden buzz. “We’re just going to make sure everyone—new or a regular—has a good time.” 1102 Fletcher Ave., 317-636-6288, samssilvercircle.com
To find the best extra virgin olive oil, look for a label that says cold-pressed, organic, and unfiltered. The oil itself should be thick—not watery—and it should be green when you pour it, not yellow or clear
—Ashlee Nemeth, co-owner of Best of Umbria
( NEW IN TOWN )
Square Deal
New Noblesville restaurant the CourtHouse Club complements its historic square.
WITH A VIEW of Hamilton County’s iconic 1879 courthouse, the name for Noblesville’s new fullservice restaurant and bar seems like a no-brainer. Making a choice from the CourtHouse Club’s wideranging menu might take a bit more mental energy, though. While sushi, sliders, and generously topped flatbreads beckon, pass those up for its substantial list of entrees, which includes a tender 8-ounce filet and a standout sweet potato packed with seasonal veggies and cheese. For dessert, go for the coconut cake or bread pudding. Diners can reserve or just walk in; either way, service is warm, friendly, and efficient, even during its bustling daily happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m. 110 N. 9th St., Noblesville, 463777-5778, thecourt houseclub.com —E.B.
GOODBYE GALLERY Downtown Indy’s Gallery Bistro & Bar closed after four years in business, citing hard-to-predict sales. TAPROOM RISING Moontown Brewing Company has opened a second location in Carmel, with 45 seats and snacks from local vendors. LIQUID LUNCH Athenaeum cafe Coat Check Coffee has launched a craft cocktail program, serving four boozy drinks from 11 a.m. to close daily. —E.B.
The Spark Keep well-behaved four-legged friends occupied with a free cup of whipped cream garnished with local kibble. They’ll be thrilled, and you can sip your cold brew or amber latte in peace at this cute Speedway coffee spot. 1402 N. Main St., 317-771-1062, thesparkcoffee.com
Gallery
Pastry Shop
On request, this local shop and its sibling, Gallery on 16th, will provide cups of whipped cream for your pet to enjoy on their pupfriendly patios. Multiple locations, gallerypastry.com
Gordon’s Milkshake Bar
Celebrate birthdays, gotcha days, and obedience school graduations with a $3 “Doggie Sundae”—Greek yogurt ice cream, banana, and peanut butter with Milk-Bone sprinkles and a beef stick straw. 865 Massachusetts Ave., 317-453-1360
BRICS
Step off the Monon Trail in Broad Ripple with your pooch for a complimentary cup of whipped cream with peanut butter drizzle. The staff also sets fresh bowls of water out on the deck every morning to hydrate furry friends. 901 E. 64th St., 317-257-5757, bricsindy.com
ALL THE BEST BOYS AND GIRLS DESERVE A LITTLE TREAT EVERY NOW AND THEN. HERE ARE A FEW LOCAL SPOTS WHERE YOU CAN REWARD FIDO FOR GOOD BEHAVIOR WITH A PUP CUP AND PICK UP A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF WHILE YOU’RE AT IT.
Hot Links
OLD MAJOR MARKET’S MARK LAFAY TRADED THE TECH BUSINESS FOR A SAUSAGE STARTUP. BY EVE BATEY
MARK LAFAY is proof that the cliche “there are no second acts in American lives” is pure bunk.
The Purdue grad built a music promotion company while he was still in college, touring the world with bands for nearly a decade. Then he turned to the tech industry, eventually building a social network that— years later—many sought to replicate as users turned away from Meta and X (formerly Twitter). After 10 years, he realized that his days spent seeking startup investors needed to end.
“I was like, ‘You know what? I want to do something that’s the exact opposite [of tech],’” LaFay says. “I was a hunter from a very young age, and I became pretty passionate about barbecue, and curing meats, and doing all that stuff.” He didn’t know much about the rules and regulations behind turning that hobby into a business, but explains, “I thought, I’ll figure it
out as I go. So I dove right in.”
The seeds of what would become Old Major Market were planted when LaFay started “selling bacon on the back of my pickup truck to my neighbors,” he says. The popularity of his house-cured staple gave him a path forward. “I decided I needed to focus on sausage. I wasn’t interested in charcuterie. I was interested in what people are eating at every single meal.”
These days, Old Major’s operation is so big that LaFay can produce charcuterie—and loads of other products he likely never dreamed of when he was dealing bacon off his truck, such as seafood and specialty butters. And his venture is only getting bigger.
FAVORITE THINGS
(1) Family. “My wife Carrie and kids Harvey, Benjamin, Maggie.” (2) Convivio. “Best pizza crust in Indy.” (3) An annual hunting trip. “Three days of great food, wine, family, and some deer hunting.” (4) International travel: “Vietnam and South Korea, see you this winter.” (5) Whopper Ploppers. “Slamming bass and slabs with top bait is a thrill.”
“People really understand that local can be better, from both a quality perspective and an economic one. We help local farmers stay in business, and they connect us with the meat we need to feed our customers. It’s how it used to be and how it can be again.” 4201 Millersville Rd., oldmajormarket.com
FOODIE
Three’s Company
CHRIS EVANS’ THIRD—AND FINAL—MEDITERRANEAN RESTAURANT IS A SWEEPING MAIN STREET CARMEL TRATTORIA THAT HIGHLIGHTS ART AND ATMOSPHERE AS MUCH AS THE FOOD. BY TERRY KIRTS
WHAT EXACTLY does 24-karat gold add to a plate of risotto? That was the question in the back of my mind as I approached the imposing four-story facade of Tre, which is on the broad plaza of the 1st on Main building in downtown Carmel. A towering wire figure sculpted by artist Jason Myers stands almost as sentinel beside deep blue and windowless doors, behind which is Chris Evans’ high-ceilinged third and unquestionably most ambitious Italian effort, following his two-location pasta spot, Sangiovese. And from the hard-to-snag reservations to the crowds of smiling guests, it’s clear that this is the Italian restaurant many Carmel residents have been awaiting.
Indeed, a press release in early April made the bold claims that Evans’ 4,800-square-foot “passion project,” which he says is his final restaurant, would offer a “diverse menu” and “exquisite art” to make diners fall “in love with life all over again.” And risotto with edible gold, which most piqued my curiosity. I also wanted to see the polish three decades of running restaurants would bring to Evans’ latest.
Well after its first months of business, however, the menu (which the website warned was temporary) was riddled with typos, not just in obscure culinary terms but also in everyday words like “romaine” and even “gold.” A chef change that brought in former Prime 47 chef Oscar Perez meant the kitchen was still getting on its feet, as
TRE 10 E. Main St., Carmel, 317-669-6580 treonmain.com
Upscale trattoria TASTING NOTES Italian classics with luxe touches such as a martini with optional caviarstuffed olives and fettuccine with truffles shaved tableside
NEIGHBORHOOD Main Street Carmel
MUST-ORDER
A roasted beet salad with butternut squash puree, burrata, and reduced balsamic; an outsized pork chop parmigiana; and light, flaky halibut with marsala cream sauce
3-STAR RATING
Tre’s pan-seared halibut (below) and martini (right).
well. A promising fried squash blossom starter, while pretty on the plate, was so heavily battered it was limp, not crisp, with a tasty enough but runny red pepper filling.
A platter of fresh oysters came with no explanation of the types from our server. They were presented beautifully, with a brisk mignonette and horseradish-forward cocktail sauce, but the oysters’ adductor muscles weren’t detached, as is customary. That left us to wrestle the flesh out with our Lilliputian forks, not always successfully. A Cognac West from the ambitious cocktail menu was watery and lacked bite. We wondered if the interior design—which included a row of curved brass tubes behind the bar and chandeliers of offset blown glass discs—would be the tastiest part of the meal.
Thankfully, salads and entrees showed more promise. A tidy mound of roasted red and golden beets, though missing promised watermelon radishes, had a lavish amount of creamy burrata and the right hit of reduced balsamic. Leaning on Evans’ Sangiovese playbook, a generous bowl of pappardelle with “Sunday sauce” was as satisfying as it sounds, especially owing to the short rib in the ragu. The one dish that lived up to the setting was a simply styled yet arresting pan-seared halibut with risotto, which our server steered us toward instead of the one with gold. Here, the gilt was on the crust of the halibut, which broke away in lush flakes above a pool of buttery marsala sauce and truffle-scented risotto with the perfect tooth and creaminess, some of the best I’ve ever had.
Many of Tre’s early, somewhat puzzling missteps may have been emended by now, given the hard work of Evans’
general manager Francesco Settanni, a native of Puglia, Italy, who arrives early each day to advise the staff. Settanni came to Evans’ restaurants in 2021 after over two decades working at New York City standards, including one used by actor Stanley Tucci in his research for the classic dining film Big Night. Settani recites regional Italian dishes by heart and waxes poetic about the staples of his home region. Given Settanni’s vast knowledge, as well as local diners’ growing awareness of regional dishes, Tre would be wise to reconsider its commitment to the trappings of luxury in favor of dishes that truly reflect their origins in Liguria, Campania, or Emilia-Romagna.
Instead, there’s a ubiquitous Caesar salad, which we tried on a return visit, perfectly serviceable but so lightly touched on the grill there was hardly any of the advertised char. There’s a delicious pork chop parmigiana, an eyepopping breaded, bone-in cut that’s
swathed in house red sauce and bubbling with smoked mozzarella.
And, yes, there’s risotto with gold, which turned out to be a mashup of risotto Milanese and spaghetti carbonara. Visually, it’s stunning—more than answering my question. But with egg in the rice, as well as a raw yolk under the gold leaf, not to mention bits of pancetta and so much saffron the dish glowed, it was almost too rich to finish. I pined for what I’d had with the halibut.
Having tried the respectable tiramisu the first time, we asked what other desserts were made in-house. Our server brought us two scoops of lemon sorbetto the chef was testing, which proved to be bright, creamy, and lusciously truetasting, a final bite showing a culinary artistry that one hopes, with time, will match the art on the walls.
Clockwise from top: Fettuccine al tartufo; Tre’s wines; Pork chop parm; Chris Evans (left) and Francesco Settanni (right).
sc MAKING A
sc
Indianapolis may be known for basketball and race cars, but anyone who has ever hung out in the parking lot behind Radio Radio between Tonic Ball sets or showed up at the Slippery Noodle on a weeknight just to hear someone sing the blues knows that this city’s best-kept secret is its music scene. From gritty punk to jazz brunch, live performances keep our toes tapping. Promoters hustle to put Indy on the map for touring artists. And a host of great little venues offer the chance to experience something raw, real, and still growing. Turn it up!
ene
How
music shapes our city’s soul.
EDITED BY Julia Spalding
WRITTEN BY Marc D. Allan, Camille Graves, Natalie Fitzgibbons, Edie Schwarb, and Sam Stall
tune in now
Ephraim Owens
INDIANAPOLIS native Ephraim
Owens grew up with music as an integral part of his life. He recalls singing “Battle Hymn of the Republic” at his grandmother’s church, captured in a childhood video. “That kid loved to perform at 3 years old,” he says.
Owens continued singing at Footlite Musicals, in the Indianapolis Children’s Choir, and in high school show choir, then went on to participate in campus music ministry at Florida A&M and Florida State. Eventually, he ended up on Season 24 of The Voice, impressing the judges with his full-throated style. That boost in his music career presented opportunities to sing the national anthem at events like the 2024 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials and the Brickyard 400.
In the meantime, Owens hopes to release his first EP before the end of the year. It will showcase his signature soulful blend of R&B and indie styles, a sound he says “breathes life and emotion.” He wants people to connect to his music through his life experiences as a dad, husband, and native Midwesterner. “I just want to be a hometown, down-to-earth person and be authentically myself.”
Meet the Indianapolis musicians with the talent and fan bases to bring down the house.
Bashiri Asad
IN 2008, Bashiri Asad took a leap of faith in pursuing music. After years of considering the possibility, he put his full energy into creating his own sound and establishing himself as a selfproclaimed “IndySoul” artist. “It’s scary at first because it’s the unknown,” Asad says. “Jumping into something you know very little to nothing about—it can be a challenging endeavor, but it’s about finding what works best for you.”
His songs are an exploration of his life and upbringing in Indianapolis. After growing up in SoBro, Asad moved to the Garfield Park area. With his affection for and familiarity with the city’s landscape, he hopes to faithfully represent the 317, whether it’s through his original
THE
VOICE
songwriting or his interpretations of wellknown standards by artists like Luther Vandross and Bobby Caldwell. His most recent project, The EveryDay SoulSinger, is available on all major streaming platforms, along with his catalog of original music.
THE SOUL SINGER
ANDREW Pickel and Kevin Hinnefeld started their music career together in middle school with nothing but two guitars and a tape recorder in Hinnefeld’s attic. “That was the spark that started everything,” Pickel says. They named their high school band Elephant Quiz and performed at house parties while attending Indiana University Bloomington.
In 2015, they started Dizgo, with Hinnefeld on bass and keys and Pickel on guitar. Bandmates Justin Clark (on drums) and Jake Evatt (on keys) joined over time. The name Dizgo originates from a dream Hinnefeld had before their first show at Bluebird in Bloomington in 2016. “It was a me-in-the-future type of dream, and the band name was Dizgo,” Hinnefeld recalls.
As the band broadens their geographical reach through touring, they are also working on refining their sound to create catchy, “stuck in your head” songs. Their current style can be described
THE DREAM GROOVE
as “disco-funk party music,” but their previous “jamtronica” studio albums are available on Spotify and Apple Music, and recordings of their live performances can be streamed on Bandcamp and Nugs.net. The band is currently on tour following the February release of their album, Melt
Public Universal Friend
TAKING ITS name from a gender-neutral religious figure from the 1700s, Public Universal Friend has released two albums, with a third set to drop early next year. Each one is a reflection of lead singer and songwriter Jody Galadriel Friend ’s personal evolution. Though she started playing guitar at the age of 12, Friend says that when she came out as trans in 2020, “I rebranded everything and had to effectively start over.”
As a result, her band’s “queer Appalachian doom punk” sound became a beacon of trans representation, touching on themes of ostracization, survival, and strength. Her performances are mesmerizing, among them a four-minute, one-shot music video for the song “Brave” that Friend choreographed herself with a troupe of local dancers.
The audience at the band’s album release party at White Rabbit Cabaret in 2023 was treated to a celebrity cameo when Friend was joined onstage by one of her “dearests,” Madeleine Jurkiewicz of the Indianapolis folk pop duo Lily & Madeleine. But Friend says her most memorable show took place on the main stage at the 2023 Indy Pride festival, where she rocked a red velvet minidress. “It was one of the coolest experiences of my life—thinking how three years earlier, I was closeted and watching so much of my life crumble because I wasn’t honoring myself. And then here I was, getting to celebrate who I was in the presence of so many other people who were celebrating who they were.”
tune in now
THE VIRAL SENSATION
Tevin Studdard
THE CULTURE MASHUP
Sweet Poison Victim
AFTER Tevin Studdard’s video for Indy’s beloved Long’s Bakery went viral in 2020, the music career he had only dreamt of took off. His newfound fame had him traveling to 33 states and performing at more than 100 colleges, all the while singing and recording theme songs for a range of businesses, restaurants, and sports teams.
Following his success, Studdard (a cousin of American Idol Season 2 winner Ruben Studdard) took a step into the literary world, with music shaping the children’s books he writes and fills with rhyme and rhythm. His passion for working with kids led him to develop a program that teaches children how to write their own books and design the covers. “Long-term, I want a community center [where I can teach] kids how to record and write music, as well as write books,” Studdard says.
FILLING the stage with keyboards, bongos, horns, and electric and bass guitars, Sweet Poison Victim is the kind of electrifying ensemble you need to see live. Born from a jam session in a friend’s house, the Indianapolis-based band merges the upbeat syncopation of West African highlife music with the soul of American funk. Is that a pinch of ska thrown in? It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what musical spell Sweet Poison Victim is casting, with its Ghanaian moonshine metaphors and contagious percussion. But their wall of sound—led by singer Kwesi Brown and backed by Ian Bradley, Josh Nosie, Mike Newman, Reed Brown, Karl Selm, Ted Somerville, and Mario Martinez on a full assemblage of instruments—is a powerful musical brew as intoxicating as their name suggests.
BEHIND THE MUSIC
Innovators
shaping Indy’s music landscape.
Musical Family TreeA-Squared IndustriesMOKB
IN 2004, a tech-savvy music enthusiast with a soft spot for Bloomington’s 1990s music scene created what would become a mainstay of Hoosier music history—Musical Family Tree (MFT). Jeb Banner’s “love letter to Indiana music,” now a nonprofit, started as a simple, crowd-sourced digital archive, an attempt to preserve the cassetterecorded echoes of grunge and alt-rock. As he tinkered away, turning his computer into a makeshift web host, MFT snowballed into something bigger. “I’m not much of a coder,” Banner says of those early days. But that didn’t stop him from building a site—years before Spotify—that would become a playable (and meticulously crossreferenced) history of Indiana’s music, from Margo & the Nuclear So and So’s, to Zero Boys, to Eisenhower Field Day.
A-SQUARED Industries is the multifaceted invention of Andy and Annie Skinner, a husband-and-wife team whose devotion to the music scene runs much deeper than their revered Broad Ripple record store, Indy CD & Vinyl. Back in 2005, Andy was a full-time all-ages concert promoter and Annie a record shop employee who was also in charge of grassroots marketing for Sony Music artists. Their mutual grind led to the birth of A-Squared Industries, an enterprise that went on to DJ events, promote shows, launch a record label, and generally foster Indy’s blossoming musical counterculture at DJ dance parties Let Go!, Real Talk!, and Spellbound. Later this year, they’re set to open a Broad Ripple all-ages venue, The 808, next door to Indy CD & Vinyl.
JOSHBAKER, CEO of concert promotion company MOKB
Presents, has spent the last decade turning Indianapolis into a music destination. The genesis of the company was partner Craig “Dodge” Lile’s early-2000s music site, My Old Kentucky Blog, a trusted source for pop commentary. That same spirit of smart engagement guides its concert promotion offshoot, which has Baker and his team hustling to get the city on the map by convincing national acts like Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend, and The Head and the Heart to play local stages, including his own venues, the 400-capacity Hi-Fi and adjoining Hi-Fi Annex. On Baker’s watch, MOKB has become a powerhouse, booking everything from small club shows to arena acts and working its way up to 30 full-time staffers.
FULLY ABSORBED
Fountain Square–based creative agency and label Absorb. is quietly making waves in the music industry.
bY Camille Graves • PHOTOS BY Jay Goldz
“Can you smell the rain?”
OWEN THOMAS ASKS. He sits on a couch flanked by two windows, a large, healthy ficus bonsai on the sill of each, shimmering against the backdrop of a brilliant, choppy gray sky. One window is open, and through it the smell of rain drifts, permeating and changing the atmosphere of the room. “There’s a word for that,” Thomas goes on, but it sits stubbornly on the tip of his tongue.
The word is petrichor, from the Greek roots “petra,” meaning stone, and “ichor,” or gods’ blood. The immersive, all-encompassing experience this phenomenon brings into the small, airy studio above Square Cat Vinyl on
Virginia Avenue is emblematic of the creative agency and music label Thomas runs from the space with business partner Jared Sparkman—a venture they’ve aptly named Absorb.
Note: Stylistically, the period is included in the name—a carryover from Thomas’ solo album, Languages. {Or: Get Dark & Find Yourself.}, which boasts his playful relationship with language (along with a preponderance of deceptively upbeat songs about heartbreak in his signature contemplative, heartland rock style). The album’s release coincided with Thomas’ transition to running his own company, both coming on the heels of his 10 years
as frontman of rock band The Elms, which called it quits in 2010.
The reason for The Elms’ breakup is simple, though at the time, with their fan base and popularity growing, it seemed the only direction for the four guys from rural Indiana and Missouri to go was up. Their last album together, The Great American Midrange, hit No. 18 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. They toured with Peter Frampton, their hit “Back to Indiana” was the official theme song of the 2010 Big Ten Conference, and they performed at Farm Aid alongside Willie Nelson and Neil Young. But, as Thomas states, “It just seemed like that’s what the planets
were saying, that it was time for a new chapter.”
So, on they moved. Guitarist Thom Daugherty became a backing musician for Grammy-winning country stars The Band Perry. Bassist Nathan Bennett became a Realtor. Drummer Christopher, Thomas’ younger brother, started a family.
Thomas, who had always handled the identity work and design for The Elms’ shows, albums, and merch, began receiving requests from industry acquaintances to lend his keen artistic eye to their visual materials. The planets were talking again. He partnered with Sparkman, a filmmaker
deep and gives him the air of someone who belongs in a bigger town, yet he has a distinctly Midwestern warmth. Sparkman is more laid-back. He’s the one with the eye for technical detail, who assembles the ingredients that make the magic real. Before Absorb., he worked in IT, but he says he’s always gravitated to creative work.
Thomas and Sparkman’s design projects pair with music that runs the gamut of styles, from country
“We’ve worked in New York. We’ve worked in LA. We’ve worked in Nashville. The thing about Indy [is that] the doors, when you knock, they get answered much more welcoming than others.”
and friend from Seymour, Indiana, to start Absorb., with Thomas as creative director and Sparkman as producer. Twelve years later, the pair is still at it, flying under the radar while booking jobs with local and national acts.
