29-04-2025
- Automotive
- Indianapolis Star
Top central Indiana chefs and elite IndyCar drivers collide in these Rev dishes
Rev, the IU Health Foundation's annual fundraiser at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, will feature 90 chefs serving dishes inspired by Indy 500 drivers
Some driver-chef pairings are based on a shared cultural background, but many chefs have to step out of their comfort zone for Rev.
As the racing world hurtles toward the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway will kick off the month of May in a manner befitting the biggest day in motorsport — by throwing a massive party.
On Saturday night the Speedway will come alive for Rev, the IU Health Foundation 's marquee fundraising event since 2014. Tickets to Rev famously go fast; this year's $300 "premiere" and $600 "VIP elite" tickets were snapped up in a matter of hours when they became available in December.
While the event has become synonymous with live music, local celebrity appearances and checkerboard chic fashion, it is just as well-known for its food, with chefs from across Central Indiana stationed throughout the Pagoda Plaza and Pit Lane. This year Rev features 90 chefs, by far the largest roster in the event's history.
Every chef in attendance is matched with a prospective Indy 500 driver and tasked with preparing a dish to represent that racer, based on a brief bio Rev provides. Chefs and drivers can be paired for a variety of reasons, some more obvious than others, such as shared country of origin or a racer's personal enjoyment of a chef's fare.
"We try to take everything into consideration," Rev Executive Director Carol Howard said.
Howard, who helped launch Rev in 2014, said some duos arise based purely on the driver's personal preference. American driver Graham Rahal of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has long been paired with Greentown-based Blondie's Cookies simply because he loves the brand's myriad sweets, Howard said. Similarly, New Zealand IndyCar veteran Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing counts Fletcher Place fine dining spot Bluebeard among his favorite restaurants.
When possible, Howard said, she and her colleagues try to match chefs and drivers with shared backgrounds.
"For me, the diversity and uniqueness of food and the places we select are very important," she said.
Motorsport, like restaurants, features personalities from across the globe. That presents Rev with several distinct pairings, although finding chefs and drivers from the same country can be a challenge.
One opportunity for culinary overlap, albeit from nations thousands of miles apart, was pairing Mexican driver Pato O'Ward of Arrow McLaren with Che Chori owner Marcos Perera, who grew up in Argentina and has sampled a global smörgåsbord in his travels. Perera's O'Ward-inspired Rev dish is a chorizo slider that pays homage to the cuisines of Mexico and Argentina, which the restaurateur noted are distinct yet share many techniques and flavors.
"The same Spaniards that went to Mexico and brought the chorizo, they brought it to Argentina," Perera said. "But in every location there were different seasonings. I think the root is similar, but in every place people have given their variations."
Perera leant into those areas of intersection while incorporating elements of broader Latin culinary tradition into his Rev offering, topping a patty of Che Chori's scratch-made sausage with a house chimichurri and a relish of onions and peppers in vinegar called sarza criolla.
Rev forces many chefs out of their comfort zones
Many of the flavors in Perera's dish are ones he's known most of his life. Other chefs, meanwhile, rely less on their cultural background and more on professional experience, with a little Googling for good measure. Such was the case for Conrad Hotel executive chef Mike Pleines, who was tapped to represent Arrow McLaren driver Christian Lungaard, a native of Denmark. Pleines said he had never made Danish food before receiving his Rev assignment.
"It's kind of neat to be given a concept and try to come up with something interesting," Pleines said. "As a chef, I feel that's what we kind of do. We look at pictures or go to restaurants or look at menus and we see things that we like and we say, 'How can I make this mine?'"
For Pleines, the answer was a Midwest-Danish fusion of fried pork belly and macaroni and cheese available through May at the Conrad Lounge under the name "hygge mac." Hygge is a Danish and Norwegian word that denotes coziness and contentment, not unlike the feeling one gets from consuming a substantial volume of creamy macaroni and cheese. The pork belly in Pleines' dish is inspired by Danish stegt flæsk, a meal of fried pork belly, potatoes and parsley sauce. Pleines said for Rev he may add sweet and sour braised red cabbage in a nod to a similar Danish food called rødkål.
As for the macaroni and cheese, Pleines said that suggestion came from the Conrad's marketing team. What better way to represent Arrow McLaren — emphasis on the "Mc," or more traditionally, mac — than with one of America's favorite comfort foods?
"You know, I may not be the best chef in the world, but I'm pretty sure I can do a pretty good pork belly and mac and cheese," Pleines said.
Earlier this month Pleines had the opportunity to prepare the hygge mac with Lundgaard for a bit of Rev promotional content, a rarity among chef-driver pairings.
On the track and in the kitchen, things don't always go according to plan
Given IndyCar's jam-packed schedule, though, not to mention the everyday grind of the restaurant industry, some chefs never meet their assigned drivers. Even this year, when multiple racing teams coordinated meet-and-greets for their drivers and chefs during the Indy 500 Open Testing week, a WiFi issue caused a nearly 3-hour delay that wiped out at least two teams' meet-and-greets.
That leaves chefs like Erin Oechsle, a culinary instructor at the Area 31 Career Center with previous stops at multiple Indy-area restaurants, to research their driver's native cuisine and take their best shot. This weekend Oechsle will prepare a take on raggmunk, a potato pancake popular in Meyer Shank driver Felix Rosenqvist's home of Sweden.
Area 31's raggmunk will feature a shallow-fried disc of herby grated potatoes with Swedish lingonberry jam and bacon, likely in the form of rendered pork lardons or cooked into a compote with caramelized onions. Oechsle estimates she and and the Area 31 students serving as her precocious sous chefs will griddle about 1,800 pancakes to order at Rev, making the selection of ingredients crucial.
"You want to make sure whatever you choose is going to be delicious in the state that people eat it," she said. "Is an egg roll still going to be crunchy after six hours of being hot? No, it's going to be dried out or like a soggy hot mess of nastiness."
Nailing their dishes isn't just about pride or setting a high standard of quality for the cooks at Rev; it's also an economic consideration. Each chef at Rev is there voluntarily, meaning they must pay for their own food and labor force. Howard guessed the event costs each culinary team $5,000 to $8,000 depending on the ingredients used and the size of the staff.
Still, chefs who vie for a Rev invitation and those who return from year to year do so for a reason. In Area 31's case, the chance for culinary students to gain catering-like experience, meet experienced chefs and sample food from restaurants they otherwise might not visit is worth the investment. For Pleines, a Massachusetts native who spent years working on the West Coast and only came to Indianapolis in September, Rev is an opportunity to connect to his new home and its signature sporting event.
"I like to support the local culture and experience what is great about an area," he said. "I think here in the Midwest, I'd be really remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to experience this amazing thing that's been going on for 110 years."