According to Thomas, “The name Absorb. simply encapsulates what I hope happens when people see or hear our work. We hope that they’re truly affected by it and understand it in a clear, multisensory way.” A peek at the part of Absorb.’s website (absorbme .com) showcasing their creative agency work has that effect, with its white-onblack text and grid of still and moving graphics previewing their album art, merchandise, live shows, museum exhibits, and music and lyric videos. It’s hard not to feel like your eyes have been peeled open Ludovico Technique–style. But it’s the heady kind of sensory overload that makes you want to hang around and, well, absorb it all.
It matches Thomas’ kinetic personality. His well of entertainment business knowledge—all self-taught—is
to experimental rap, and superbly capture a range of moods and emotions. The art for duo Dream Chief’s hypnotic R&B/pop tune
“Love Me Back” depicts the bittersweetness of infatuation through distorted closeups of satin-soft flowers. The bold typeface, monumental collages, and bright primary colors of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum’s 2022 exhibit Roadsters 2 Records conveys the thrill of the Indy 500 in its most innovative era, the 1960s and early ’70s. The Band Perry’s blacked-out 2017 performance of “Stay in the Dark” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, lit only by a circle of black-clad dancers holding bright spotlights, titillates with its suggestion of body parts and silhouettes glimpsed in the low light.
Along with the two others on their team, project manager Brianna Aragon and CONTINUED ON PAGE 98
photographed through water and glass to convey romantic obsession; Frank’s July single “Stupider” explores feelings of inadequacy and isolation.
COVER FOR ME
From top: Bayem’s song “Avalanche” is an exhilarating mix of R&B and electropop; The art for Dream Chief’s “Love Me Back” uses flowers
CATCH A show
Beyond the huge arenas, these are the intimate spots where live music truly thrives.
8 Seconds Saloon
Once a bowling alley, this sprawling westside venue is the premier spot for country music. It’s a wide-open room good for line dancing and concerts. (Keith Urban played here.) Cowboy boots are optional but recommended. 111 N. Lynhurst Dr., 317-4861569, 8secondssaloon.net
Black Circle
Part of a repurposed warehouse, this is the go-to spot for music fans craving a hardcore soundtrack. With past shows featuring touring metal acts such as Amsterdam-based 16BL, Black Circle is wildly supportive of all things edgy. It’s also where your cutup concert T-shirt fits right in. 2201 E. 46th St., blackcirclebrewing .com
Burnside Inn
Escape the Mass Ave barhopping bustle inside this three-story “boutique bar” full of cozy nooks perfect for relaxed listening. Acoustic performers either take to the small stage or entertain on the piano while audience members sip on Burnside’s multiple variations of the mule cocktail. 314 Massachusetts Ave., 317-991-4150
Chatterbox
Downtown’s home for jazz for the past 40-plus years is an authentic dive bar with an intimate setting. No one is more than 40 feet from the stage, so the audience can hear the musicians communicate with sound and observe other subtle nuances of up-close live music. 435 Massachusetts Ave., 317-636-0584
Duke’s
A charmingly scruffy honkytonk filled to its rafters with neon pronouncements and funky Americana, Duke’s opened in 2018, replacing southside institution Ice House. In addition to kitchen manager Derek Hurt’s fried chicken dinners and smashburgers, the bar serves up country and Western entertainment from local and touring musicians. Among Duke’s weekly themed nights is its no-cover TwoStep Tuesday featuring line dancing lessons, live music on the stage, and a reminder to #tipthedamnband. 2352 S. West St., 317-643-6403, dukesindy.com
Feinstein’s at Hotel Carmichael
Step into this club inside the Hotel Carmichael and you’re struck by its intimate 1920s speakeasy vibe. The music is likely to be Great American songbook standards, but it could be a tribute to Tina Turner too—to be enjoyed with dinner and drinks (try the sidecar).
Surround yourself with Ireland—in pictures, drinks, and music—at this eastside pub USA Today once called “one of the nation’s 10 best places to party like you’re Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.” Wednesdays are music nights. Be prepared for sing-alongs with songs that’ll make you laugh or weep. 2533 E. Washington St., 317632-0696, goldenaceinn.com
Healer
An edgy, all-ages venue that blurs the line between music and art, Healer itself feels like an installation piece. Located deep inside a southside strip mall, it is housed in a former medical billing office and still has the dropped ceilings and cubicles to show for it. The shows feature a range of hardcore genres, from punk to screamo. Founded in 2018 as an incubator for artists, it also hosts benefit shows and movie screenings. 3631 E. Raymond St.
Almost every night, the city’s best original-music club (capacity 400) brings in cool touring bands, and in warm weather, there’s a separate show in its outdoor annex, which is open to all ages. Be prepared to stand (or pay extra to sit) and to hear new music. 1043 Virginia Ave., 317-986-7101, hifiindy.com
Hoosier Dome
This all-ages venue on the edge of Fountain Square promises an up-close and personal live music experience. It holds maybe 100 people—standing room only— who are there to see young rock, rap, and metal touring acts in a drug- and alcohol-free room with surprisingly good sound. 1627 Prospect St., 317-289-4293, indyhoosierdome.com
Iozzo’s Garden of Italy
A distant highway hum provides a constant background track on the back patio, which is lined with decorative fountains and strung with twinkle lights. Acoustic musicians who set up on the tiny pedestal are in their element in downtown Indy’s version of an European back alley. 946 S. Meridian St., 317974-1100, iozzos.com
Irving Theater
Irvington’s movie theaterturned-multipurpose venue has a spartan feel. But the lack of decor is secondary to the music: a mix of road warriors, up-andcomers, and local talent, plus the prog-rock concert series put on by local promoter Mark Gasper. 5505 E. Washington St., 317-356-3355, attheirving.com
“The Apollo Theater of the Midwest”—to borrow a phrase from Geno Shelton, who’s promoted shows there for years— has an intimate 900-seat theater and a 250-capacity ballroom. The theater has great sightlines to see artists such as Babyface and Gladys Knight. When you go, dress to the nines, and you’ll be fine. 617 Indiana Ave., 317-236-2099, madamwalkerlegacycenter.com
Melody Inn
Saturday is Punk Rock Night at “the CBGB of the Midwest,” so expect a welcoming and inclusive room where bands and attendees unleash their rebellious spirit. Patrons can get right up against the stage and rock out, or they can chill in the back PBR Lounge or outside in the Smoker’s Garden. 3826 N. Illinois St., 317923-4707, melodyindy.com
Speedway Lounge
Mike’s
On Thursday nights, this westside bar represents, with cover bands from that side of the city playing ’70s to ’90s classic rock hits. As one bartender put it: “Better Aerosmith than Aerosmith.” Mike’s is a good-time place to play pool or darts, have a bite, or just blow off steam. 3701 W. 16th St., 317-969-6710, mikesspeedwaylounge.co
Mousetrap
It’s a live music room, a pool room, a restaurant, and a bar. The Mousetrap, around since 1957, has several different vibes. Musically, it caters to jam bands, especially up-andcoming national acts, and it’s known for hosting post-concert parties when out-of-town bands visit. 5565 N. Keystone Ave., 317255-3189, trapindy.com
Sara’s Soirée
Sara Howe’s restaurant/club on Noblesville’s Courthouse Square is a place to dine and linger while (mostly) jazz plays. It’s an intimate room in which most of the instruments don’t need amplification, with exposed brick walls and a bit of a New Orleans feeling. 818 Logan St., Noblesville, 317219-6565, sarassoiree.com
Slippery Noodle Inn
Downtown’s legendary blues bar likes to celebrate national holidays: National Cheeseburger Day, National Drink Beer Day, National Taco Day. Couple that with Wednesday night jam sessions featuring local players or the occasional touring act, and you’ve got a fun place for those who observe. 372 S. Meridian St., 317-631-6974, slipperynoodle.com
State Street Pub
This friendly spot on the east side is a great place to hear energetic local bands perform experimental, electronic, punk, and rap. Anything musically left of center is welcome, and there’s enough open space for a dance floor or mosh pit. 243 N. State Ave., 317-384-1238
Nickel Plate District Amphitheater
Get out your picnic baskets and blankets— or maybe your wine and charcuterie boards—and bring the family. Fishers’ outdoor venue, which books local and national acts, can hold crowds as big as 6,000 for concerts and festivals. 6 Municipal Dr., Fishers, 317-5953150, npdamp.com
Radio Radio
A large neon sign featuring an old-school microphone marks the location of David “Tufty” Clough’s spirited night spot. Himself a local music legend who embodied Fountain Square before Fountain Square was cool, Clough treats visiting performers (the likes of Eisley, Amy Ray, and Panic! at the Disco) to a battery of sound tech. Fans pack the room for the indie bands, dim vibes, and full bar. 1119 Prospect St., 317-955-0995, radioradioindy.com
One of the city’s best record stores occasionally doubles as a music venue. Bands play on a small stage in the back of the Fountain Square shop, and once they start playing, Square Cat becomes a club. It will get loud, and if stage diving is appropriate ... there will be stage diving. 1054 Virginia Ave., 317-875-1314, squarecatvinyl.com
That Place Bar and Grill
During the week, mozzarella sticks and Captain Morgan get top billing. On Friday and Saturday nights, the stage steals the spotlight. Expect party bands, cover songs, and plenty of folks dancing like nobody’s looking. 8810 S. Emerson Ave., 317-8887100, thatplacebarandgrill.com
The Cabaret
Remember supper clubs?
This room is a faithful revival, a softly lit, chandelier-filled room that holds 180 people. No seat is more than five rows from the stage. Broadway is calling. 924 N. Pennsylvania St., 317-275-1169, thecabaret.org
The Jazz Kitchen
Order some étouffée and prepare to be within a mere few feet of national jazz acts and hot local cats. Offerings range from Monday jam sessions to Thursday Latin Dance Parties. 5377 N. College Ave., 317-2534900, thejazzkitchen.com
The Snug
Tuesdays are “trad” nights, a communal event where people come to hear and sing along with traditional Irish songs, in this cozy Irish pub in Irvington. You might hear sea shanties or the theme song from Cheers—a fitting anthem at this intimate neighborhood bar. 210 S. Audubon Rd., 317-308-8553, snugin.us
The Rathskeller
When there’s music in the history-rich outdoor biergarten, you’re in a crush of mostly 20-somethings. It’s like a college party where everyone shows up, but no one knows the host. The music is loud, the drinks are flowing, and everyone’s having a time they might not remember tomorrow. 401 E. Michigan St., 317-636-0396, rathskeller.com
The Vogue
You can feel the history inside Broad Ripple’s famed movie theater-turnednightclub. Artists of all genres, generations, and career levels have graced the stage, including Johnny Cash (1995), Bo Diddley (1993), and Willie Nelson (2009). There are tables and chairs around the perimeter and in the balcony for early birds. 6259 N. College Ave., 317-259-7029, thevogue.com
Turntable
As of this fall, this Vogueadjacent Broad Ripple space is home to a cozy, speakeasy-style listening room and spacious concert venue for the 18+ crowd (and yes, they check IDs). General admission tickets are standing room only, but seating is available with an upgrade. 6281 N. College Ave., 317-2597029, turntableindy.com
The Fountain Square venue describes its atmosphere as “intimate, romantic, and retro, with a touch of whimsy.” Although a smallscale space with roughly 100 seats, White Rabbit’s stage was intentionally built larger to accommodate multiple kinds of performing arts, including live music, comedy, dance, and theater. 1116 Prospect St., 317-686-9550, whiterabbitcabaret.com
Dialed In
bY Mark D. Allan • PHOTOS BY Jay Goldz
Growing up without much, Kyle Long was forced to scrounge through Goodwill stores, local library sales, and Indian supermarkets for used records and tapes. That unleashed his fascination and obsession with sound and motivated him to take deep dives into local music history. As a result, he became a DJ and music journalist, as well as the driving force behind two WFYI-FM radio shows, Cultural Manifesto and Echoes of Indiana Avenue, on which he unearths the works of unheralded musicians who helped build the tunes of our city and state.
You’ve probably never heard of Lester Johnson, who was with the Ebony Rhythm Funk Campaign, a soul and
“I think a lot of people think I’m just pulling this stuff off Wikipedia or something. It just couldn’t be further from the truth. A lot of the episodes of the programs I produce are literally years in the making.”
funk band. Or Billy Wooten, a jazz vibraphonist who also recorded with some Blue Note Records artists. Or the Haughville Slickers, who played Clevelandstyle polka. But Long has, and he can tell you why they’re significant. Did you know there was a lesbian music scene in Indianapolis in the 1970s? Do you know why the Beatles’ first record came out on an Indiana-based record label? Or what else was happening musically in Gary when the Jacksons were getting ready to break out?
Kyle Long knows. And though his focus is usually on the little-known, he’s gotten the notoriously difficult Brian Wilson to talk about the influence Indianapolis quartet The Four Freshmen had on the Beach Boys. He’s also spoken to Carlos Santana about the importance of legend Wes Montgomery to Santana’s guitar playing. Lucky for Long—and for us.
LONG STORY
The host of WFYIFM’s Cultural Manifesto started collecting music at a young age, digging through secondhand bins for CDs and records.
For those who remember when it opened in the middle of an empty field and hosted rock shows amid the mud puddles,
IT WILL ALWAYS BE DEER
CREEK.
Today, Noblesville’s 35-yearold outdoor concert pavilion is officially named Ruoff Music Center. But return with us now to the 1980s, when “naming rights” wasn’t a thing, and some Hoosiers thought a state-of-theart outdoor concert venue just might be the work of the devil.
THE BACKGROUND
The original Deer Creek was the brainchild of Sunshine Promotions founders David Lucas and Steve Sybesma, who for years booked shows in Indiana and surrounding states. Back in the 1970s and ’80s, their larger Indy gigs typically took place in Market Square Arena and at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. However, purposebuilt outdoor pavilions were starting to catch on nationally, and Lucas and Sybesma decided they wanted one for the Indianapolis area Unfortunately for them, not everyone felt equally enthusiastic
about their plans. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Sunshine tried positioning the project in Westfield, Pike Township, and even at White River State Park, to no avail. The reasons for the refusals varied from logistical issues (only one semi’s worth of equipment at a time could have been offloaded at White River State Park) to all the classic NIMBY worries—which could be summed up in a statement by a Union Bible College representative who, as Lucas told The Indianapolis Star in 1998, solemnly informed the Westfield Plan Commission, “If you allow this amphitheater to be built in your community, your daughters will be dancing in the street with the devil.”
The $12 million project finally found a home on 220 acres of Hamilton County farmland. But even though this spot outside Noblesville stood in the precise, geographic center of nowhere, the idea that it could pose some sort
of cultural, moral (or, at the very least, acoustic) threat to the locals persisted.
THE FIRST SEASON
On May 20, 1989, gospel singer and Indiana native Sandi Patty took the stage as Deer Creek’s first headliner, kicking off an inaugural concert season that redefined the word “eclectic.” Patty was followed the next night by heavy metal hair band Cinderella. Over the course of the summer, Bob Hope, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Willie Nelson, Metallica, Frank Sinatra, Kenny G, Bob Dylan, Gallagher, and MC Hammer, among a great many others, took the stage.
THE NOISE
Cinderella’s metal show offered a chance to determine just how loud Deer Creek concerts could be. This was of more than academic concern, because local ordinances stated that concerts couldn’t be louder than 75
bY Sam Stall
decibels a half mile from the venue’s property line. Cinderella was famously loud, so Sunshine Promotions talent buyer/ production manager Steve Gerardi asked the band’s sound guy to crank up its audio system to 130 decibels (the equivalent of a jet taking off) while he stood on the Deer Creek property line and measured the mayhem with a sound meter. Even at this relatively close range, the needle didn’t reach 75 decibels. “I knew right then we would never get a noise penalty,” said Gerardi. Unfortunately, noise penalties were just one of the strictures imposed on Deer Creek by local authorities. Shows on Mondays through Thursdays had to wrap at 10:30, and weekend shows at 11 p.m.-ish. And who better to break that curfew than Guns N’ Roses. On the first night of a twonight stint, the band took the stage nearly 90 minutes late and played almost an hour past curfew. The next night, they overplayed by a further 25 minutes, earning them a $5,000 fine.
THE BOOZE
It’s no surprise that folks attending Deer Creek shows liked to relax and unwind, often with the assistance of alcoholic beverages or other moodaltering compounds. Given this fact, it’s also no surprise that in the early days, the venue suffered from a nagging problem: fans pre-partying in their cars, then marching into the show blissfully unaware that they’d left their engines running. Another issue was that beer signs in the concession area were visible from the stage, posing problems for acts like Aerosmith and the Grateful Dead, which had members who had gone through rehab and didn’t want to stare at booze logos while they played. As a result, right before their concerts began, any alcohol-related signage within line of sight of the stage was covered.
THE CELEBRITY MOMENTS
In 1993, Julia Roberts and musician Lyle Lovett, who was playing at Deer Creek, held their wedding reception on the grounds before Lovett’s show that evening. The staff had about 36 hours to pull the soiree together. Also that year, Foreigner performed before a near-capacity audience. They released a DVD of the footage, Foreigner: Live at Deer Creek, in 2003. In 2005, the power went out while Tom Petty performed his song “Refugee.” Unruffled, the crowd continued singing the lyrics until the power came back on, at which point Petty simply picked up where his fans were. And in 2012, CBS news anchor Katie Couric sang backup as one of perennial Deer Creek fixture Jimmy Buffett’s “Reeferettes.”
THE WEATHER
To make sure their acts and audiences didn’t get caught in dangerous storms, Deer Creek maintained a closely guarded, top secret hotline to the National Weather Service office at Indianapolis International Airport. Not surprisingly, the weather crew could get gratis tickets to pretty much any show they wanted to see. When word got out that several of the meteorologists were fans of Chicago (the band, not the city), they were invited to have dinner with the group the next time they played.
THE DEAD
2, 1995, when gate-crashers overran a Grateful Dead show and forced a cancellation of the next night’s concert. The band was so angry that it issued an official letter admonishing its followers in language that was far more Dadlike than Dead-like. “If you don’t have a ticket, don’t come,” it read. “This is real. This is first a music concert, not a freefor-all party.”
THE END
The Deer Creek name was retired in 2001. SFX Broadcasting purchased Sunshine in 1997 and was consumed by Clear Channel Communications in 2000. Clear Channel (which eventually morphed into Live Nation) expanded the facility’s lawn seating, then sold naming rights to Verizon Wireless. In 2001, Verizon Wireless Music Center debuted, to be followed in 2011 by Klipsch Music Center, Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center in 2017, and today’s Ruoff Music Center in 2019. When Fort Wayne–based Ruoff announced online that they would be shortening the name, the amphitheater’s social media spaces were flooded with comments from people stating that, to them, it would always be Deer Creek. May it ever be so.
The Grateful Dead loved to play Deer Creek, and its management loved to host them. And why not? The musicians were super mellow, and they always sold out. Their fans were a totally different deal, however. When the Dead played their first show at the venue in 1989, a handful of Deadheads got their wires crossed, winding up in the tiny town of Deer Creek in Carroll County, about 45 minutes to the north. Sunshine Promotions, recognizing the town’s patience with the sudden appearance of misguided fans, handed out tickets to an upcoming Anne Murray concert to its bemused residents. Things ended less amicably on July
GRATE-EST SHOW ON EARTH
Deadheads got lost on their way to Deer Creek in 1989, then famously gatecrashed a second show in ’95.
Tales of true crime exert an irresistible pull on us all, with interest in the genre exploding in the last decade. These reporters and investigators found themselves in the middle of cases they just couldn’t shake. Some of them are still trying to fi nd a way out.
the ssonren g
Course Correction
AFTER 27 YEARS SPENT PUTTING CONVICTS BEHIND BARS, GARY DUNN TURNED HIS ATTENTION TO GETTING ONE OUT.
THE SHELVES of any bookstore’s true crime section are stuff ed with books by longtime members of law enforcement. It’s not a bad deal: Living off what’s typically a decent pension, these retired police officers, prosecutors, or deputies get to relive their glory days and supplement their income, while readers get the inside scoop on their most infamous cases. But Gary Dunn took a diff erent path. The lifelong FBI agent investigated some of Indiana’s most notorious crimes, but the book he chose to write was about the man he helped set free.
Dunn had worked in FBI outposts across the region before settling into the Bloomington offi ce for his final decade with the agency. While there, he worked hand-in-hand with state and local law enforcement to investigate cases such as 1995’s high-profile abduction and slaying of Linton resident Pam Foddrill and the May 2000 disappearance of Indiana University freshman Jill Behrman. “I devoted well over two years of my life to that,” Dunn says of the latter case.
Both of those crimes ended in convictions, with the killer arrested and imprisoned. “That’s how it’s supposed to go,” Dunn says. “You explore all the possibilities. You find the right person. And they go to jail.”
Dunn retired in 2003 after receiving accolades from groups including the Indiana State Police, which named him an honorary lieutenant colonel. “Not that that means anything,” he says. “But apparently, they thought enough of me at the time.”
His long-formed relationship with that branch of the law changed the following year, when defense attorney Katharine “Kitty” Liell asked Dunn to reexamine the evidence in one of Indiana’s most famous trials, the murder conviction of former Indiana state trooper David Camm. According to prosecutors, Camm fatally shot his wife Kim and children Jill and Brad on September 28, 2000, at their Georgetown home. The Indiana Court of Appeals had recently overturned the conviction, and Camm was headed to a second trial.
“I said, ‘I don’t think so, Kitty,’ because I knew that the state police investigated it. But I told her that I’d briefly look at it, just as a favor.”
BY EVE BATEY
“But then, when I did, I said, ‘This can’t be.’” Dunn says he immediately took issue with how prosecutors presented bloodstain evidence and was confounded by a seeming dismissal of a signifi cant piece of evidence at the crime scene. Dunn swiftly identified a promising suspect in the homicide and brought everything he found to the investigating officer. “And instead of listening, he waved me off. Said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’”
It’s been 20 years since, but Dunn still gets heated when he recalls that exchange. “This was a total, total miscarriage of justice. It just wasn’t a mistake,” he says of the conviction. He agreed to join the defense eff ort as a paid expert but says that as the case grew more demanding, he dedicated thousands of unpaid hours to the work to exonerate Camm. “Obviously, I took a great deal of pride in the job that I did in the FBI, and so did the men and women with me,” Dunn says. “It didn’t sit right with me to just let this egregious violation stand.”
In 2013, a jury ruled Camm not guilty and set him free. “I’d almost lost faith in the system,” Dunn says, “but facts matter. It came through in the end.”
In 2022, his book about the case, Their Bloody Lies & Persecution of David Camm, was published. It’s a painstaking deconstruction of the prosecution’s case, packed with enough forensic and evid entiary detail to ruin your enjoyment of crime scene procedurals such as CSI or Dexter. Just as important as the facts, Dunn says, is the book’s underlying message. “If anything comes from this, it’s that you shouldn’t automatically assume that the prosecutors and the cops have got their story correct. And don’t assume that defense attorneys are always trying to get their client off regardless of the truth.’”
Gary Dunn
The girlnext door
A HAPPENSTANCE DEATH NEAR HIS HOME HAS HAUNTED THIS WRITER FOR YEARS.
BY TONY REHAGEN
I’D BEEN writing about crime for about 15 years when my neighbor, Jane Pepper, was killed just steps from my home. It was Monday, October 29, 2007, when my wife and I were roused by sirens and lights outside our Broad Ripple townhouse at 64th Street and College Avenue. Reporters and TV trucks flooded the area, reporting that Pepper’s boyfriend had found her blood-soaked body inside her ground-level residence at the Wellington Square Apartments. No one knew who killed her. Even worse, no one knew why.
At that point in my career, I had covered trials, dug into court files and archives, and visited crime scenes. I’d talked to victims, their friends and families, witnesses, and law enforcement. I’d even gone to prisons to interview convicted murderers. But when you have a reporter’s notebook in your hand, you have distance. You don’t feel the ripples left by a killer who walked mere yards, perhaps feet, from your front porch. In one day, I went from being the person who told that story to the person who was, in a very peripheral way, part of it.
I didn’t know Jane Pepper, even though she was my neighbor. I didn’t know most of my neighbors. I had grown up in a small town (population 312) where everyone knew everything about everyone. The peaceful anonymity of the city is part of what drew me to it, and I reserved my chats with strangers for my day job. But now, I found myself talking to people who lived nearby, trying to pick up scraps of information from those who met her. I won’t say I was trying to solve the case, but more than any story I ever worked on, I was desperate to know why she’d died.
At first, I ascribed that obsession to my
training as a reporter. After all, we’re the people who are supposed to pursue the facts and bring them to a receptive public. If I learned everything I could about Pepper, a 44-year-old Purdue graduate who worked as an administrative assistant at Methodist Hospital, maybe I’d understand why someone stabbed her in the face, chest, hands, back, and neck. The medical examiner noted the presence of semen on her remains, suggesting that she’d been raped in the attack. How did that happen to this woman, who drove older neighbors to and from the grocery store and brought them iced tea when they were sitting outside reading?
When a reporter runs out of information, their editor pulls them from the story, and they move on to the next. But I struggled to move on from this crime against my neighbor. It’s still with me now, even though police identified a suspect in 2009 by way of the DNA from Pepper’s suspected sexual assault. Her attacker, a man named Nathan Anderson, told police he’d been walking past the building when he noticed an open window and entered it, hoping to find something to steal. Pepper woke up, he said, and he killed her. He was sentenced to 65 years.
I’m glad that justice was served, and that Pepper’s friends, family, and neighbors got closure. But that answer—that her killer just happened to see her open window— does nothing to bring order to chaos. It’s hard to accept that we’re all wandering on this planet without a path and that connections and collisions are inevitable. It’s even harder to accept that the difference between life and death can be as simple as a stranger wandering past an open window.
BY SARAH D. BUNTING BOOK ’EM
Blood Trail
(Steven Walker and Rick Reed)
Essential reading for any Hoosier true crime hound
This memorably grimy account of violent-crimes-detective-turnedfraud-investigator Reed’s pursuit of Joseph Weldon Brown starts out overwritten. Let it settle down.
It’s a brisk, colloquial rendering of Brown’s hopeless childhood, then his (notably inept) career of larceny and violence culminating in the murder of his partner, Ginger Gasaway, whose remains Brown notoriously scattered across three counties.
Freed to Kill: The True Story of Serial Murderer Larry Eyler
(Gera-Lind Kolarik with Wayne Klatt)
The writing is relatively run-of-themill, but this is one of the few booklength treatments of serial killer Larry Eyler, whose body count was higher than it should have been thanks to 1) lack of cooperation between police agencies and 2) an improper search that let Eyler loose to kill again.
Murders That Made Headlines: Crimes of Indiana
(Jane Simon Ammeson)
This slim anthology focuses on long-ago cases that dominated contemporary news, then fell below the horizon. It’s packed with archival graphics, grisly details (a reservoir drained, in vain, to find Pearl Bryan’s head), and histrionic headlines. The Harry and Nettie Diamond chapter is a strangely nostalgic treat.
Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34
Hell’s Princess:
The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men
(Harold Schechter)
The Lady Bluebeard of La Porte County’s crimes were so vile that a densely footnoted academic overview is the only way to write about the case without sickening the reader. Schechter is the professor for the job. He can’t entirely avoid phrases like “a jumble of putrefied body parts,” but his biography and analysis of Gunness is compelling and complete.
Indiana Gothic: A Story of Adultery and Murder in an American Family
(Pope Brock)
A politician’s affair with his sisterin-law; a pregnancy they couldn’t otherwise explain; a broad daylight shooting on Main Street; a pioneering insanity defense. It sounds like pulp fiction, and that’s how Brock writes the true story of his great-grandfather Ham Dillon’s murder and his family’s enduring shame. This volume is rich in turn-of-the-last-century detail, and the prose moves right along.
(Bryan Burrough) Burrough’s 2004 book about the country’s “first, and greatest, war on crime” became a Johnny Depp–starring film in 2009. But the text is plenty cinematic on its own, never more so than when it zooms in on the bank-robbing, jail-breaking John Dillinger, who, of course, became Public Enemy No. 1.
Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy
(Alex Mar)
When a “beloved Bible teacher” was murdered during a 1985 home invasion, few objected when her killer, 10th-grader Paula Cooper, got the death penalty. Then the victim’s grandson publicly forgave Cooper—and campaigned to commute her sentence. A holistic account of the ripple effects of a horrific crime on two families, the book takes on multiple criminal justice issues—racial bias, prosecutorial tunnel vision, Lake County corruption— without feeling like homework.
The Blotter
A FORMER CRIME
REPORTER
LOOKS BACK ON HOW HIS BEAT HAS EVOLVED.
BY EVE BATEY
ASK ANY PUBLISHER, podcaster, or producer, and they’ll tell you the same thing: We’re in a golden era for true crime, with award-winning actors, directors, and journalists eager to mine every community’s darkest moments. But many of the incidents detailed in glossy documentaries and slick podcasts were first exposed by local reporters on the crime beat, often via bite-sized items penned on the fly. Those journalists are responsible for the grains of sand that high-profile, star-studded true crime pearls are formed around. Until recently, eastside resident Ryan Martin was one of them.
Martin was a reporter with The Indianapolis Star for around seven years, where his work ranged from brief, breaking news items to a Pulitzer Prize–winning group investigation into how law enforcement agencies use—and often misuse—trained dogs. That latter style of crime reporting can be the most professionally satisfying, Martin admits. But it’s also expensive for news companies to produce and is rarely profitable. “There were all these things that would happen on the police beat that I would always want more time with,” Martin says. “That’s not the nature of the beat, really.”
Instead, daily newspapers and broadcast TV rely on short and immediate reports for their bread and butter. These are the stories you see shared on Nextdoor or Facebook with amateur commentary, speculation, and infighting threaded beneath. Though those stories are often superficial, Martin says they still serve an important function. “If you’re invested in a neighborhood, you really want to know what’s happening there,” Martin says. “People have a right to know about threats to their own livelihood in their own neighborhoods.”
Ideally, those breaking news items can improve society by creating a betterinformed citizenry. “If there’s a bunch of police on your street, you want to know why they were there,” Martin says. “Otherwise, people will fill the blanks in with things that may be even worse.”
But for a long time, daily crime coverage might have twisted how we see the world. As long as news organizations have existed, they’ve traded in sensational headlines and fearmongering to attract readers. “As we’ve learned over time, it can be very damaging
PHOTO BY TONY VALANIS
if you cover crime in a certain way,” Martin says. “It can stereotype people. It can tokenize people. It can create misperceptions about entire neighborhoods.”
“There was a time you’d just go and pull the court record, then you’d find something egregious to play up, slap a mug shot on it, write a headline that is tantalizing, and then call it a day,” Martin says.
“It’s embarrassing to think about the lack of care, the lack of empathy, the lack of understanding of how everybody involved in those stories ended up in that situation,” he says of the professional expectations that he (as well as most other crime writers) worked under.
WATCHING THE DETECTIVES
True crime adaptations and documentaries with a focus on Indiana
BY SARAH D. BUNTING
An American Crime
No scripted take on the starvation and torture inflicted on Sylvia Likens could approach the utter bleakness of just perusing the murder’s Wikipedia page; no production could justify putting actors through anything close. The film is still quite grim—but it’s courageously acted by Elliot Page as Likens and Catherine Keener and Ari Graynor as Sylvia’s tormentors.
Things are improving, however. Many outlets have repositioned their crime reporting since the social justice uprising of 2020, increasing efforts to center those who
“People have a right to know about threats to their own livelihood in their own neighborhoods.
”
experienced the crime (as opposed to the perpetrators), cutting use of mug shots, and relying less on a single narrative provided by law-enforcement.
Last year, Martin left the Star for a role as deputy managing editor at Mirror Indy, a community-based newsroom. The outlet, which can be found at mirrorindy.org, made a conscious decision against covering the day-to-day crime on which Martin built his career.
“We don’t want to replicate what other newsrooms are doing. We want to add to the local journalism that’s being produced,” Martin says. “We did a lot of research, interviews, and surveys and heard time and time again that there’s plenty of sports and crime news in Indy. So when we got ready to launch, we decided not to do either. Readers have ample opportunity to find that somewhere else.”
Cross of Fire
The prosecution of D.C. “Steve” Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, for the 1925 rape and murder of educational activist Madge Oberholtzer fractured the KKK’s stranglehold over the state and its politics and set legal precedent for how homicide is charged. The miniseries is painstaking, and John Heard’s performance personifies Stephenson’s repellent corruption.
The Curious Case of Natalia Grace
The central “mystery” of this docuseries—was Natalia, a Ukrainian adoptee with dwarfism who was “de-homed” by her American family, actually a scheming adult when Kristine and Michael Barnett brought her home to Westfield?—is solved in the second season. The larger mystery of human behavior (Natalia’s, the self-absorbed Barnetts’, and the representatives of various institutions who let Natalia down) endures.
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
Directed by the great Stanley Nelson, the doc’s a bit hard to find and quite hard to watch, particularly the audio of Jim Jones and his followers’ terrifying end in the jungle. But it’s the most effective, economical presentation of a chilling story that’s more often associated with California and Guyana … but began in Indiana.
The Legend of the Reno Brothers
The Reno Gang—brothers Sim, Frank, and John and a rotating cast of unrelated thieves—committed the world’s first peacetime train heist (and many others), tangled with the Pinkertons, and hid their loot so well it’s never been found. The Renos should be better known, and this 2013 documentary is “home sewn” but shows the proper rigor for its outlaw subjects.
“Secret Life of a Serial Killer” (A&E Investigative Reports)
This episode is a predictable, slightly dated, but illuminating hour from before the true crime boom, when there just wasn’t much genre programming beyond A&E’s somber and informative newsmags. This one is an early outing from director Liz Garbus (Lost Girls) and an efficient brief on Herb Baumeister, his Fox Hollow Farm killing field, and his wife’s resolute denial.
The Speedway Murders
First-time directors Adam Kamien and Luke Rynderman put a haunting spin on reenactments in their 2024 doc about the 1978 Burger Chef killings, in which actors portraying the four young victims play citizen detectives with various theories of the (still unsolved) crime. Their affecting performances plus a Rashomon-esque structure set this one apart from the many other properties about the case.
TRAVEL
ON DISPLAY
At these 28 museums, gardens, architectural wonders, and heritage sites, you’ll travel through time, culture, space, and more.
AMERICAN SIGN MUSEUM
(Cincinnati, Ohio)
More than 200 signs are on display in this museum, which seeks to celebrate American iconography. From bright neon to reverse glass painted, any kind of sign you can think of is here. With its recent expansion, the American Sign Museum added another 20,000 square feet of bold signage for you to enjoy. 1330 Monmouth Ave., Cincinnati, OH, 513-541-6366, americansignmuseum.org
FRANKLIN PARK CONSERVATORY AND BOTANICAL GARDENS
(Columbus, Ohio)
The combination of indoor-outdoor gardens in Columbus offers breathtaking greenery at every turn. A great afternoon out for all ages, you can take your time observing the detail and craftsmanship of the Bonsai Collection while the kids run around the Sunrise Lawn at the Children’s Garden. 1777 E. Broad St., Columbus, OH, 614-715-8000, fpconservatory.org
NATIONAL AVIARY
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
The National Aviary in Pittsburgh, the
in the country, is a must-see for bird lovers. From penguins, to toucans, to doves, the aviary houses more than 500 birds of 150 different species. For those less partial to feathery creatures, you can see (and even feed) Vivien, the twotoed sloth. 700 Arch St., Pittsburgh, PA, 412-323-7235, aviary.org
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
(Dayton, Ohio)
Located on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the museum has more than 360 aircraft and missiles from the U.S. Air Force’s entire history on display. Exhibits are sorted by time period, and go all
produced by the Wright brothers. 1100 Spaatz St., Dayton, OH, 937-255-3286, nationalmuseum.af.mil
DAYTON ART INSTITUTE
(Dayton, Ohio)
As one of the best art museums in Ohio, the Dayton Art Institute caters to all creative genres from ancient to contemporary. The DAI is also a great museum for children, thanks to the
Lange Family Experiencenter and many child-oriented programs. 456 Belmonte Park North, Dayton, OH, 937-223-4278, daytonartinstitute.org
FALLINGWATER
(Mill Run, Pennsylvania)
Take the 70-mile drive out from Pittsburgh to visit the house designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is considered one of the greatest works of American architecture. With an organic style integrating both the surrounding forest and the waterfall it sits atop, this famous house is worth the trip. 1491 Mill Run Rd., Mill Run, PA, 724-329-8501, fallingwater.org
KENT STATE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM
(Kent, Ohio)
Eight galleries of fashion and design
The massive collection of clothing, design sketches, historical garments, and costumes are available to students and the public alike and can be searched online as well. 515 Hilltop Dr., Kent, OH, 330-672-3450, kent.edu/museum
Always in Season? IT’S A SHORE THING
Shores & Islands Ohio has something for everyone. Hike and bike miles of natural trails, explore quaint downtowns and museums, witness fall bird migration, and enjoy the beauty of changing colors throughout our region.
Visit an orchard to pick a peck of apples or sample other fresh-from-the-farm produce at a farmer’s market. Take a tour of a local winery at the peak of harvest season and taste craft beverages at a brewery or distillery on the free Shores & Islands Ohio Cheers Trail . Sign up, check in, and collect points for prizes!
Find your Lake Erie Love year-round at SHORESandISLANDS.com .
SPEED ART MUSEUM
(Louisville, Kentucky)
Speed is the largest and oldest art museum in the state of Kentucky. Collections range from many eras throughout history, but Speed is primarily known for its display of Western art. The museum has recently added Speed
arts. 2035 S. Third St., Louisville, KY, 502-634-2700, speedmuseum.org
CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM
(Chicago, Illinois)
In 1856, the Chicago Historical Society opened this museum to study the city’s history, and it’s still going strong nearly 170 years later. The interactive exhibits explore Chicago’s past and present with displays about The Great Chicago Fire, Abraham Lincoln, protest art, and more. 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 312-642-4600, chicagohistory.org
THE WARHOL
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
This Pittsburgh art museum is the largest on the continent dedicated to a single artist—Andy Warhol. The beloved 20thcentury artist who popularized the pop art
movement is celebrated with a rotating collection of some of his most famous works. 117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, PA, 412-237-8300, warhol.org
MICHIGAN SCIENCE CENTER
(Detroit, Michigan)
The giant science museum and
itself Michigan’s hub of all things STEM. With exhibits ranging from nanoscience to math, in addition to live performances,
it’s hard to disagree. 5020 John R. St., Detroit, MI, 313-577-8400, mi-sci.org
ARMSTRONG AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM
(Wapakoneta, Ohio)
This air and space museum is located in the hometown of Neil Armstrong, the
exploration featuring real spacecraft, spacesuits, and moon rocks. 500 Apollo Dr., Wapakoneta, OH, 419-738-8811, armstrongmuseum.org
MOTHMAN MUSEUM
(Point Pleasant, West Virginia)
It’s the only museum in the world dedicated to Mothman, with a collection of memorabilia, relics, documents, and
sure to come back next September for the 2025 Mothman Festival. 400 Main St., Point Pleasant, WV, 304-812-5211, mothmanmuseum.com
CASTLE NOEL
(Medina, Ohio)
Santa’s always coming to town at the country’s largest year-round indoor Christmas experience. The 40,000 square feet of Christmas installations— including window displays, animatronics, toys, movie props and costumes, indoor snow, and more—will put you in the holiday spirit no matter when you visit. 260 S. Court St., Medina, OH, 330-7216635, castlenoel.com
ERNEST WARTHER MUSEUM & GARDENS
(Dover, Ohio)
Esteemed woodcarver Ernest “Mooney” Warther’s family keeps his legacy
and craft alive at this Dover museum. You’ll be able to walk through the old family home, explore Warther’s original workshop, and see plenty of his famous hand-carved wooden trains. 331 Karl Ave., Dover, OH, 330-505-6003, thewarthermuseum.com
LOUISVILLE SLUGGER MUSEUM & FACTORY
(Louisville, Kentucky)
The factory where the iconic Louisville Slugger bats are produced doubles as a museum for baseball lovers. You can watch the wooden bats get crafted from
that once belonged to some of history’s most famous baseball players, like Babe Ruth and Johnny Bench. 800 W. Main St., Louisville, KY, 877-775-8443, sluggermuseum.com
MUHAMMAD ALI CENTER
(Louisville, Kentucky)
Legendary Louisville boxer Muhammad Ali’s accomplishments and impact are celebrated at the Ali Center. Exhibits include memorabilia and artifacts from some of Ali’s most famous moments, as well as an area to learn boxing skills
yourself. 144 N. Sixth St., Louisville, KY, 502-584-9254, alicenter.org
SHAKER VILLAGE OF PLEASANT HILL
(Harrodsburg, Kentucky)
The history of Kentucky’s Shaker community comes to life in this 3,000acre village where you can explore, eat, and stay the night. Historic buildings are open for guests to walk around and stay in, and the still-functioning farm provides fresh ingredients for The Trustees’ Table restaurant. 3501 Lexington Rd., Harrodsburg, KY, 859-734-5411, shakervillageky.org
BLUEGRASS MUSIC HALL OF FAME & MUSEUM
(Owensboro, Kentucky)
Kentucky’s homegrown music genre has its own museum for fans to peruse. The site functions as a bluegrass hall of fame with plaques and artifacts of some of the music style’s biggest names. There are also regular performances by contemporary bluegrass artists. 311 W. Second St., Owensboro, KY, 270-9267891, bluegrasshall.org
NATIONAL QUILT MUSEUM
(Paducah, Kentucky)
The National Quilt Museum dedicates itself to the many different styles, time periods, and mediums of the quilting arts. In addition to displaying pieces, the museum hosts regular classes and contests to grow the country’s quilting community. 215 Jefferson St., Paducah, KY, 270-442-8856, quiltmuseum.org
CENTER OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY
(Columbus, Ohio)
Columbus’ Center of Science and Industry is a highly interactive and overthe-top museum to educate and entertain visitors of all ages. Come for the walking 6-foot-long mechanical T. rex skeleton model, and stay to watch rats playing basketball. 333 W. Broad St., Columbus, OH, 614-228-2674, cosi.org
FIELD MUSEUM
(Chicago, Illinois)
This natural history museum in Chicago is one of the largest of its kind in the world. Exhibits feature cultural and natural artifacts from all over the world, including gemstones, a Chinese scroll
from the Song dynasty, and the biggest dinosaur skeleton ever discovered. 1400 S. Lake Shore Dr., Chicago, IL, 312-922-9410,
AMERICAN WRITERS MUSEUM
Book lovers are sure to enjoy the American Writers Museum, which celebrates the country’s best authors. From the beloved Children’s Literature Gallery to the Mind of a Writer Gallery, visitors can explore the world of words. There are also frequent author talks for those who want to learn the tricks of the trade.
Chicago, IL, 312-374-8790,
CHARLES H. WRIGHT MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY
The Wright in Detroit exhibits Black history and culture from the past to the present. Programming puts an emphasis on uplifting the Black community through education and communitybuilding. Exhibits are presented through different creative mediums like stained glass, murals, and immersive settings.
494-5800,
STAN HYWET HALL & GARDENS
One man’s massive Akron estate from the turn of the century now boasts some of the most beautiful gardens in Ohio. The historic home museum features 10 different types of gardens in addition to an indoor conservatory. Tours are also available for the home and carriage house.
330-836-5533,
ABRAHAM LINCOLN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
In the Presidential Museum, you can follow the journey of Lincoln’s life from boyhood to assassination and see his legacy through exhibits on the Civil Rights Movement. Then check out his Presidential Library and its massive collection of Lincoln-related manuscripts, books, and artifacts. 212 N.
ZIIBIWING CENTER OF ANISHINABE CULTURE AND LIFEWAYS
The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan has created a museum to help visitors learn about and appreciate the people and culture of the Great Lakes Anishinabek. Ziibiwing’s grounds also function as the tribe’s cultural center and preservation hub.
NEW VRINDABAN
This international community of Hare Krishna feels more like a royal palace in India than a village in West Virginia. From the ornate Radha Krishna Temple to Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold, your strolls through the rose garden past cows and peacocks will transport you to another spiritual realm.
1600,
Fall Discoveries in Madison County
Discover cancer care that empowers you to simply focus on getting better. Our multidisciplinary approach keeps everyone on the same page throughout treatment. With our team guiding you every step along the way, you’ll never feel alone.
eCommunity.com/cancer
Sara H., patient
HEALTH WATCH: CANCER CARE
Lifestyle changes and prevention measures, early detection of disease, and effective therapies and protocols can help protect against cancer diagnoses and promote successful treatment outcomes.
By Lori Roberts
Nobody wants to think about a cancer diagnosis, but the National Cancer Institute estimated some sobering statistics for this year: More than 2 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States over the course of 2024, and more than 600,000 people will die from various forms of the disease. Fortunately, research continues to focus on different types of cancers and their treatment options, and local medical professionals work to educate their patients about cancer prevention and effective care. “In terms of advocacy, we’re getting the word out,” says Dr. Radhika Walling, a hematologist and medical oncologist with Community Health Network.
Patients aren’t helpless when it comes to fighting the disease. We talked with Walling and other Central Indiana physicians about promising prevention measures, as well as strategies for catching cancer early, before it has a chance to spread. We also discussed how to maximize the effectiveness of treatment regimens. Together, patients and their doctors can create a game plan that increases survival odds.
PREVENTATIVE MEASURES
Most people are familiar with lifestyle choices that can promote good health and prevent cancer, Walling says. Those include:
• Prioritizing physical activity
• Maintaining a healthy weight
• Consuming a diet high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains
• Omitting alcohol or using it sparingly
• Quitting smoking
The guidance in this list may seem simple, but the benefits can be far-reaching. For instance, smoking is linked not only to lung
cancer but also to cancers of the larynx, mouth, esophagus, pancreas, bladder, stomach, colon, rectum, liver, cervix, and kidneys, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ideally, patients should never pick up the first cigarette, says Dr. Francesca Duncan, a pulmonologist and critical care physician with Eskenazi Health. But if patients are hooked, their doctors may be able to help them kick the habit. “If you do smoke, talk to your doctor about ways you can quit,” Duncan says. “There are behavior modifications, counseling, and medications that can help.”
If you do smoke, talk to your doctor about ways you can quit. There are behavior modifications, counseling, and medications that can help.
DR. FRANCESCA DUNCAN, PULMONOLOGIST AND CRITICAL CARE PHYSICIAN WITH ESKENAZI HEALTH
Maintaining a healthy weight, staying active, and watching your diet can also have a dramatic impact on cancer prevention and overall health, says Dr. Dipen Maun, a colorectal surgeon with Franciscan Health. “The Western diet tends to be lower in fiber and higher in animal fat compared to other diets across the world, which may be why we see higher colon cancer rates than other countries,” Maun says. “I’m not saying everyone should become vegetarian, but be conscious.”
EARLY DETECTION
Early detection is a powerful tool in the cancer treatment arsenal. When cancer is found early, before symptoms appear and the disease spreads to other parts of the body, it can be easier to cure or treat. Patients should talk to their doctors about the various cancer screening options:
• Women should begin having annual mammograms at age 45 to detect breast cancer.
• The American Cancer Society recommends starting regular colon cancer screenings at age 45 or earlier if patients have a family history of colon cancer.
• Cervical cancer screening through pap smears should begin at age 25.
• Lung cancer screening with a low-dose CT scan can be beneficial to certain patients.
Maun understands that patients don’t particularly look forward to having a colonoscopy. While the procedure is done under general anesthesia and causes little or no pain, the necessary preparation measures used to clean the colon beforehand can be, literally, hard to swallow. But colonoscopies remain the gold standard for diagnosing and removing colon polyps, which can be precursors to colon cancer.
Recent years have brought new colon cancer screening options to patients who dread the thought of a colonoscopy, Maun says. Stool tests look for cancer DNA fragments in the stool, while blood tests can check for those fragments in the blood. But neither of those less-invasive options can diagnose polyps, which can be key to preventing colon
continued on page 78
MOVING FOR BETTER OUTCOMES
When a patient receives a cancer diagnosis, they may think about reaching out for a second opinion or hitting the internet to find out more about the disease. Macy Hogan has another suggestion: Ask for a referral to a physical therapist.
Hogan, a physical therapist and lead therapist with the Transplant Optimization Program (TOP) at Franciscan Health, works with patients to ensure they stay strong and can handle the physical stresses of cancer treatment when they are facing certain bone and blood cancers. Even the healthiest patient can be knocked down by the rigors of cancer treatment. “It’s easier to be proactive about it than reactive,” Hogan says.
Research has shown that exercise can improve symptoms and allow patients to regain their previous quality of life. It may also
Patients can do hard things. They can tolerate things you didn’t think they could.
reduce the risk of hospital readmission, which opens the door to infections or pneumonia. According to conventional wisdom, every day that a patient lies in a hospital bed translates to three days of recovery, Hogan says. The TOP program works to keep patients from having to deal with these setbacks.
The program first determines a patient’s baseline measurements, which gives Hogan and other therapists a framework to create an exercise program that preserves the patient’s strength and abilities. She emphasizes that movement is part of treatment. While the TOP program currently focuses on patients with blood and bone cancer, there are plans to expand to other disease areas.
“For a long time, I think the perception was that patients were fragile, and we just need to let them rest,” Hogan says. “But we have found out over time through research and experience that was the wrong way. Patients can do hard things. They can tolerate things you didn’t think they could.”
BEYOND BARRIERS
Barriers to care are not always obvious. Thanks in part to community partners, volunteers and donors, these barriers are being overcome. Learn more or join
MACY HOGAN, PHYSICAL THERAPIST WITH FRANCISCAN HEALTH
continued from page 76
cancer. “If you have access to all the options that are available, colonoscopy can find the highest number of polyps and give you the option of having them removed,” Maun says. If someone is a smoker or ex-smoker, they may benefit from an annual low-dose CT scan for lung cancer, Duncan says. Current guidelines recommend annual scans for patients between the ages of 50 and 80 who currently smoke or who have quit within the last 15 years. Patients must also have a 20 pack-year smoking history, which means they have smoked an average of 20 cigarettes—or one pack of cigarettes—each day for an accumulated 20 years. “Low-dose CT scans have been shown to reduce lung cancer mortality by 20 percent,” Duncan says.
Certain populations may be at a higher risk for lung cancer, Duncan says. Black males have a higher incidence of diagnosis and a lower survival rate than other patient populations. This underscores the need for all patients to talk to their medical provider about cancer screening.
DIAGNOSIS AND DECISIONS
Preventative measures can help ward off disease, but sometimes a cancer diagnosis can come as a surprise. Patients who receive this news are encouraged to take necessary steps to obtain the best possible treatment. This can start with a second set of ears in the doctor’s office. “Listen to your doctor,” Walling says. “Absorb what you can. It’s always a good idea to have another supportive person with you, because studies have shown that what you retain is very minimal at your first cancer consultation.”
Indiana is lucky to be home to many worldclass oncology programs, but some patients may be tempted to travel to big-name treatment centers because they hope to get better care. While most physicians believe their patients can obtain the established standard of care locally, they won’t discourage patients from doing what makes them comfortable, Walling says. Clinical trials may also sound like an obvious option, but most physicians
recommend exploring these trials only if the disease has progressed beyond the capabilities of currently available treatments.
Choosing a specialist can also be an important decision. Cancer is a broad term for a very diverse range of conditions and is characterized by a rapid creation of cells that grow uncontrollably, affecting nearby tissue and organs. But cancer of the breast is different from cancer of the liver. Certain cancers can be more sensitive to hormonal treatments or specific immunologic treatments. As research and knowledge about specific cancers continue to grow, it’s important for patients to find a doctor who is an expert in their specific diagnosis. “Typically, it would be my recommendation that if you can find a person in your area who is a [cancer] subspecialist, that would be ideal,” Walling says.
A cancer diagnosis does not have to be a death sentence. Patients are encouraged to talk to their healthcare providers about their risk factors and necessary screening options to ensure early detection and better treatment options. “The idea is to get the message out,” Duncan says.
REVOLUTIONIZING CANCER CARE
The Franciscan Health Indiana Blood & Marrow Transplantation Program has been leading the way for 25+ years, providing novel therapies, firs t-in-the-world clinical trials and innovative treatments for people with complex blood cancers.
•IBMT providers were the first blood and marrow transplant program in Indiana
•First-in-the-state CAR T-Cell therapy
•100+ transplants performed
•24/7 physician access
•Best Outcomes in the Midwest by the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplantation (2023)
THE HEROES FOUNDATION:
SUPPORTING LOCAL CANCER PATIENTS AND RESEARCH
Nearly a quarter century ago, 26-year-old Vince Todd was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Fortunately, Todd had access to good treatment and received a clean bill of health a couple years later. But he and his wife, Cindy, wanted to do more. They gathered with friends to launch the Heroes Foundation, an organization focused on raising funds to support Indiana researchers and local cancer patients.
“Instead of saying, ‘Why me?’ they were asking what they could do to be part of the solution,” says Annie Martinez, the Heroes Foundation executive director.
The Heroes Foundation raises money through three major events each year: a golf tournament in the fall, a fitness campaign in the summer, and the annual An Evening With Heroes, a gala event set for January 25, 2025, at the JW Marriott. These activities
have raised millions of dollars for research through the IU Health Simon Cancer Center, the Harper Cancer Research Institute at Notre Dame University, and other organizations. A medical advisory board of nurses,
The good news is that through the years, the amount of time one can live with a cancer diagnosis is growing.
ANNIE MARTINEZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR WITH HEROES FOUNDATION
doctors, and oncologists assesses each request that comes to the foundation, Martinez says.
“We might invest in new promising faculty members and their students,” she explains.
“Sometimes it’s the form of a graduate student scholarship. Sometimes it’s funding for research. Sometimes it’s just buying a machine for an oncology lab.”
The Heroes Foundation also works to support local cancer patients who may not know about available resources like rental assistance during treatment. “We depend on the already existing programs in the state,” Martinez says. “We’re not trying to duplicate their efforts. We’re trying to help them support the families and people with cancer.”
If Martinez and others had their way, there would be no need for a Heroes Foundation. But as long as cancer is a diagnosis, the organization will continue to fight for progress in preventing or curing the disease. “There are so many different kinds of cancers,” Martinez says. “To break down the problem is almost overwhelming. But the good news is that through the years, the amount of time one can live with a cancer diagnosis is growing.”
S C H O O L SCHOOL
O P E N H O U S E OPEN HOUSE G U I D E GUIDE
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Indy schools open their doors to help families find the right academic fit.
By Julie Young
School open houses are opportunities for academic institutions to show families their facilities and what they have to offer. Campus tours provide prospective students and their parents with a firsthand look inside schools’ learning environments, as well as an overview of the cultures within. Other related events provide detailed information about academic programming and extracurricular activities and serve as a starting point for future relationships with schools’ constituents. Whether they occur during a school day, in the evening, or on a weekend, open houses are critical components of the school selection process.
CORE VALUES
Families of prospective enrollees can expect a celebration of excellence and Holy Cross core values during an open house at Cathedral High School. Attendees not only have the opportunity to explore the 40-acre campus, but they also get a chance to meet and greet members of the extended community. Guests enjoy a showcase of student activities and are encouraged to grab a bite to eat in the dining hall or enjoy coffee, tea, or lemonade at the student-operated Johnny Mac’s Coffeehouse.
“Open house is an opportunity to get a quick snapshot of what Cathedral offers, so families should come prepared with lots of questions,” says Grace Trahan-Rodecap, director of marketing for Cathedral. “Educators can answer questions
about classroom expectations, current families can speak to their experience, counselors can speak to course selection and the college application process, and campus ministry can speak to how we celebrate our faith.”
Prospective students and families have many options for visiting Cathedral High School prior to the first day of class. Once they start the application process, students can sign up for a shadow day or an individual tour. The Cathedral admissions team also welcomes parents to an information session with administrators that includes a campus tour.
“If you like being challenged in the classroom, enjoy community service projects, want to grow in your faith, and enjoy extracurricular activities, Cathedral may be right for you,” Trahan-Rodecap explains.
MULTIPLE CHOICES
The Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township offers both fall and spring open houses at each of the system’s middle schools, as well as annual high school open houses at both Lawrence Central and Lawrence North. Dana Altemeyer, director of communications for the district, says open house is usually the first opportunity families have to learn about class offerings, support services, career and technical educational programs, and dual credit courses that give students a leg up at the post-secondary level.
“With students transferring in with some high school credits, as well as those visiting from feeder, charter, and private schools, we know that families are shopping for their next educational experience. They may be attending four open houses looking
PHOTOS COURTESY CATHEDRAL HIGH SCHOOL, LAWRENCE TOWNSHIP SCHOOLS
Lawrence North football players put on their game faces.
Cathedral High School offers a variety of hands-on classroom experiences (below) and enriching extracurricular activities (right).
to make a connection,” Altemeyer says.
In addition to student-led open houses, prospective enrollees can also schedule a shadow day to see the school in action and familiarize themselves with the building. Parents are also encouraged to ask questions to find out what student support is available.
“In addition to asking about the types of academic offerings that are available based on their child’s likely career path, parents should also find out the best way to help their students get involved. Who are the key adults that will help them transition and thrive in their new environment?” Altemeyer says. She offers the following advice to parents when making the final decision: “Above all, trust your gut instinct.”
ENRICHING EXPERIENCES
At St. Richard’s Episcopal School, the fall open house takes place during the day so prospective parents can see the school in real time. It opens with a light breakfast with current parents, followed by an overview presentation given by the head of school, a tour, and a Q&A session with a student panel.
Kim Napier, director of admissions and enrollment for St. Richard’s, says sometimes parents
don’t know what they want from a school until they start their search. While it’s important to ask about a school’s curriculum and extracurricular offerings, it’s also critical to delve deeper to discover whether the site will offer your student a well-rounded experience. She suggests that parents ask about the school’s policies on screen time, phone use, outdoor activities, and the availability of special classes such as music and physical education, which may not be available at other schools.
“There are all kinds of enrichment classes that are offered during our aftercare program, including fencing club, karate club, chess club, and cooking club,” Napier says. “We have trips to Washington, D.C., and we have an actual back-toback exchange program with a school in France, which is highly unique at the grade school level.”
GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES
The Orchard School hosts a series of open houses throughout the year, developed to offer a unique experience for children and families. Some of these events are designed just for parents and guardians, while others are planned with a familyfriendly focus.
Orchard offers a variety of amenities, programs, and services built to support and enrich the student
experience. The 43-acre wooded campus features a 27-element ropes/challenge course in a natural setting for outdoor learning and exploration. Elementary students gather hundreds of gallons of sap each year and transform it into maple syrup for the annual pancake breakfast organized by the Alumni Heritage Association. Middle school students explore their passion during Winterm, a two-week intensive session in the spring that allows them to dive into topics such as producing a musical, healthy cooking, business leadership, and creative writing. Additionally, the school’s nocut sports policy ensures that every student can participate and grow through athletics.
James Layne, director of marketing and communications for Orchard, says parents exploring educational environments should ask about a school’s mission, as well as its approach to teaching. What is the school’s philosophy on homework? Do students look happy and engaged? How do parents feel when they interact with members of the community, and can they see their child being successful in this environment?
“If a learning environment that nurtures personal curiosity and personal growth for over a century aligns with your family’s values, Orchard may be the ideal place for your child to thrive,” Layne says.
PHOTOS COURTESY THE ORCHARD SCHOOL, ST. RICHARD’S EPISCOPAL SCHOOL
St. Richard’s Episcopal School students explore the sciences.
The Orchard School exposes children to indoor and outdoor learning environments, as well as spirited convocations (clockwise from above).
Visit our High School Open Houses!
6:00-8:00 PM Lawrence Central NOV 13
6:00-8:00 PM Lawrence North NOV 12
6:00-7:30 PM McKenzie Center NOV 19
Tour our newly renovated High Schools and the McKenzie Center for Innovation & Technology.
• AP/IB Courses • National Technical Certifications • 28 Varsity Sports • • Dual Credit Opportunities • Honors Courses • Bilingual Education • • Nationally Recognized Performing Arts • Indiana College Core Credits • Learn more at LTschools.org
S C H O O L SCHOOL OPEN HOUSE GUIDE LIST
CATHEDRAL HIGH SCHOOL
5225 E. 56th St., 317-542-1481, gocathedral.com
Cathedral Open House: October 3, 5:30–8 p.m., mass at 5 p.m.
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF INDIANA
4330 N. Michigan Rd., 317-923-1951, isind.org
Upper School Open Shadow Days: October 1 and November 14, 8:15 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
Lower School Info Sessions: October 10 and January 9, 2025 (virtual), 12–1:30 p.m.; November 7 (in person), 9–10:30 a.m.
Upper School Info Sessions (virtual): October 17, November 21, and January 16, 2025, 12–1:30 p.m.
MSD OF LAWRENCE TOWNSHIP
6501 Sunnyside Rd., 317-423-8200, ltschools.org
Lawrence North Open House: November 12, 6–8 p.m.
Lawrence Central Open House: November 13, 6–8 p.m.
High School Open House at McKenzie Center for Innovation & Technology: November 19, 6–7:30 p.m.
THE ORCHARD SCHOOL
615 W. 64th St., 317-251-9253, orchard.org
An Evening at The Orchard School: October 24, 6:30–8:30 p.m.
These days, it takes a village to manage your financial world. Whether it is managing your assets with a wealth manager, navigating the ever-changing tax landscape, sorting out your estate and succession planning or picking the right life insurance, finding the right team can be a daunting task. In fact, many consumers have a hard time figuring out where to even begin.
Sometimes, a few simple questions can put you off on the right path. Asking a professional what makes working with them a unique experience can help you understand how they work and if their style meshes with your own.
This is a great place to start! Five Star Professional uses its own proprietary research methodology to name outstanding professionals, then works with publications such as Indianapolis Monthly to spread the word about award winners. Each award candidate undergoes a thorough research process (detailed here) before being considered for the final list of award winners. For the complete list of winners, go to www.fivestarprofessional.com.
RESEARCH DISCLOSURES
In order to consider a broad population of high-quality wealth managers and investment professionals, award candidates are identified by one of three sources: firm nomination, peer nomination or prequalification based on industry standing. Self-nominations are not accepted. Indianapolisarea award candidates were identified using internal and external research data. Candidates do not pay a fee to be considered or placed on the final lists of Five Star Wealth Managers or Five Star Investment Professionals.
• The Five Star award is not indicative of a professional’s future performance.
• Wealth managers may or may not use discretion in their practice and therefore may not manage their clients’ assets.
• The inclusion of a professional on the Five Star Wealth Manager list or the Five Star Investment Professional list should not be construed as an endorsement of the professional by Five Star Professional or Indianapolis Monthly
• Working with a Five Star Wealth Manager, Five Star Investment Professional or any professional is no guarantee as to future investment success, nor is there any guarantee that the selected professionals will be awarded this accomplishment by Five Star Professional in the future.
• Five Star Professional is not an advisory firm and the content of this article should not be considered financial advice. For more information on the Five Star Wealth Manager or Five Star Investment Professional award programs, research and selection criteria, go to fivestarprofessional.com/research.
Wealth Managers
Scott D. Carmony Carmony Asset & Wealth Advisors Page 4
Alexandra Daniels Durham Ausdal Financial Partners
Tim Dukeman
Teeple Snyder Newsome Wealth Management
Thomas Foster Morgan Stanley Page 4
Daniel J. Gandolph LPL Financial
J. David George George Wealth Management Group
Sarah Grecco CAPTRUST Page 2
David Charles Hobbs Hobbs Wealth Management
Justin Kassanits CAPTRUST Page 2
Todd Edward Larson Embassy Wealth Advisors
Mark A. McDonald Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC
Mark J. Moss Moss Financial Services
Mark Olsen
Teeple Snyder Newsome Wealth Management
Shellee Pietras Promise Advisory Group Page 3
Matt Snyder Teeple Snyder Newsome Wealth Management
Angela R. Sodrel LPL Financial
Kevin Sweet CAPTRUST Page 2
Matt Teeple Teeple Snyder Newsome Wealth Management
FIVE STAR WEALTH MANAGER DETERMINATION OF AWARD WINNERS CRITERIA
Award candidates who satisfied 10 objective eligibility and evaluation criteria were named 2024 Five Star Wealth Managers. Eligibility Criteria – Required: 1. Credentialed as a registered investment adviser or a registered investment adviser representative. 2. Actively employed as a credentialed professional in the financial services industry for a minimum of five years. 3. Favorable regulatory and complaint history review. 4. Fulfilled their firm review based on internal firm standards. 5. Accepting new clients. Evaluation Criteria – Considered: 6. One-year client retention rate. 7. Five-year client retention rate. 8. Non-institutional discretionary and/or non-discretionary client assets administered. 9. Number of client households served. 10. Education and professional designations. 1,650 award candidates in the Indianapolis area were considered for the Five Star Wealth Manager award. 143 (approximately 9% of the award candidates) were named 2024 Five Star Wealth Managers.
FIVE STAR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL DETERMINATION OF AWARD WINNERS CRITERIA
The investment professional award goes to estate planning attorneys, insurance agents and select others in the financial industry. Eligibility Criteria – Required: 1. Credentialed with appropriate state or industry licensures. 2. Actively employed as a credentialed professional in the financial services industry for a minimum of five years. 3. Favorable regulatory and complaint history review. 4. Accepting new clients. Evaluation Criteria – Considered: 5. One-year client retention rate. 6. Five-year client retention rate. 7. Number of client households served. 8. Recent personal production and performance (industry specific criteria). 9. Education and professional designations/industry and board certifications. 10. Pro Bono and community service work. This year, we honored 1 Indianapolis-area investment professional with the Five Star Investment Professional award.
Ryan Thomas CAPTRUST Page 2
Brian Upchurch CAPTRUST Page 2
David G. Yearwood Charter Advisory Corporation Page 3
Jeff Yu CAPTRUST Page 2
Investments
Doug Atkins Creative Financial Designs
Chad Bailey Intrepid Financial Planning Group
John Francis Cech Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC
Chris Douglas C.H. Douglas & Gray Wealth Management
Bob Dunlap Dunlap Gill Wealth Management Group Page 3
Sheri Kendall CAPTRUST Page 2
James J. Otley Otley Investment Fiduciary Solutions
Jeff Pittsley Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, LLC
Matthew Reynolds Embassy Wealth Advisors
Jeff Roach Plansmart Wealth Management Page 4
This award was issued on 09/01/2024 by Five Star Professional (FSP) for the time period 11/14/2023 through 05/31/2024. Fee paid for use of marketing materials. Self-completed managers were considered for the award; 143 (9% of candidates) were named 2024 Five Star Wealth Managers. The following prior year statistics use this format: YEAR: # 2021: 1,716, 128, 7%, 9/1/21, 12/7/20 - 7/2/21; 2020: 1,786, 143, 8%, 9/1/20, 12/2/19 - 6/12/20; 2019: 1,659, 153, 9%, 9/1/19, 11/19/18 - 6/28/19; 2018: 1,588, 149, 9%, - 7/21/15; 2014: 2,009, 360, 18%, 9/1/14, 1/15/14 - 7/21/14; 2013: 1,624, 413, 25%, 9/1/13, 1/15/13 - 7/21/13; 2012: 1,375, 387, 28%, 9/1/12, 1/15/12 - 7/21/12. Wealth managers do not pay a fee to be considered or placed on the final list of Five Star Wealth Managers. The award is based on 10 objective criteria. Eligibility criteria – required: 1. Credentialed as a registered investment adviser (RIA) or a registered Been subject to a regulatory action that resulted in a license being suspended or revoked, or payment of a fine; B. Had more than a total of three settled or pending complaints filed against them and/or a total of five settled, pending, dismissed or denied complaint process; feedback may not be representative of any one client’s experience; C. Individually contributed to a financial
WEALTH MANAGERS
CAPTRUST
help individual investors, business
and
We know our clients expect financial advice with their best interests in mind, and our commitment to serving our clients means we’re extensively vetted with a reputation for objectivity that precedes us.
Our mission is to enrich the lives of our clients, colleagues and communities through sound financial advice, integrity and a commitment to service beyond expectation.
To learn more, please visit www.captrust.com.
questionnaire was used for rating. This rating is not related to the quality of the investment advice and based solely on the disclosed criteria. 1,650 Indianapolis-area wealth Considered, # Winners, % of candidates, Issued Date, Research Period. 2023: 1,594, 132, 8%, 9/1/23, 11/14/22 - 5/31/23; 2022: 1,673, 131, 8%, 9/1/22, 12/27/21 - 6/24/22; 9/1/18, 12/28/17 - 7/23/18; 2017: 1,164, 182, 16%, 9/1/17, 12/29/16 - 7/13/17; 2016: 1,083, 332, 31%, 8/1/16, 1/15/16 - 7/21/16; 2015: 1,743, 348, 20%, 9/1/15, 1/15/15
F.
managers will be awarded this accomplishment by FSP in the future. Visit www.fivestarprofessional.com. This year, we honored 1 Indianapolis-area investment professional with the Five
Left to right: Back row: Eleven-year winner Ryan Thomas, CFP®, CPA; Thirteen-year winner Jeff Yu, CFP®, CPA; Thirteen-year winn er Brian Upchurch, CFP®, CPA, J.D., CIMA®; Six-year winner Justin Kassanits, CFP®, CPA; Front row: 2024 winner Sarah Grecco, CFP®; Twelve-year winner Kevin Sweet, CFP®; Ten-year winner Sheri Kendall, CFP®, CPA
Shellee Pietras
CFP®, Financial Advisor
Shellee has been helping clients since 2004. She has a broad base of training in life insurance, retirement planning and investments. She graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Management and Organizations. Shellee has also earned the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) designation. Earning these marks required extensive coursework in a broad range of financial subjects, rigorous examinations, significant work experience and adherence to a strict code of ethics.
Promise Advisory Group has built its practice with pride in loyal clients and strong customer service. Shellee’s business continues to grow through the recommendations of clients’ friends, family members and colleagues. To meet with Shellee and learn more about how she can help you work toward a more confident financial future, please contact Promise Advisory Group to set up a consultation.
• Creating your financial road map and providing guidance through life’s transitions
• Celebrating 38 years of serving clients at Charter Advisory Corporation Helping People Make Smart Choices About Their Money
Our priority is helping you pursue your dreams for the reasons that are important to you. By understanding your current financial situation, we can make informed decisions to work toward your future goals. With our experienced guidance, we will walk alongside you on your journey to financial success.
and a
This award was issued on 09/01/2024 by Five Star Professional (FSP) for the time period 11/14/2023 through 05/31/2024. Fee paid for use of marketing materials. Self-completed managers were considered for the award; 143 (9% of candidates) were named 2024 Five Star Wealth Managers. The following prior year statistics use this format: YEAR: # 2021: 1,716, 128, 7%, 9/1/21, 12/7/20 - 7/2/21; 2020: 1,786, 143, 8%, 9/1/20, 12/2/19 - 6/12/20; 2019: 1,659, 153, 9%, 9/1/19, 11/19/18 - 6/28/19; 2018: 1,588, 149, 9%, - 7/21/15; 2014: 2,009, 360, 18%, 9/1/14, 1/15/14 - 7/21/14; 2013: 1,624, 413, 25%, 9/1/13, 1/15/13 - 7/21/13; 2012: 1,375, 387, 28%, 9/1/12, 1/15/12 - 7/21/12. Wealth managers do not pay a fee to be considered or placed on the final list of Five Star Wealth Managers. The award is based on 10 objective criteria. Eligibility criteria – required: 1. Credentialed as a registered investment adviser (RIA) or a
feedback may not be representative of any one client’s experience; C. Individually contributed to a financial settlement of a customer complaint; D. Filed for personal bankruptcy within the past 11
E. Been terminated from a rate; 8. Non-institutional discretionary and/or non-discretionary
Left to right: Brandon Knop, Financial Advisor; Six-year winner Shellee Pietras, CFP®, Financial Advisor; Morgan Pietras, Financial Advisor; Olivia Pierce
WEALTH MANAGERS
800 E 96 th Street, Suite 400 Indianapolis, IN 46240 Office: 317-818-7342
thomas.foster@morganstanley.com
I have experience in working with individuals and business owners to create personalized financial and retirement plans that reflect your values and legacy. With a diverse financial background, I offer tailored investment strategies, retirement and estate planning strategies to help meet your unique goals. My focus is on building strong relationships based on trust and integrity to help ensure the best possible outcomes for my clients. Let’s collaborate to bring your financial vision to life and preserve your legacy.
and having
questionnaire was used for rating. This rating is not related to the quality of the investment advice and based solely on the disclosed criteria. 1,650 Indianapolis-area wealth Considered, # Winners, % of candidates, Issued Date, Research Period. 2023: 1,594, 132, 8%, 9/1/23, 11/14/22 - 5/31/23; 2022: 1,673, 131, 8%, 9/1/22, 12/27/21 - 6/24/22; 9/1/18, 12/28/17 - 7/23/18; 2017: 1,164, 182, 16%, 9/1/17, 12/29/16 - 7/13/17; 2016: 1,083, 332, 31%, 8/1/16, 1/15/16 - 7/21/16; 2015: 1,743, 348, 20%, 9/1/15, 1/15/15
with any regulatory authority or FSP’s consumer complaint process. Unfavorable feedback may have been discovered through a check of complaints registered with a regulatory authority or complaints registered through FSP’s consumer financial services firm within the past 11 years; F. Been convicted of a felony); 4. Fulfilled their firm review based on internal standards; 5. Accepting new clients. Evaluation criteria – considered: 6. One-year client retention rate; 7. Five-year client retention not indicative of the wealth manager’s future performance. Wealth managers may or may not use discretion in their practice and therefore may not manage their clients’ assets. The inclusion of a wealth manager on the Five Star Wealth Manager list should managers will be awarded this accomplishment by FSP in the future. Visit www.fivestarprofessional.com. This year, we honored 1 Indianapolis-area investment professional with the Five
Wealth Managers
Martin Joseph Armbruster · Savant Wealth Management
Brian Paul Austin · Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC
Christopher Ronald Baker · Oaktree Financial Advisors
Kristi K. Baker · HUB International/CSI Advisory Services
Benjamen Michael Banks · Forum Private Client Group
Stephen Joseph Barrett · StrategIQ Financial Group
Evan Dennis Bedel · Bedel Financial Consulting
Robert William Best · Morgan Stanley
Florence E. Brown · Westpoint Financial Group
Lisa Lynn Brown · Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC
Paul Elliott Bullock · Wellington Investment Advisors
Michael Robert Burley · Meridian Investment Advisors
Vince James Catania · Retirement Counseling Services
Randall Dean Clark · Corient Private Wealth
Paul Edwin Coan · Raton Wealth
Christopher Allen Cook · Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC
Brian Forrest Cooke · Cooke Financial Group
Chris Christopher Cooke · Cooke Financial Group
Joe Copeland · Morgan Stanley
Brad Raymond Cougill · Deerfield Financial Advisors
David Neal Crossman · Bedel Financial Consulting
Paul E. Daniels · Morgan Stanley
Christopher Michael Day · Edward Jones
Joshua Charles DeArmitt · Dearmitt Financial Group LLC
Nicole Marie Yankauskas · Avalon Wealth Advisory Investment Professional
Susan Dawson · Gamble Richardson, CPA
This award was issued on 09/01/2024 by Five Star Professional (FSP) for the time period 11/14/2023 through 05/31/2024. Fee paid for use of marketing materials. Self-completed questionnaire was used for rating. This rating is not related to the quality of the investment advice and based solely on the disclosed criteria. 1,650 Indianapolis-area wealth managers were considered for the award; 143 (9% of candidates) were named 2024 Five Star Wealth Managers. Wealth managers do not pay a fee to be considered or placed on the final list of Five Star Wealth Managers. The award is based on 10 objective criteria. Eligibility criteria – required: 1. Credentialed as a registered investment adviser (RIA) or a registered investment adviser representative; 2. Actively licensed as a RIA or as a principal of a registered investment adviser firm for a minimum of 5 years; 3. Favorable regulatory and complaint history review (As defined by FSP, the wealth manager has not; A. Been subject to a regulatory action that resulted in a license being suspended or revoked, or payment of a fine; B. Had more than a total of three settled or pending complaints filed against them and/or a total of five settled, pending, dismissed or denied complaints with any regulatory authority or FSP’s consumer complaint process. Unfavorable feedback may have been discovered through a check of complaints registered with a regulatory authority or complaints registered through FSP’s consumer complaint process; feedback may not be representative of any one client’s experience; C. Individually contributed to a financial settlement of a customer complaint; D. Filed for personal bankruptcy within the past 11 years; E. Been terminated from a financial services firm within the past 11 years; F. Been convicted of a felony); 4. Fulfilled their firm review based on internal standards; 5. Accepting new clients. Evaluation criteria – considered: 6. One-year client retention rate; 7. Five-year client retention rate; 8. Non-institutional discretionary and/or non-discretionary client assets administered; 9. Number of client households served; 10. Education and professional designations. FSP does not evaluate quality of services provided to clients. The award is not indicative of the wealth manager’s future performance. Wealth managers may or may not use discretion in their practice and therefore may not
Collette Travel and Indianapolis Monthly invite you to
July 16–25, 2025
All About This Bucket-List Adventure
Join Indianapolis Monthly lifestyle editor Christina Vercelletto on a journey through spectacular mountain scenery and picturesque cities as you discover three Alpine countries together. You’ll spend four nights each in the UNESCO World Heritage city of Bern, Switzerland, and the charming mountain city of Innsbruck, Austria. Your classic Swiss experiences will include meeting a local alphorn maker and yodelers and enjoying a fondue luncheon. You’ll see for yourselves why Lucerne is known worldwide as the “Swiss Paradise on the Lake.” Next up will be Salzburg, where you’ll visit Mozart’s birthplace and the enchanting Mirabell Gardens, which so many people dream of visiting aftering seeing them in The Sound of Music hills are alive on this captivating journey across Switzerland, Austria, and Bavaria.
MUST-DO EXPLORATIONS:
·Spend a day wandering Salzburg’s charming Old Town while learning about its intriguing past.
·Take a lively walking tour of Lucerne’s Altstadt.
·Get an inside look at Bavaria’s Linderhof Palace and its dreamy gardens.
CULTURAL CONNECTIONS:
·Witness the creation of Alpine music during alphorn and yodeling demonstrations.
·Experience a Tyrolean folklore show in Innsbruck.
CULINARY HIGHLIGHTS:
·Dine on authentic Austrian meal at the 1,200-year-old—yes, really!—St. Peter’s Restaurant.
·Savor a fondue luncheon in an idyllic Alpine town where the cheese simply doesn’t get any better.
·Indulge in a gala dinner relishing the stuff of foodie dreams: Tyrolean cuisine.
This 10-day tour includes airfare and 13 meals. An optional three-night Vienna post-tour extension is available.
Visit gateway.gocollette.com/link/1290198 to request more information or sign up for the tour. Or call the reservation line at 1-800-852-5655 and reference the group booking code 1290198. Reservations must be made by January 17, 2025, and availability is on a first-come, first-served basis.
ITINERARY
DAY 1: OVERNIGHT FLIGHT
Get ready to discover spectacular Switzerland, Austria, and Bavaria on a tour featuring fournight stays in two cities.
DAY 2: BERN, SWITZERLAND
Your journey begins in Bern, the capital of Switzerland. This UNESCO World Heritage site rests in the Swiss countryside. The cobbled Old Town section is so well-preserved that residents who lived here 500 years ago would still find it familiar today. In the evening, join your fellow travelers for a welcome dinner featuring local cuisine at Hotel Bern.
DAY 3: BERN
Explore the delightful city on a panoramic sightseeing tour, led by a local guide, featuring the Bundeshaus (the Swiss Parliament), the famous Bear Pit, the Rose Gardens, and the gothic cathedral that dominates Old Town’s skyline. The remainder of the day allows time to explore independently. Perhaps you’ll take a ride in one of the red carriages of the Gurtenbahn funicular railway, climbing Gurten Mountain to an altitude of 2,574 feet (858 meters) for impressive views of Bern, the surrounding towns, and mountains.
DAY 4: BERN > HABKERN > BERN
After breakfast, head to Habkern, a small mountain village outside of Interlaken. Partake in a tour with a local workshop owner, learn how the alphorn—or alpine horn—is made, and
even delight your musical side by playing one. Afterward, take a peek into the world of yodeling through a professional demonstration. Finish your afternoon with a fondue lunch at a local restaurant before heading back to Bern, with the rest of your day to spend at your leisure.
DAY 5: BERN > LUCERNE > BERN
Set out for Lucerne, the “Swiss Paradise on the Lake.” Meander on a gently paced Altstadt (Old Town) walking tour, exploring the hidden treasures of this 800-year-old city, such as the covered Chapel Bridge (built in 1333); the famous Water Tower, which has served as a prison, watchtower, and treasury; the Renaissancestyle Town Hall; the baroque Jesuit Church; and the Lion Monument, carved from natural rock to commemorate the heroic Swiss Guard. In the evening, dine at one of Bern’s great restaurants.
DAY 6: BERN > LIECHTENSTEIN > INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA
En route to Innsbruck, Austria, you’ll make your way through Liechtenstein, the smallest German-speaking country in the world and the only country to lie entirely within the Alps. Upon arrival in Innsbruck, you have your choice of activities. Select one of two easygoing walking tours: 1) Join a local guide as you discover the city’s history, culture, and popular attractions, including Maria-Theresien-Strasse, the Hofburg, and the “Golden Roof,” or 2) embark on a tour focusing on Innsbruck’s unique architectural structures, including its famous ski jump.
Learn more about this trip and book your tour at gateway.gocollette.com/link/1290198
DAY 7: INNSBRUCK > SALZBURG > INNSBRUCK
Travel through the scenic Austrian countryside to Salzburg. Enjoy a walking tour featuring Mirabell Gardens (seen in The Sound of Music), the quaint Getreidegasse (birthplace of Mozart), and many other highlights of this beautiful city. Complete your afternoon with a delightful lunch at 1,200-year-old St. Peter’s Restaurant, the oldest in Austria and still owned by the monks.
DAY 8: INNSBRUCK
Indulge in a free day in beautiful Innsbruck. You may want to stroll through Old Town and shop at many of the city’s outstanding stores, or you can just relax and breathe in the mountain air while enjoying a beverage in one of the many cafes that dot this charming city. Later, experience the rich musical tradition of mountainous Austria during a Tyrolean folklore show hosted by a well-known local family.
DAY 9: INNSBRUCK > BAVARIA, GERMANY > INNSBRUCK
Tour Linderhof Palace, the only palace out of three that King Ludwig II lived to see completed. Walk the extraordinary halls that were modeled after Versailles with an expert guide and bask in the luxury of past royals. Afterward, make your way to the Ettal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery founded in 1330 by Louis IV. Here, you’ll explore the Basilica, followed by a brewery tour complete with tastings. Next, return to Innsbruck. In the evening, you are treated to a farewell dinner at a traditional Tyrolean restaurant.
DAY 10: INNSBRUCK
Your tour comes to an end in Innsbruck.
Call the reservation line at 1-800-852-5655 and reference group booking code 1290198.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 53
strategic partnerships manager Michael Slonim, Absorb. relies on the help of a slew of collaborators from around Indy and the U.S. “We’re counting on these people to bring in their own creative sensibilities, which we have massive respect for. It makes it easy to let go of control on something that you know they’re only going to elevate,” Thomas says, noting that all his old bandmates have played on Absorb. tracks.
Sparkman points out that Indy is special because people are far more supportive than in other places. “We’ve worked in New York. We’ve worked in LA. We’ve worked in Nashville. The thing about Indy [is that] the doors, when you knock, they get answered much more welcoming than others.”
Indy residents will notice evidence of the local connections in scenes off the streets of the city. Look for landmarks on a driver-for-hire’s midnight journey in the video for Kishi Bashi’s dreamy “Can’t Let Go, Juno,” filmed in and around downtown. The driver’s weariness as he shuttles around fares who party, argue, and make out in his backseat is relatable to anyone who’s ever worked a weekend late shift, but it melts away in an instant as he observes a moment of purity between a mother and daughter. And folks in Fountain Square may recognize the streets Jon McLaughlin playfully soft-shoes down in one continuous take that makes up the bulk of the video for the achingly sweet, piano-driven “Why It Hurts.”
As for the label, which emerged out of the creative agency in 2020, Thomas and Sparkman emphasize that their focus is on developing artists whose desire is to build their careers thoughtfully and to explore and hone their craft before fully stepping out professionally. “They actually get to know us. It’s not only working together as a business, but it’s also a relationship,” says Absorb. artist Frank, who lounges on a couch in the studio next to another mononymous local
artist, Bayem. Sparkman and Thomas have worked with both since 2020 and have supported them through transformations both personal and professional.
Frank is bubblier and more approachable than the impression given by her online persona, which is a little bit witchy, a little bit grunge, a little bit Debbie Harry updated with a full sleeve. Her collection of songs boasts various styles, but her most recent ones, the banger “Sick of Yourself” and the dark and angsty “Stupider,” have a raw, ’90s vibe hearkening to Hole or Liz Phair’s most memorable hits. After testing genres and landing where she’s most comfortable, she’s preparing to record her next single, “Stuck in Reno,” as of this writing, with a flight to Nevada to film the video already booked.
Letting an artist dabble in different styles seems counterintuitive when record labels usually expect them to demonstrate they can make the big bucks within a certain timeframe or be sidelined, but it’s exactly what Absorb. encourages. “The artist development process is a lot of feeling around in the dark and just learning who people are as artists and as humans over time,” Thomas says. “You’re not looking for something that’s fully forged out of the gate. Nothing is. No one is.”
While all labels have A&R—artist and repertoire—departments responsible for “developing” talent and preparing them to make albums, Absorb. follows a much slower, artist-directed strategy that values personal passion above hasty profits. According to Thomas, this helps avoid the all-too-common identity crisis many young performers eventually undergo when their sound and aesthetic are determined by the label. “They inevitably reach this point where it’s like, I’m the most famous person in the world, and nobody actually knows me,” Thomas says. “That’s when they begin a self-discovery process that takes a lot of time and can be disastrous on a person’s mental health.”
Next to Frank, Bayem is somewhat reserved, but there’s an elegant alertness behind the calm. While February’s “Regrets” is a throwback to the golden age of neo soul, down to the drippy gold lighting and open-front button-down he dons in the video, his most recent song, “Avalanche,” like most of his work, combines elements of R&B, contemporary pop, and electronic music, often with a heavy dose of synthy ’80s Eurodisco or electropop. This at times unexpected
but always seamless integration of styles gives his songs powerful texture. The 2020 single “Pressure,” the perfect summer earworm with its irresistibly buoyant rhythm and video game tones, was featured in an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, while “Joyride” was in Hulu’s original film, Sex Appeal. Despite being more established in his sound, Bayem didn’t perform live until this past April, when he played two sold-out shows at Lo-Fi Lounge. This measured approach was part of Thomas and Sparkman’s plan. “There was this constant preaching of just taking it a step at a time,” Bayem says. “[That] kind of solidified in my mind that before anything happens, I need to make sure that internally I’m the person I need to be to fully maximize that opportunity or just be a good steward over it,”
Thomas shares that Absorb. didn’t want Bayem to play a show until he had a full set of songs that represented him “in a way that’s the most truthful.” The technique paid off, as others have taken note of Bayem’s mature, unique sound and confident stage presence: His next appearance is this month at The Peppermint Club in LA, which scouted him for Breaking Sound, their regular showcase of up-and-coming artists. The show will be followed by stops in Chicago and Nashville before he returns home to celebrate the release of his next EP by headlining the Hi-Fi on December 14.
As for what comes next, Bayem and Frank are constantly dropping new music. In fact, the two have paired to form a side group, Polychrome, leading to May’s “Sunday Morning.” The art for the track says it all: Frank in a gold sequined bodysuit. Bayem in a purple silk shirt, afro picked out into a shining sphere. It’s disco, baby—another super chill summer anthem, the kind of song you put on a feel-good mix.
Ultimately, Sparkman and Thomas want their artists to blow up so big they fill stadiums and “get the Palm Springs and Paris houses.” But if that happens, “it’ll happen because it’s in a way that’s true to them and true to us as a company,” Sparkman says.
In the meantime, he and Thomas continue building up their ecosystem of staff and collaborators, hoping Absorb. becomes a “de facto contributor to the health of the music scene in town.”
“I don’t want Absorb. to be a household name,” Thomas laughs. “I want our artists to be household names.”
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 57
“I think a lot of people think I’m just pulling this stuff off Wikipedia or something,” Long says. “It just couldn’t be further from the truth. A lot of the episodes of the programs I produce are literally years in the making. It’s just that mystery of, Where did this music come from? and wanting to better understand what existed before I came along. And the more I learn about this stuff, the more compelling the story is.”
Long is 49. He’s tall and lean and looks like a younger version of the late comedian Norm MacDonald. We’re sitting in a WFYI studio that temporarily houses his latest acquisition—a collection of tapes that belonged to a local soul songwriter named Tony Black. Black died in 2020, after which his son Evan decided to gift Long his father’s expansive archive, which contains the earliest known cuts of Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds’ original music; lost sessions from Lamp Records, Indianapolis’ version of Motown Records; and early recordings from WTLC-FM.
The collection includes music on microcassettes, floppy disks, flash drives, and multiple sizes of reel-to-reel, all delivered in trash bags. Eventually, Long will sort them and use them to tell another previously hidden story. “When Kyle started with us, I had no idea of the depth and passion of his knowledge,” says Roxanna Caldwell, WFYI’s director of radio. “It was a hidden gem, honestly—a buried treasure that we did not know we were about to unearth.”
Long began building his knowledge base in an Avon trailer park, where he lived with his mother and younger sister. He had few friends and even less interest in school. But he had a constant companion: music. He remembers reading about the iconic Bollywood singer Lata Mangeshkar, who held the world record for making the most recordings of any vocalist in history. That led him to an Indian grocery store, where he bought her cassettes. Soon, his interest
expanded to learning about the music of immigrants to Indiana. “Immigrants have been here for much longer than we realize, making contributions to the culture,” he says. “So I would go to these stores and, for hours, pore through the tapes, look at the covers. And I discovered this whole scene of Bollywood funk and psychedelic music that was in vogue in the ’70s.”
He quit school at 16—“I couldn’t figure it out. I was not good at it.”—and instead spent his time at the Indianapolis Public Library. “I remember, you could check out up to 80 records at one point, and I would have the maximum number of records, tapes, and books at any given moment that you could have.” He also worked a series of “terrible” jobs— clerking at a gas station, stocking shelves at a supermarket. He was 30 and working in a restaurant when both his mother and sister died within a couple months of each other. “It forced me to reinvent myself and rethink my life,” he says. “And things that I might have been scared to do or hesitant to do before, I just felt more of a courage to do them.”
DJing was one of those things. The idea of being the center of attention terrified him. But he did it, anyway. A gig playing at IUPUI for the International Student Association, where he played Indiana Bollywood and Brazilian music, as well as Fela Kuti, the Nigerian performer and political activist, went well. “It’s like I opened something up that had been bottled.” A second gig at Garfield Park Arts Center went equally well. “People were connecting to this music in this way that was very special.”
Long was working in the kitchen of a downtown cafe when the owner asked him to play down-tempo music between 5 and 9 p.m. Long suggested playing other kinds of music after 9, leading to a night of Brazilian forró—“like partners’ dance music with accordions”—which caught fire with the public. So did Indian music night. Soon, DJ Kyle Long had lines around the building. Word spread. He and visual artist Artur Silva developed a partnership called Cultural Cannibals that put on events around the city. The alternative paper Nuvo took interest and assigned a writer to profile Long. Then Nuvo invited Long to contribute stories.
In 2012, he started a weekly column. Subject matter included the musical heritage of Indiana Avenue and other regional song history, the contemporary
underground scene, and immigrant music culture, which involved a visit to a westside discount mall where vendors sold cassettes from Latin America. “I was going to the Somalian and Ethiopian grocery stores and writing about the music they were selling. So, I was just covering local music in a way that was different.” Later, he accompanied the articles with podcasts.
Ed Wenck, then-editor of Nuvo and a radio veteran, thought Long’s efforts deserved to be on the radio. “I was astonished at the depth of his knowledge with each and every person that he was speaking to,” Wenck says. “It was some of the most well-researched stuff I’d ever heard. And he had a very natural ability when it came to interviewing people and keeping the flow going of a natural conversation while sounding both authoritative, informative, and relaxed.” Wenck brought the idea to Caldwell at WFYI. In 2014, she put Long’s Cultural Manifesto on one of the station’s highdefinition signals, which ordinarily would have guaranteed that no one heard the show. But Long promoted himself well enough to get listeners. In 2015, he made his debut on the main signal, 90.1. Five years later, when A Prairie Home Companion stopped making new episodes, Caldwell saw room to grow Long’s audience. Echoes of Indiana Avenue is the result. Long teamed up with Herman “Butch” Slaughter, who had grown up in the Indiana Avenue area and performed with a soul group called Words of Wisdom. In 2023, their partnership earned them a regional Edward R. Murrow Award.
Today, Cultural Manifesto has an average of 8,600 listeners a week, and Echoes of Indiana Avenue has another 6,000. The podcasts of both shows are downloaded 5,500 and 2,000 times a month, respectively. And Long has become the curator and caretaker of Indianapolis music history. Musicians trust him to tell their stories. Musicians’ families trust him to remember their loved ones’ contributions.
That’s a heady position to be in for a guy like Long, who started with nothing. “It’s interesting the way Kyle connects with musicians,” Wenck says. “A lot of those folks he profiles are just doing what they love and barely making rent, much less food money. And I think there’s a shared experience there that, whether consciously or not, he kind of speaks to.”
Photo by TONY VALAINIS
9th Street Bistro’s pavlova, a dish of baked meringue, macerated strawberries, and local shiro plums (p. 106).
DOWNTOWN
INCLUDES Fletcher Place, Fountain Square, Mass Ave, Mile Square
Ali’i Poke
POKE Follow the IU and Purdue students to this delightfully fresh fast-food spot just off the now-separate schools’ Indianapolis campuses. The scooped-to-order poke bowls have a rice base (sticky or brown) over which customers layer their protein of choice and a rainbow of add-ons. Fresh mango, edamame, avocado, pickled ginger, seaweed salad, and unagi sauce are just a few of the available toppings. Go wild ladling them on, or get the Hawaiian Style with just rice and fish. 910 W. 10th St., 317-602-3632, aliipoke.com V $$
Ash & Elm Cider Co.
CIDERY Ash & Elm’s array of complex and quaffable ciders gets broader all the time, with funky cocktails demonstrating a flavor profile well beyond sweet apples in the vibrant tasting room at the former Ford Assembly Plant on Washington Street. The food pairs beautifully with the drinks, from the now legendary elote fritters made with Indiana corn and cilantro crema to the crispy fried Brussels sprouts flavored with, of course, cider vinaigrette. A thick-cut Cuban and an Italian hoagie with all the meats are great choices among sandwiches, though the pimento cheeseburger with pickled green tomato is hard to beat. But more uptown offerings, such as ricotta gnocchi with seasonal garnishes or a lunchtime bulgogi noodle bowl, showcase how cider brings out the flavors in world cuisines as deliciously as fine wines. Save room for cider doughnut holes lavished with caramel sauce. 1301 E. Washington St., 317-600-3164, ashandelmcider.com V $$$
Bakersfield Mass Ave
TACOS Done up with bourbon barrels and dangling Edison bulbs, this popular Mass Ave spot does a nice job with all the latenight standards: booze, raucous music,
and tacos topped with the likes of achiotebraised pork, pickled red onions, and habanero salsa. 334 Massachusetts Ave., 317-635-6962, bakersfieldtacos.com V $$
Bluebeard
CONTEMPORARY When it opened in 2012, Tom and Ed Battista’s charming little restaurant led the charge in getting Indy’s dining scene on the national radar. A perennial nominee for the James Beard Awards with mentions in the The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, and Bon Appétit, Bluebeard—which takes its name from one of native son Kurt Vonnegut’s novels—still delivers on the hype. The menu has settled into a comfortable groove, starting with shareable small plates such as house-frizzled chips and French onion dip, gourmet bar nuts, and grilled bread from sibling bakery Amelia’s served with a flight of slatherings. Midsized dishes diners have grown to love: chopped salad; fat scallops over celery root puree, topped with pickled apples and jalapeño; and spaghetti tossed with creme fraiche, parmesan, and gremolata. A platespanning Faroe Island salmon, beef-and-pork Bolognese, and other larger entrees make for a nice, lingering dinner accompanied by cocktails in a delightfully shabby dining room decorated with shelves of books and Vonnegut-era typewriters 653 Virginia Ave., 317-686-1580, bluebeardindy.com V $$$
Bodhi Craft Bar + Thai Bistro
THAI This Mass Ave restaurant serves a small, focused menu of Thai dishes like massaman curry with braised beef and Bodhi’s own version of pad thai. Cocktails get a lot of attention on a drinks list designed by beverage director Dalton Lineback. 922 Massachusetts Ave., 317-941-6595, bodhi-indy.com V $$$
The Bosphorus Istanbul Cafe
TURKISH This cozy, colorful cafe in the Holy Rosary neighborhood celebrates the cuisine of the Middle East, Greece, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Silky, tahini-rich hummus is a must, alongside exemplary falafel, creamy eggplant salsa, and borek—buttery phyllo
stuffed with feta and parsley. 935 S. East St., 317-974-1770, thebosphoruscafe.com V $$$$
Cafe Patachou
CAFE The so-called “student union for adults” continues to draw in the morning crowds and has inspired citywide offshoots. The wait for a weekend table can be brutal (but is worth it), as the cinnamon toast remains as thick as a brick; the produce is still locally sourced; the massive omelets continue to have cheeky names; and the broken-yolk sandwiches are a perennial lunch favorite. 1060 N. Capitol Ave., 317-222-3538, cafepatachou.com V $$
Commission Row
BR 2024
FINE DINING
This glossy spot from Indy’s near-ubiquitous Cunningham Restaurant Group is just steps from Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and it reflects its neighbor’s baller vibes with a three-figure seafood tower, caviar service, and an eight-steak menu (which offers add-ons such as foie gras and lobster tail). Sure, you can play small with its excellent burger or sizable salads, but if you do, you’ll be missing the point. Appropriately, its wine list leads with bubbles by the glass or bottle, while its cocktail list boasts eight takes on a classic martini. 110 S. Delaware St., 317-550-2500, commissionrow.com $$$$
A Cup of Chai
TEAHOUSE Punjab native Pravy Nijjar’s cozy, funky teahouse, which opened in July of 2023 on a secluded section of Shelby Street in Fountain Square, offers a true taste of Indianstyle chai with several different spice profiles. For the genuine article, go for the masala chai, a dairy-forward drink that features ginger, cardamom, fennel, and cloves, equally good hot or iced. Pair that with one of Nijjar’s street food–inspired snacks, such as golden, aromatic samosas or tasty kati rolls (tender paratha stuffed with spiced chicken, paneer, or potatoes). Coffee drinkers can get an espresso or cappuccino, and those avoiding caffeine can go for a spice-infused golden latte, mango lassi, or minty pineapple lemonade. 1028 Shelby St., 317-998-4463, acupofchai.us $
bearing this
$10–$20
Under $10
Restaurants included in this guide are selected at the discretion of the Indianapolis Monthly editorial staff based on food quality, innovation, atmosphere, service, value, and consistency. IM does not accept advertising or other compensation in exchange for dining coverage. Price symbols indicate the average cost of a meal per person (without tax, tip, or alcohol). Due to limited space, this list does not cover every evaluated restaurant. For a more comprehensive guide to Indianapolis dining, visit IndianapolisMonthly.com/Dining. Feedback? Please
The Hulman
CONTEMPORARY With its sleek midcentury modern decor, the street-level restaurant inside downtown’s Hotel Indy pays tribute to the VIP Indianapolis Motor Speedway experience. The pared-down seasonal menu supplies some fittingly elegant dishes, like short rib spaccatelli with horseradish sugo and a fancy Alaskan king crab bisque presentation. High-concept desserts (such as a candied-almond churro curled around banana gelato) are a must, as are signature craft cocktails. 141 E. Washington St., 317-735-2586, thehulmanindy.com V $$$
Julieta Taco Shop
MEXICAN Gabriel Sañudo and Esteban Rosas’ taco shop in the Stutz Building shows the pair’s skill and fine dining experience in little details such as the marinades for meats, tortillas handcrafted from heirloom corn varieties, and surprisingly flavorful vegetarian options. Start with a signature taco al pastor, the meat shaved directly from a rotating spit, and pair that with one of the other tender grilled or braised meats, such as the earthy brisket-like suadero. 1060 N. Capitol Ave. $$
Love Handle
SANDWICHES Daily lunch and brunch features such as schnitzel and waffles and a pulledchicken Hot Brown are the main draw at Chris and Ally Benedyk’s cheeky sandwich shop. The chalkboard menu (which is also updated online) also offers side options in the form of braised greens and potato salad with roasted tomatoes. Fridays often see a fish special, and weekends are a chef’s playground of eggy experiments, satisfying hashes, and sweet sides. 877 Massachusetts Ave., 317-384-1102 $$
Maialina Italian Kitchen + Bar
ITALIAN Straw-wrapped chianti bottles, wooden cross-back chairs, and family photos give a throwback trattoria feel to this addition to the city’s Italian scene. Meatballs from a family recipe with a solid house marinara are always a good choice. Pastas range from a straightforward toss of rigatoni with sausage and broccoli rabe to a rich, three-meat Bolognese lavished atop plump gnocchi. 1103 Prospect St., 317-982-7676, maialinaindy.com V $$$$
Mesh
CONTEMPORARY This Mass Ave restaurant has settled into veteran status as one of the most consistently solid dinner spots downtown. The seasonal menu changes constantly, but past hits have included fork-tender lamb chops, house-made garganelli with sherry cream and wild mushrooms, and duck confit with black rice. The steak frites and any plate that includes Ora King salmon are always great choices. 725 Massachusetts Ave., 317-955-9600, meshrestaurants.com V $$$
Milktooth
BRUNCH This airy diner-style cafe has a playfully gritty vibe and a menu that changes with both the seasons and the whims of its chef. The early morning counter service featuring pastries and coffee gives way to a full-service brunch menu—if they’re serving a Dutch baby pancake, get it. Daytime craft cocktails are also on offer. 534 Virginia Ave., 317-986-5131, milktoothindy.com V $$
Nesso
ITALIAN Highly stylized seafood and meats paired with small pasta courses and shared a la carte sides add up to a sumptuous dining experience inside The Alexander hotel. Pass around a plate of prosciutto-wrapped prunes or crab arancini, but keep the tortelloni and sea bass all to yourself. 339 S. Delaware St., 317-643-7400, nesso-italia.com V $$$
Nowhere Special
COCKTAIL BITES Dan Cage’s funky cocktail lounge and small bites spot is far from its all-too-modest name. Sleek banquettes in earthy greens and brushed brass tabletops provide an elegant backdrop to classic pours and a host of new elixirs created by the talented bar staff. Try the light and fruity Love Island with passion fruit liqueur, tangy citrus cordial, and bubbles. 608 Massachusetts Ave., nowhereindy.com $$
Oishi
Sushi & Ramen
JAPANESE Thai restaurateur Kanlaya Browning (Thaitanium, Thai Orchid) expanded her Asian portfolio with this lively Japanese-inflected spot. Chicken and veggie gyoza, spring rolls, and an especially crunchy, flavorful version of chicken karaage are highlights among starters. While classic maki features all the usual suspects such as California, spider, and shrimp tempura rolls, be sure to order at least one contemporary roll like the generously dressed Cherry Blossom with spicy tuna, avocado, fish roe, spicy mayo, and eel sauce. Just over a half dozen varieties of ramen include the comforting tonkotsu ramen with chashu pork belly, wood ear mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, as well as spicier versions and tan tan ramen, the Japanese riff on Szechuan dan dan noodles. 600 Massachusetts Ave., 317-493-1884, oishiindy.com V $$
St. Elmo Steak House
STEAKHOUSE Since 1902, this stately house of red meat has served as the unofficial ambassador of downtown Indianapolis— the walls carry decades’ worth of celebrity photos, the burnished bar hearkens to an earlier era, and the servers remain starched and bow-tied. The drill remains the same, as well: a generous martini, a shrimp cocktail with that notoriously hot cocktail sauce, the bean soup or tomato juice, the wedge, and one of the legendary steaks. 127 S. Illinois St., 317-635-0636, stelmos.com $$$
Shapiro’s Delicatessen
DELI Slide your tray along and take your pick of kosher comfort foods at this family-owned downtown institution. Hot pastrami and corned beef sandwiches on rye have drawn long lines for more than a century. The Reuben is a contender for the city’s best, and heartier fare such as potato pancakes, stuffed cabbage, and matzo ball soup are perennially satisfying standbys. If you don’t load up on a massive slice of cheesecake or pie, you haven’t really had the proper Shapiro’s experience. 808 S. Meridian St., 317-631-4041, shapiros.com $$
Siam Square
THAI Soothing red and green curries—redolent of coconut milk, Thai chili paste, and fresh veggies—play strictly by the book. The same goes for the fresh shrimp-and-chicken spring
rolls packed inside a filament of rice paper, as well as the refreshing Som Tum salad, which is big enough for two. Made with crisp papaya and peanuts then funkified with a generous pour of fish sauce, it’s the ideal start to any meal. 936 Virginia Ave., 317-636-8424, siamsquareindy.com V $$
Social Cantina
MODERN MEXICAN This Bloomington import’s festive vibe runs on perky street tacos, rice-based bowls, and tequila bling. The chips and salsa flight is a straight-up tablepleaser. But for a more ambitious starter, the ahi-stuffed avocado is a creamy fusion bomb with tropical salsa and a sweet soy glaze that leans Asian. The tacos are fussier than their humble forerunners but tasty. Vegan options and substitutions abound. The tequila flex—more than 100 bottles, plus two on tap—is impressive, as is the lengthy list of margaritas, which can also be ordered by the pitcher. But it’s not surprising, given that Social Cantina comes from the same restaurant group that conceived The Tap, whose beers are also featured on the deep list of adult beverages. 148 S. Illinois St., 317-218-3342, thesocialcantina.com V $$$
Tinker Street
NEW AMERICAN Diners are in for a delightful treat at this cozy, detail-oriented restaurant where the open kitchen almost feels like part of the dining room. The menu changes with the seasons, but the soup is always something lush and vegan, the Duck & Dumplings (featuring duck confit and truffled dumplings) sells out fast, and the person who orders the pork chop will be the most-envied diner at the table. The cocktails are delicate, the wine list well-curated. Don’t skip dessert, especially if it involves a scoop of ice cream. While Tinker Street sets aside some tables for walk-in diners, reservations are available online and are an especially good idea Thursday–Sunday. 402 E. 16th St., 317-9255000, tinkerstreetrestaurant.com V $$$
Vicino
ITALIAN More than filling Mass Ave’s pasta needs, this modern, colorful trattoria from the owners of The Oakmont measures up to some of the best Italian spots anywhere in the city. New seating and light fixtures add a brighter palette to the sleek former Hedge Row location, and a nicely edited menu offers familiar classics with a few twists for the more daring. 350 Massachusetts Ave., 317-798-2492, vicinoindy.com V $$
EAST
INCLUDES Irvington, Windsor Park
10th Street Diner
VEGAN Surprisingly familiar and hearty plant-based takes on diner classics occupy the entire menu at this rehab of a former pawn shop, a comfy backdrop for enjoying such tasty fakeouts as a gooey seitan Reuben, a “chicken” pot pie, and chili that rivals your favorite con carne version. 3301 E. 10th St., 463-221-1255 V $$
Beholder
CONTEMPORARY You never know what to expect from restaurateur Jonathan Brooks’ Windsor Park kitchen, aside from one of the most innovative and well-executed meals in town. The menu is difficult to track, mainly because Brooks builds his dishes around seasonal ingredients that are fresh and of-the-moment. Impeccable servers will guide you through the evening’s offerings, which start small at the top of the menu (fresh oysters, perhaps, or pork rinds with kimchi and chicken liver mousse) and bulk up toward the bottom (think wild boar Bolognese or a massive pork Wellington portioned for two). Finish with the most exotic flavor of house-made ice cream. 1844 E. 10th St., 317-419-3471, beholderindy.com V $$$$
Chopped Cheese Boys
DELI New York’s beloved bodega snack is the eponymous specialty at this no-frills Irvington convenience store and takeout deli. True to form, well-seasoned ground beef gets chopped on a sizzling flattop, then pressed into a sub sandwich roll, and finally topped with plenty of gooey cheese and mayo, which makes for a rich and flavorful mashup of the smashburger and a Philly cheesesteak. But be sure to dip into the eye-popping menu of wings, chicken tenders, fried fish, and—another Big Apple food cart favorite—chicken over rice (tender grilled chicken breast meat with a signature white sauce slathered over rice). Try it with lamb, as well, or go meatless with falafel. 1520 N. Arlington Ave., 317377-4951 V $$$
King Dough
PIZZA This industrial-feeling pizza spot from Adam and Alicia Sweet began as a studentfriendly Bloomington destination in 2014; now it’s a local mini-chain with three locations. The huge wood-burning pizza oven (it’s named Thunder Dome) is the first thing diners see when they enter the space, and the open kitchen feels like a grown-up version of the exhibition pizzerias so popular in the 1980s. But this is present-day pizza, bubbly and charred, with seasonal toppings such as truffles and imported Taleggio cheese. 452 N. Highland Ave., 317-602-7960, kingdoughpizzas.com. V $$
Natural State Provisions
CASUAL Customers order at the counter and find a table inside this former microbrewery. The food is rooted in homestyle Arkansas cooking from co-owner Adam Sweet’s native state, heavy on the deep-frying and sweet tea–brining, but you shouldn’t miss the daily soft serve ice cream flavor. If the weather is warm, take a seat at one of the picnic tables outside and watch the neighborhood pups frolic in the adjacent dog park. 414 Dorman St., 317-492-9887, naturalstateprovisions.com $$
Open Kitchen
NEW AMERICAN Breakfast specialties, such as light-as-air French toast, biscuits and gravy, and eggs Benedict lavished with crab and avocado, are stars on the menu at Dexter and Toni Smith’s cheery restaurant. But lunch and dinner are equally respectable, especially a generous shrimp po’ boy or a crispy chicken sandwich with peppered bacon, onion rings, and barbecue sauce with your choice of spice level. More substantial
entrees include a grilled pork chop with apple chutney, with elevated touches owing to Dexter Smith’s Chef’s Academy pedigree. After operating mainly as a carryout spot on North Sherman and later in Little Flower, this location comes with a full bar, which means cocktails—such as the creamy, floral Respect Your Elders with bourbon, elderflower, and lemon—are a must. 4022 Shelby St., 317-974-9032, opennkitchen.org $$
Sam’s Square Pie
PIZZA Detroit-style pizza obsessive Jeff Miner’s pop-up pie shop now has a permanent home on Indy’s near east side, giving followers and newcomers easy access to his square-cut pizzas. Just don’t expect a long list of available toppings or side options like salads and wings. This spot is a single-minded homage to panbaked pizzas with a signature crown of wellbrowned cheese around the edges of the chewy, sturdy crust. Topping combos include the signature El Jefe with two styles of pepperoni, kicky Italian sausage, dollops of ricotta, and a drizzle of spicy honey. Slightly thinner and larger Sicilian pies occasionally appear on the menu, so snag one if you can, especially the sausage-topped High Plains Drifter that garnered second place at Las Vegas’ Pizza Expo. Cheesy garlic bread made with Miner’s pizza dough and garlic knots slathered in butter are also available, but it’s best to save room for the main attraction. Carry-out is available, but dining in is always a good time. 2829 E. 10th St., samssquarepie.com V $$$
Sidedoor Bagel
BRUNCH Appropriately dense and chewy with that required crackly sheen, the hand-rolled sourdough rings at Josh and Emily Greeson’s walk-up bagel shop are the stars of the show. The flavor selection varies, but flaky salt, everything, sesame, and poppy are all solid standbys. Order yours sliced and schmeared at the counter, then score an outdoor table or head back home (it’s carryout only). Don’t miss the daily sandwiches, which range from the open-faced Lox & Loaded to the Turkey Bacon Club with Fischer Farms turkey and Old Major Market bacon. 1103 E. 10th St., sidedoorbagel.com V $$
NORTH SUBURBAN
INCLUDES Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville, Westfield, Zionsville
9th Street Bistro
BR 2024
SEASONAL Co-owners Samir and Rachel Firestone Mohammad’s tiny innovator is almost always packed by fans eager for the duo’s globally inspired Midwestern dishes. In response, the pair has created a community dinner series to allow even more patrons to sample their takes on the local farmstead ingredients that inspire their dishes. Mussels in aromatic broth, house-made burrata with of-the-moment garnishes, and pasta with shrimp and lemony cream sauce still anchor the menu, but it’s better to let the creative duo keep you guessing. 56 S. 9th St., Noblesville, 317-774-5065, 9thstbistro.com V $$$
1933 Lounge
STEAK AND COCKTAILS This clubby cocktail lounge offers a younger, sexier take on its fine dining parent, St. Elmo Steak House. The twist here is that the black-vested servers deliver the oysters Rockefeller and 45-day dry-aged ribeyes to diners tucked into noir-lit corners, where no one can see their faces melt into a brief ugly-cry at that first bite of incendiary shrimp cocktail. The Yard at Fishers District, 317-758-1933, 1933lounge.com/fishers $$$$
Anthony’s Chophouse
STEAKHOUSE The interior of this swanky heavy hitter along Carmel’s Main Street has the polished gleam of a new Vegas hotel, with an upper-level lounge containing the salvaged mahogany bar from The Glass Chimney, another fine dining legend. The food has equal flourish. Lobster bisque with a hunk of tempura-fried meat begins a meal that might include a cowgirl ribeye, a flight of filets, or a domestic wagyu burger. Take note—the steak menu also lists a spinalis. You may never eat another steak this perfect. Black-suited servers and well-composed cocktails keep the high-dollar meal running smoothly. 201 W. Main St., Carmel, 317740-0900, anthonyschophouse.com $$$$
Aroma Experience
INDIAN Vinita Singh’s portfolio of restaurants expanded in March 2024, when she brought a new location of her Aroma mini-chain of restaurants to Carmel City Center. Those who enjoy her Aroma Indian Cuisine and Bar spots in Fountain Square and SoBro will find plenty to like in this glitzy, date-night venue. The other locations’ daily dinner menus of Northern Indian dishes such as tikka masala and Kerala-style curry are on offer, as are ambitious entrees including a lehsuni prawn dish that plays notably with Aroma’s coconut and cashew naan. (There’s also a chili garlic naan so engaging that one could enjoy it unaccompanied.) Lunch, which is served daily, is a more concise affair of bowls, rolls, and wraps. There’s also a full bar and some standout, homemade ice cream–based desserts. 885 Monon Green Blvd., Carmel, 317-993-3021, aromaindy.com V $$$
Auberge
FRENCH Brick Street Inn’s classic French bistro installed talented chef Toby Moreno (of The Loft at Traders Point Creamery and Plow & Anchor) in early 2022 and immediately sent him to Paris, where he trained in the kitchens of famed chef Alain Ducasse. Moreno has added that continental know-how to the vintage dishes he makes fresh with as much local produce, meats, and cheeses as he can. That translates to an impressive plate of buttery escargot topped with croutons, seasonal salads, and a deeply flavorful French onion soup with a rich broth. Seafood shines among the entrees, especially crispy-skinned roasted cod, though diver scallops with asparagus puree showered with herbs and toasted almonds also impress. 175 S. Main St., Zionsville, 317733-8755, auberge-restaurant.com $$$$
Bearded Bagel
DELI Food truck veteran Tom Race opened this brick-and-mortar bagel deli on Indy’s northeast
side in late 2021, featuring his signature steamed bagel sandwiches with dozens of topping combinations. Breakfast versions, such as the Slammin Sammy with bacon, egg, and American cheese or the Hangover Helper with spicy cream cheese, bacon, egg, and three slices of cheese are a no-brainer. But whimsical tributes to fast-food favorites, such as the R-Bee’s with roast beef and extra cheddar, are great lunch choices. Vegetarians can opt for the Urban Farmer with “all the veggies,” avocado, and cheese, and traditionalists can sink into a cream cheese–schmeared bagel with lox, tomato, capers, onions, and cucumbers. Puffy, sweet cinnamon rolls, hearty biscuits and gravy, and loaded tater tots with sausage gravy, bacon, cheese, and eggs complete the menu, along with Nutella and peanut butter bagels and a short list of cookies and brownies. 7305 E. 96th St., 317-516-5938, beardedbagel.com V $$
Bonge’s Tavern
AMERICAN Opened in the 1930s near the rush of the White River and purchased by Charles Bonge a little over 10 years later, Bonge’s Tavern has been a part of Indiana dining history for more than 90 years. In the fall of 2023, Burgess Restaurant Group purchased it and installed Dean Sample as executive chef. The centerpiece of the menu is still the signature tenderloin, appropriately named the Perkinsville Pork. Other favorites include a stuffed duck breast and a fresh fish entree. Chef Sample inflects his own ideas into the menu, with a Southern influence. It’s worth the risk to order whatever delightful special he adds to the menu. Make sure to grab a reservation long before you plan to go—they go quick—and arrive early enough to tailgate in the parking lot with other diners, a Bonge’s tradition worth keeping. 9830 W. 280 N, Perkinsville, 765-734-1625, bongestavern.com $$$
Convivio
ITALIAN With a menu that traces the geographical regions in Italy, this is not your average red-sauce joint. The pasta, including curled nests of black squid ink spaghetti and purple beet-infused fettuccine, are all made in-house. The torchietti pasta, tossed with dried figs, black olives, basil, goat cheese, and parmesan, has been known to induce deep cravings in the weeks after eating, and the frutti di mare packs a generous serving of mussels, clams, shrimp, scallops, and calamari with tonnarelli pasta in a spicy and bright tomato sauce. Beyond pasta, the menu offers Neapolitan-style pizzas served blistered and hot from the imported Italian pizza oven, rotating regional specials, and an easy-to-navigate, Italian-heavy wine list that makes picking a bottle for the table a pleasure. 11529 Spring Mill Rd., Carmel, 317-564-4670, convivioindy.com $$$
Cooper & Cow
STEAKHOUSE Louisville-based Endeavor Restaurant Group’s swashbuckling steakhouse in downtown Fishers is perhaps distinguished most by its intimacy and calm, where diners can actually hear their dinner companions across the table. The 4,200-square-foot space, which was last an outpost of LouVino, has been transformed with well-appointed decor that recalls the swankier saloons of preProhibition days. It makes a great backdrop
for surprisingly fresh, well-prepared seafood offerings alongside prime aged filets, ribeyes, and wagyu flank steak. A house wagyu burger is more than dinner-worthy, and sides such as fried Brussels sprouts with roasted garlic and bresaola are excellent for sharing. Save room for a towering wedge of bourbon-enriched chocolate cake with both dark chocolate ganache and milk chocolate buttercream. 8626 E. 116th St., Fishers, 317-288-2801, cooperandcow.com $$$
Field Brewing
BREWPUB This Westfield addition to the local craft brewery scene would be dazzling enough for its mod fixtures and bocce ball court that spans the family-friendly outdoor space, but the menu is as daring as it is easy to pair with the house brews. The kitchen skillfully prepares standout dishes, such as tender lamb ribs with chimichurri and deeply caramelized Brussels sprouts, served with hunks of bacon, that are some of the best in town. Their event space is simple-chic and full of natural light, available (with reservations) for special receptions and birthdays—or just for big family and friend gatherings. 303 E. Main St., Westfield, 317-8049780, fieldbrewing.com V $$$
The HC Tavern + Kitchen
CONTEMPORARY The term “tavern” hardly captures this swank addition to the Huse Culinary Group/St. Elmo family. A hit among starters is the Lobster “Cargot” with lumps of lobster meat in garlic butter and melted Havarti. Chops include the supper club darling steak Diane with mushroom cream sauce and horseradish mashed potatoes, though equally regal is the wagyu meatloaf enriched with pork and veal, sauced with a truffle mushroom demi-glace. The Yard at Fishers District, 317-530-4242, atthehc.com $$$
Trax BBQ
BARBECUE Owner Andrew Klein, who has a background in high-end steakhouses, oversees the tender headliners at this no-frills barbecue joint that sits beside the train tracks in McCordsville. You can taste his expertise in the essential meats: brisket hacked into fatty hunks, pulled pork that melts in the mouth, and ribs by the rack, all prepared in a smoker that customers walk past before they hit the front door. Fans of smoked meats order off a menu that covers traditional carnivore territory as well as some creative upgrades, including pulled pork nachos and The Willie brisket sandwich topped with hot liquid cheese and slaw on a brioche bun. 7724 Depot St., McCordsville, 317-335-7675, traxbbq.com $$
NORTHEAST
INCLUDES Broad Ripple, Castleton, Geist, Herron-Morton, Kennedy-King, Keystone at the Crossing, Meridian-Kessler, Nora, SoBro
Baby’s
BURGERS This playful, family-friendly joint limits its menu to smashburgers, chicken, milkshakes (spiked or not), and cocktails. Housed in a former drag show bar,
it also has fun with the building’s artsy legacy—the house burger is called a Strut Burger, and all of the cocktail names come straight from the RuPaul meme factory. Sip a Tongue Pop or a Sashay Away as you polish off the last of the Talbott Street Style fries dressed with bacon, cheese sauce, white barbecue sauce, and pickled jalapeño. 2147 N. Talbott St., 317-600-3559, babysindy.com V $$
The Burger Joint
AMERICAN Tucked away in a strip mall off Emerson Way and 56th Street, The Burger Joint is a true hidden gem waiting to be discovered. They don’t take hamburgers lightly; the menu is full of specialty patties topped with savory and tender brisket, grilled pineapple, or spicy chorizo. They all pair well with hand-battered onion rings, fries, or loaded tater tots. If the burgers are what bring you in, it’s the milkshakes that make you stay— hand-dipped and served in an old-fashioned glass, piled high with whipped cream, and, of course, garnished with a cherry on top. 5450 E. Fall Creek Pkwy. N Dr., 317-991-4995, indysburgerjoint.com $$
Cheeky Bastards
ENGLISH Co-owners Michael Rypel and chef Robert Carmack fell in love with British culture and cuisine during travels abroad. Their Geist restaurant is a true tribute to the food, serving not only a classic full English breakfast and sausage rolls made with imported meat but also a very convincing fish and chips featuring crispy planks and hand-cut potatoes. Don’t forget to ask for the malt vinegar or the HP Sauce for the full UK experience. 11210 Fall Creek Rd., 317-288-9739, cbindy.com $$
Chicken Scratch
SOUL FOOD Chef Tia Harrison’s second, mostly carryout spot on Keystone Avenue streamlines the menu to the bestsellers from her original Chef Tia and Co. location on West Washington Street. Meaty, tender wings with a variety of sauces and spice levels, as well as earthy, dressed-up fries, cover most of the menu here. That’s more than enough for a Cajun-inflected feast. Signature honey hot wings, either naked or breaded for extra crunch, come customized with the amount of sauce you want. And fries are available with a simple toss of truffle seasoning and parmesan or dressed up to entree status with chipotle steak or shrimp and Alfredo sauce. 5308 N. Keystone Ave., 317-4263457, orderchickenscratch.com $$
Diavola
PIZZA Pies emerge expertly bubbled and charred from a centerpiece brick oven. Ingredients are simple but top-shelf, including homemade meatballs, spicy sopressata, smooth clumps of fior di latte, and torn basil. 1134 E. 54th St., 317-820-5100, diavola.net V $$
Fernando’s
Mexican & Brazilian Cuisine
BR 2024 LATIN AMERICAN A subtle name change in the last year, owing to a legal request from the international fast-food chain Nando’s, has done nothing to diminish the spirit and vibrant flavors of this Broad Ripple restaurant featuring the cuisines of Mexico and Brazil. Enjoying a flight of fruit-infused
caipirinhas and a plate of crisp, savory chicken croquettes on Fernando’s spacious sheltered patio is still a warm-weather delight, and dishes like feijoada with fall-apart-tender pork and rich stewed black beans, as well as chicken stroganoff and a delectable Brazilian take on the homey pot pie, remain hearty staples that are hard to find elsewhere. Fare such as queso fundido and arroz con pollo more than hold their own against the best, and refreshing desserts such as an ultra-creamy flan and Brazilian-style guava cheesecake are worth saving a few bites of your entrees to make room for. 834 E. 64th St., 317-377-4779, fernandosindy.com $$$
Festiva
MEXICAN This lively Latin spot on the east side puts a gourmet flourish on south-of-the-border fare. The menu includes tacos, plus an old favorite: poblanos stuffed with chorizo and queso. A pitcher of their house margaritas, made with fresh lime and agave, is perfect for the whole table, especially with one of their delicate, seasonal desserts. Weekend brunch is a lot of fun, with Latin-flavored benedicts and chilaquiles with red or green sauce. 1217 E. 16th St., 317-635-4444, festivaindy.com V $$
Gather 22
CONTEMPORARY This colorfully cozy all-day hangout and cocktail spot in Fall Creek Place from Byrne’s Grilled Pizza owners Adam Reinstrom and Pablo Gonzalez draws on Reinstrom’s love of interior design and Gonzalez’s background in innovative mixology. Vibrant wall fixtures by creators such as Bootleg Signs & Murals and revolving works by locals from the LGBTQ art community provide a funky backdrop for sipping seasonal elixirs, such as the bracing but balanced Bourbon Renewal. Salads include a wedge with smoked blue cheese and roasted-poblano ranch. Byrne’s original pizzas, cracker-thin and charred, are on offer, as are thicker-crusted Roman-style oval pies with well-chosen toppings. Fresh takes on shareable plates include crispyskinned salmon with kale and quinoa and intriguing scallop sliders with Asian-style slaw. On Sundays, the brunch menu features classics such as egg dishes and French toast. There are also breakfast pizzas such as the Chilaquiles, a thin crust topped with chorizo, salsa, eggs, and fried tortillas. Coffee drinks and a solid sandwich list anchor the daytime menu, and desserts feature a luxe take on the Hoosier classic sugar cream pie. 22 E. 22nd St., 317-258-2222, gather22.com $$
Late Harvest Kitchen
CONTEMPORARY A luscious comfort food menu delivers top-shelf versions of family-table dishes, such as chunked kielbasa (on a base of mustard spaetzle browned in dill butter) and braised short ribs. Taste the farmers market throughout the year with chef Ryan Nelson’s farm-to-table approach; this is one of the first spots in Indy to incorporate local produce. 8605 River Crossing Blvd., 317-663-8063, lateharvestkitchen.com $$
Nicole-Taylor’s Pasta + Market + Backroom Eatery
MEDITERRANEAN Since taking over Tony and Rosa Hanslits’ beloved SoBro pasta market, lunch cafe, and private dining spot in July
of 2023, chef Erin Kem and partner Logan McMahan have brought their deep affection for Mediterranean flavors to a lunchtime menu that features an assortment of house pastas with seasonal additions. The current summer menu includes a stunning spring pea bucatini with asparagus, smoked salmon, and dill. Creative sandwiches and salads draw on McMahan’s talent with plant-based cuisine, which, along with the market’s egg-free pasta, have made the shop a bona fide vegan destination. An ever-changing selection of ready-to-eat, deli, and gourmet options make this a great spot to stop for quick supper ideas. And Kem brings her years of experience in the kitchens of local restaurants and in the thick of private events to the market’s highly in-demand small group dinners. 1134 E. 54th St., 317-257-7374, nicoletaylorspasta.com V $$
Pisco Mar
PERUVIAN Vibrant music and a spacious dining room provide a bustling backdrop for a hearty cuisine that pulls from both land and sea. Tangy, citrusy ceviche is a good starting point and comes in different versions, including Leche de Tigre or Vuelve a la Vida. Both pair beautifully with Causita de Pollo, a mound of creamy mashed potatoes layered with avocado and topped with a creamy chicken-based sauce. Shredded chicken with a lush yellow pepper sauce and a wine-enriched, vegetable-laden beef stew are the most classic main dishes for those getting a first taste of the cuisine. The big appetites at the table will appreciate meaty dishes such as Lomo Saltado, sauteed strips of beef with onions and tomatoes, or a so-called “poor man’s plate” that pairs two generous strips of Angus steak with french fries, rice, plantains, and eggs. 9546 Allisonville Rd., 317-537-2025, piscomarindy.com $$
Umi Sushi & Seafood Buffet
BUFFET The sheer volume of all-you-can-eat food offered at this Castleton buffet is most impressive. Diners are greeted just inside the door with a full sushi bar cranking out vibrant raw fish in every configuration, including flanks of smoky unagi on sticky rice and tiny saucers of fish roe offered up like condiments. Piles of steamed crustaceans await cracking, and you can create your own ramen combo. Dim sum gets its own section of dumplings and sticky chicken feet. And milky boba teas in already-sealed cups sweeten the deal. 6304 E. 82nd St., 317-350-8888, umibuffet.com $$$
Wisanggeni Pawon
INDONESIAN The talents of chefs Bambang Wisanggeni and Putri Pratiwi make dining at Wisanggeni Pawon a superb experience. That, plus all their wonderful family recipes. The husband-and-wife duo presents the complex, spice-forward dishes of their homeland, as well as some hibachi favorites drawn from their experience at nearby Japanese restaurants. Start off by splitting a platter of martabak telor, a hearty beef omelet encased in crispy wonton skin, or share some steamed Indonesian dumplings with a rich peanut sauce. Then try the signature beef rendang, a dish from Western Sumatra featuring tender meat simmered in coconut milk with an aromatic array of spices. Lighter fare includes nicely blackened grilled chicken with rice or stir-fried noodles topped with crunchy crackers and a
shower of chopped peanuts. Save room for ube spring rolls or sweet pancakes stuffed with peanuts, gooey cheese, and condensed milk, all sprinkled with chocolate. 2450 E. 71st St., 317-756-9477, wpawon.com V $$
NORTHWEST
INCLUDES College Park, Lafayette Square, Traders Point
Amara
INDIAN Innovative restaurateur and Aroma owner Vinita Singh converted the popular northside tavern Smee’s Place to her third Indian eatery in late 2022, offering an ambitious and artfully executed menu of dishes from around South Asia. Starters are where the menu truly shines, with crispy eggplant and kale fritters, deeply aromatic Chicken 65, and true-to-their name Juicy Drums of Heaven. Lesser-known dishes, such as chettinad—equally good with chicken, seafood, or lamb—are great bets. Breads are a must here, especially chewy, crisp garlic naan. Vegetarians get special attention at this place, with a menu of plant-based dishes and mock meats. All fall somewhere between flavors of India and from farther east. A full menu of wines and cocktails pairs nicely with the spicy, aromatic dishes on offer. 1454 W. 86th St., 317-884-6982, amaraindy.com V $$
Athens on 86th
GREEK Whether you select a large chicken gyro or the kota psiti—a roasted chicken with green beans and Greek potatoes—add an order of the fries, served here with feta, Mediterranean spices, and Greek dressing. Their gyro pizza is a fun marriage of the craveable classics, and it’s hard to argue with their multiple takes on the classic Greek salad. For the hungry, indecisive, or just plain adventurous, the sampler platter gathers nearly everything in the expansive menu onto one plate. 2284 W. 86th St., 317-879-8644, athenson86th.com V $$
The Loft Restaurant
FINE DINING With its pastoral setting on the grounds of an artisanal dairy farm, Traders Point Creamery’s farmstead restaurant (housed in one of several restored historic barns) feels like a working model for farm-to-table dining. Some of the ingredients on executive chef Jon Warner’s menu are grown on-site, and it would be a shame to pass on the charcuterie board, an appetizer featuring the creamery’s award-winning cheeses, sweet and savory spreads, crunchy cornichons, and locally cured meats. Grass-fed Niman Ranch steaks, seasonal fish and seafood, and house-made yeast rolls are always solid choices, as is the burger made with 100-percent grass-fed beef. For dessert, grab a scoop or three of their ice cream, perfect if you just want to go a la mode. 9101 Moore Rd., Zionsville, 317-7331700, traderspointcreamery.com V $$$
Oakleys Bistro
CONTEMPORARY The meticulously plated fare at Steven Oakley’s eatery hails from a culinary era when sprigs of herbs and
puddles of purees provided the flavor, and every single element on the plate served a purpose. The presentations are wild, with menu descriptions giving little more than clues as to what might arrive at the table. Heads-up on anything that appears in quotes, such as a creative “Coq au Vin.” 1464 W. 86th St., 317-824-1231, oakleysbistro.com V $$$
SOUTH SUBURBAN
INCLUDES Bargersville, Greenwood
Antilogy
BRUNCH AND COCKTAILS This snug corner spot divides its energy between the morning meal and evening libations. Early birds can choose from thoughtful combinations of fat biscuits, sunny eggs, bourbon-candied bacon, and Belgian waffles, with plenty of Bovaconti Coffee–based lattes and mochas to kick-start the day. In the evening, the menu shifts to shareable plates, such as a panko-crusted crispy burrata, parmesan truffle fries, and a molten spinach-Gruyere dip. 5867 N. State Rd. 135, Greenwood, 317-530-5312, antilogycg.com V $$
Baan Thai Bistro
THAI Roxanna Williams’ cozy Thai eatery, which she opened in a former house and hair salon in late spring of 2023, is a welcome addition to Wanamaker’s dining offerings, bringing aromatic flavors and artful presentations to dishes like the lightly breaded and fried Son-in-Law Eggs (Kai Look Keuy), which is drizzled with earthy-sweet tamarind sauce, and generous summer rolls that come with a trio of tangy dipping sauces. Less expected starters to split include rich and flavorful Isan Thai Sausage with just the right amount of spice, served with a not-too-hot dipping sauce and a darling bamboo basket of sticky rice; a Crispy Rice Salad that crackles and pops; and airy steamed dumplings. Hearty Boat Noodle Soup and Crispy Pork Belly Ramen with a light mushroom-scented broth are good bets for main dishes, as are the kicky Crying Tiger Steak and more typical curries and noodle dishes. Adventurous diners will want to try one of three fish dishes redolent of ginger and basil, and a sumptuous mix of whole chicken drumsticks and sweet curry noodles makes for a comforting supper. 8705 Southeastern Ave., 317-759-8424, baanthaibistro .com V $$
Cafe Euclid
COFFEEHOUSE Vino Villa owners Paul and Laura Jacquin opened this cozy cafe in a smaller restored home behind their popular wine bar in Old Town Greenwood in July 2022, and southside coffee lovers immediately lined up out the door. Lattes and espresso drink specials top the caffeinated offerings, and bagels sourced from Bloomington’s Scholars Inn Bakehouse get dressed up with Italian meats, smoked salmon, or avocado and veggies to complete your morning pickme-up. But house-baked cinnamon rolls and generous chocolate chip cookies with flakes of sea salt are worth the visit alone. Colorful murals paying homage to the Greek
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mathematician Euclid, repurposed wood accents, and plenty of patio seating make this a soothing daytime sitting spot before heading for adult beverages next door. 357 Euclid Ave., Greenwood, 317-360-9887, cafe-euclid.com $
Chin Brothers
BURMESE One of the oldest Burmese restaurants in town, this brightly lit and friendly spot attached to a large, well-stocked market serves as somewhat of a cultural center for immigrants from the Chin state of Myanmar. Invigorating refreshers such as sweet tea with condensed milk and a cane syrup beverage with puffed rice offer a colorful taste of Burmese culture. Fried rice and soups are solid standards here, as well as luscious and tender curried goat. Their Lahpet Thohk salad, made with fermented tea leaves, greens, and spices might be one of the best in the region. 2320 E. Stop 11 Rd., 317-888-1850, chinbrothers .com V $$
Field to Fork
SANDWICHES This gourmet market and local meat counter that set up shop along downtown Franklin’s quaint main drag puts its inventory center stage in a compact menu of sandwiches. Top picks are the Well-Dressed Italian, which is built around thin-sliced salami, provolone, and banana peppers; and the fig-forward Franklin Jam that puts thick-sliced Fischer Farms ham and Gruyere to delicious use. 90 W. Jefferson St., Franklin, 463-710-6170, fieldtofork. shop $$
Main & Madison Market Cafe
BAKERY Franklin’s first hospital was reborn as a breakfast and lunch hot spot in 2018, when co-owners and cousins Amy Richardson and Stephanie Northern opened their bakery and cafe just steps from the city’s historic courthouse. With its combination of Brooklyncool baristas (many are students at nearby Franklin College) and Midwestern friendliness and prices, the restaurant easily attracts long lines for its rotating menu of sandwiches, soups, salads, and baked goods. The roasted pepper and gouda soup is especially satisfying; that it’s served with one of their caramelized onion and goat cheese scones turns it into a special treat. Pastries like a shareable-sized pecan sticky bun or a stuffed peanut butter cookie are a sugar crash waiting to happen but are more than worth the ride. 100 N. Main St., Franklin, 317-736-6246, mainandmadison.cafe V $$
Mr. Patakon
COLOMBIAN The name of Diana Moreno and Brenda Sánchez’s cheerful, authentic southside Colombian eatery comes from the popular Latin and South American dish patacones— flattened, fried plantains filled with everything from shredded barbecue chicken criollo to cheese, corn, and shredded beef. Or try the Super Perro hot dog, which is topped with every meat in the kitchen, quail eggs, and a special house sauce. Mazorcada (heaps of sweet corn topped with meats, cheeses, and potato sticks) is a delectable side dish. Fruit drinks and desserts, especially obleas (wafer cookies filled with dulce de leche and cheese), are worth the extra calories for a flavor experience like no other in the city. 7415 U.S. 31, 317-6929829, mrpatakon.com $$
Our Table
CONTEMPORARY The location is suitably cozy and out of the way for Bargersville’s newest fine dining destination. Chef and owner Joe Miller focuses on gorgeous, rustic plates of steak, seafood, and Old World lasagna made with fresh pasta and generous layers of beef Bolognese, mozzarella, and creamy ricotta. The brioche sliders (containing buttermilk fried chicken or beef tenderloin with crispy onions and horseradish creme fraiche) are little bites of heaven. 5080 State Rd. 135, Bargersville, 317-847-4920, ourtablerestaurant.com V $$$
Revery
CONTEMPORARY This Old Greenwood bistro inside an 1800s-era drugstore offers approachable fine dining, with a more casual bar on the historic building’s back end. Small plates have included beets with whipped goat cheese and wasabi, while entrees are seasonal and skew toward seafood, with lobster, halibut, and mussels on recent menus. Whiskey drinks get priority on the cocktail menu, and their old fashioned feels fresh and new. 299 W. Main St., Greenwood, 317-2154164, reveryrestaurantgroup.com V $$$
Richard’s Brick Oven Pizza
PIZZA When husband-and-wife team Richard Goss and Meg Jones first fired up their restaurant’s massive brick oven in 2009, chain pizza ruled the Central Indiana landscape, either delivered within 30 minutes or served in a cavernous room with a singing, mechanical rodent. Franklin was a risky place to launch their vision of high-quality Neapolitan pizza made with fresh, often local ingredients—but the gamble paid off, and 15 years later, it’s become a destination for diners from far beyond Johnson County. With a tightly edited menu of pastas, you’re not restricted to their thin-and-bubbly-crusted pies; they also offer custom calzoni and lasagna. 229 S. Main St., Franklin, 317-738-3300, richardskitchen.com V $$$
Yokohama
SUSHI In this restored arts and crafts–style home, sushi rolls run the gamut from the traditional to the eclectic (the Las Vegas roll mingles unagi with sweet potato and lotus chips). Don’t miss the Fire Dragon roll made with tuna and avocado topped with more tuna, mango, eel, and tempura crunch, a sprawling concoction that balances the spicy, sweet, tangy, and unexpected. Purists will be pleased by their sashimi and nigiri menus. Those who eschew seafood are also well-served with a dinner menu that weaves in hibachi-grilled steak and chicken. There’s also a separate vegetarian menu of udon and tempura dishes. 67 N. Madison Ave., Greenwood, 317-8591888, yokohamagreenwood.com V $$$
WEST
INCLUDES Brownsburg, Pittsboro, Plainfield
Abyssinia
ETHIOPIAN This spot—where diners use a spongy sour flatbread known as injera in lieu of
utensils—provides a thorough introduction to Ethiopian cuisine. Aficionados of East African food will be impressed by the seasoning of the stewed lamb, beef, and spicy chicken; vegans and vegetarians will appreciate their greens, lentils, and chickpeas. 352 W. 38th St., 299-0608, abyssiniaindy.com V $$
Bob’s Indian Kitchen
INDIAN A surprisingly spacious and airy counter-service restaurant located in a new mini-strip in Hendricks County houses Bhavesh “Bob” Patel’s ode to home-cooked Indian cuisine. Irresistible entry-level cream cheese bhajia and dreamy butter chicken get just as much respect as the crispy pani puri filled with tamarind water, the goat biryani, and the mini section of Indian pizzas. Cool your tastebuds with sweet sips of mango lassi. 618 E. Main St., Brownsburg, 317-983-0225, bobsindian.square.site V $$
Borage
BR 2024 ALL-DAY CAFE Josh Kline and Zoë Taylor’s long-awaited all-day cafe, dinner spot, and market took years longer to open than they expected when they chose its Speedway site. Some even despaired that the couple in business and life—who met while toiling in the kitchen at Milktooth— might never see their dream realized. But suddenly this summer, Borage threw its doors open, and all worries vanished. Every menu lineup, from breakfast to dinner and everything in between, is a collage of standby ingredients, such as polenta or milk bread, reimagined into well-portioned small plates that will fill your table. Mussels float in kimchi-flecked coconut broth alongside a meatloaf sandwich made with brisket and bacon. Every aspect of the restaurant, its bakery, and the attached retail space feels thought-through and intentional. Borage was worth the wait. 1609 N. Lynhurst Dr., 317-734-3958, borageeats.com V $$
Brozinni Pizzeria
PIZZA Owner James Cross grew up in New York, and everything on the menu is named after an iconic NYC location, from the Madison Square Garden meatball sandwich to the Hell’s Kitchen calzone. Don’t skip the garlic knuckles, curled into knots and drenched in garlic butter. Use the sauce pooling at the bottom of the basket for dipping. 1067 N. Main St., Speedway, 317-744-2826, brozinni.com $$
Che Chori
ARGENTINEAN Marcos Perera-Blasco’s colorful drive-thru restaurant offers a delectable intro to Argentinean street food. The focus of menu includes a selection of traditional butterflied-sausage sandwiches and warm empanadas filled with seasoned meats. Make sure to pick up the house-made dulce de leche, which is sold by the jar, as well as their churros and specialty Argentinian shortbread cookies. And don’t overlook the cook-at-home sausages, from Spanish-style chorizo to Argentinean black sausage. 3124 W. 16th St., 317-737-2012, chechori.com $$
Hoosier Roots
COMFORT Don’t miss this gem serving familystyle mains and side dishes in a roadhouse setting. Owner Greg Steller runs the tiny kitchen, preparing house-smoked salmon, herb-crusted roast beef, beer can chicken, and
other classics. Buttermilk fried chicken is their signature dish, and a generous eight pieces is served family style with hot sauce and local honey. Desserts are meant to be shared, but you won’t want to—there’s a honey lavender cake with bauchant icing that’s worth keeping for yourself. 26 E. Main St., Pittsboro, 317-892-0071, hoosierrootscatering.com $$
Negrill Jamaican
Restaurant and Bar
JAMAICAN You’ll need to come early to this spirited island spot if you want to score some of the day’s tender, rich oxtail stew or aromatic curried goat, served up in “lickle” (little) or larger portions dressed with rice and peas, steamed cabbage, and sweet fried plantains. Jerk chicken has just the right heat. Beef patties, fried or “escovitch” fish garnished with tangy veggies, and soups, depending on the day, round out the menu. 3701 W. 10th St., 317-602-8553, negrillrestaurant.com $$
Rick’s Cafe Boatyard
SEAFOOD You don’t have to be a Parrothead to appreciate the pontoon-life allure of Eagle Creek’s waterside restaurant, with its breezy dining room on stilts over the Dandy Trail boat slips. The menu gets creative with all of the casual dining tropes, mixing smoked salmon nachos and chicken cordon bleu fingers in with the jumbo shrimp martinis. With a full menu of mules, tropical cocktails, and nonalcoholic concoctions, this is also a great spot for a couple of snacks and a drink or two at sunset. 4050 Dandy Trail, 317-290-9300, ricksboatyard.com $$$
Rusted Silo
BARBECUE Nestled between I-74 and the railroad tracks in Lizton, you’ll find this barbecue joint with only six indoor tables and a line out the door. Pitmaster Robert Ecker smokes, cooks, and even bakes some of the best Southern-style pit barbecue, sides, and desserts in Indiana. Grab a beer from one of the floorto-ceiling coolers just inside the door and get ready to make your way down the menu. If you can’t decide between the perfectly seasoned, pink-tinged shredded pork butt or a slice of the fork-tender brisket, go ahead and get both and try them with one (or all) of the four housemade sauces on deck. On the side? The ranch beans are creamy and well-seasoned, and the three-cheese mac is made from scratch. The cheese grits might be the star, though; sourced in Kentucky and ground at Weisenberger Mill, it leaves other restaurants’ grits in the dust. Where other barbecue joints might phone in their desserts with frozen pies and canned fruit, Rusted Silo dishes up homemade bourbon pecan pie, peach cobbler, and a notably rich banana pudding. 411 N. State St., Lizton, 317-994-6145, rustedsilobrewhouse.com $$
Shiba Pho
VIETNAMESE Deep bowls of the namesake aromatic noodle soup get top billing at this no-frills Brownsburg spot, which also makes a special vegetarian broth for the plant-based. Starters such as spring rolls and dumplings set the tone, while deep-fried wings (served with three sauces) are standouts even in our chickenrich region. Don’t miss the Chef’s Specials (including Vietnamese steak and egg with pate)
or the sensibly stuffed banh mi sandwiches, served on fresh baguettes. 578 W. Northfield Dr., Brownsburg, 317-286-7018, shibapho.net $$
Theo’s Italian
ITALIAN Hearty pastas and puffy, pizza-like Roman-style pinsa flatbreads top the menu at Cunningham Restaurant Group’s Italian spot. Named for restaurateur Mike Cunningham’s grandson, the restaurant incorporates some colorful whimsy into the decor, though the cocktail and wine list (which includes bottles and glasses) are quite adult, as are the sophisticated takes on otherwise homey Italian American fare. Lunch leans toward salads and sandwiches. Dinner includes pastas such as a luscious bowl of lobster tortelloni with squid, shrimp, roasted tomatoes, and a silky white wine cream sauce. Some pinsas, which easily serve two, come topped with a butcher’s case worth of meat. Others are piled high with fresh, seasonal produce and cheese. 2498 Perry Crossing Way, Plainfield, 317-203-9107, theositalian.com $$$
WALLS TALK AT ALLISON MANSION, WHERE EVERY INCH OF SPACE BARES INTRICATE, EARLY-20THCENTURY DETAIL.
BY CAMILLE GRAVES
WHEN INDIANAPOLIS Motor Speedway co-founder James Allison began building his brick, arts and crafts–style mansion on Cold Spring Road in 1911, he was one of a few members of the city’s elite putting down opulent roots on what would become known as Millionaires’ Row. His stately masterpiece included a silver globe chandelier imported from Germany; intricate wood- and stonework carved by European artisans; an indoor aviary with white Italian marble walls and floors, a pond, and a stained-glass skylight; an indoor pool; a music room with a two-story pipe organ; a telephone intercom system; and an elevator. Perhaps the most intriguing space is the small, surprisingly whimsical basement room where the windows are made of the bottoms of glass bottles and the walls and ceiling are covered with a gilt, hand-painted mural depicting Allison and two other co-founders of the IMS, Carl Fisher and Frank Wheeler, as young, 16th-century pheasant hunters. It was here that Allison and his friends frequently gathered to play cards, pouring themselves drinks from a liquor cabinet complete with an icebox located behind a pair of Gothic wooden doors. Allison died in 1928, and the estate was sold to the Sisters of St. Francis in 1936, who started Marian University. The home now serves as the office of the president. The adjacent formal garden and the Marian EcoLab, which contains ruins of the Allison estate and a neighboring estate, were originally designed by Danish landscape architect Jens Jensen.
