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Indianapolis Star
5 days ago
- General
- Indianapolis Star
INdulge: It's tomato season. This summer salad is the best thing I ate in Indy this week
I spent last weekend up north in the charming lakeside town of Syracuse, where I read some books, played some euchre and swallowed what felt like roughly one eighth of Lake Wawasee (I'm really bad at swimming). The trip brought back memories of childhood visits to my grandparents' home in nearby South Bend, where no summer was complete without eating something grown in the dirt of my grandmother's garden. Something like: While it feels wrong to visit Goose the Market and not get a sandwich, the Near Northside deli counter is currently one of the local eateries you're most likely to find a big honking pile of tomatoes. So for this week's INdulge, I purchased the market's burrata salad. Previously in INdulge: This beautiful, messy hot dog is the best thing I ate in Indy this week Goose serves the salad every Thursday during peak tomato season, which in Indiana typically runs through the end of August. A thicket of peppery mixed greens supports six palm-sized slabs of heirloom tomato and a rotund blob of burrata, a delightful balloon-like dairy product filled with mozzarella shreds and clotted cream. The burrata is cool and rich, faintly sweet and a plenty salty with a twinge of sourness. It's great, but I came for the tomatoes. Though best known for corn and soybeans, Indiana also grows a lot of tomatoes (tuh-may-tuhs, as my Hoosier grandfather would have called them). Most of the crop is raised by Elwood-based Red Gold, the largest privately owned tomato processor in the United States. Goose the Market sources its tomatoes from Full Hand Farm, a small organic grower in Noblesville that provides produce for multiple Indianapolis-area restaurants including Beholder, Bluebeard and Tinker Street. The green-flecked heirlooms are plenty sweet for a fruit that is, gastronomically speaking, basically a vegetable. They have the trademark acidity and dense, pulpy texture that I understand many small children and even some grown adults don't really vibe with but that I adore. Dressed up with balsamic vinaigrette and ground pepper, Full Hand's tomatoes make a lovely and filling lunch for $13. That price point should feel reasonable to anyone who has ever bought a quart of deliciously gnarly-looking farmers market tomatoes for — and this may be a slight exaggeration — roughly a million dollars. In truth, good tomatoes at a forgiving price are hard to come by. Nowadays, most mass-market tomatoes in Indiana are harvested with machines, as large-scale producers breed their tomatoes to have thicker skins that can better withstand machine-picking. But those tomatoes also lack some of the flavor compounds found in hand-picked varietals, yielding plants that taste less like summer fruit and more like Del Monte's take on packing peanuts. When it comes to harvesting flavorful tomatoes en masse, man beats machines every time. From a humanitarian standpoint, well, you can probably guess where this is going. Hand-picking, which was the modus operandi in Indiana until the 1980s and still is in parts of Florida and California, is extremely hard work. Pickers spend long days in the summer heat, backs bent beneath the beating sun. For much of our nation's post-slavery history, that labor has primarily been performed by migrant workers, many of them Mexicans or Mexican Americans who follow seasonal farm work across the country in exchange for meager pay and dormitory-like living accommodations of varying quality. The 1964 repeal of the Bracero Program, which for 22 years allowed Mexican immigrants to temporarily work on farms throughout the United States, had rapid consequences for Indiana farms. In a 1965 article from the Marion Leader-Tribune, Hoosier farmers statewide reported that roughly a fourth of their tomato crop had rotted due to unfavorable weather and a failure to attract enough workers. More: Historic Indiana tavern, opened in 1934, still 'kind of everybody's place' under new owner Regional employment offices tried to recruit lower-class 'local persons' to perform the backbreaking work, with little success. One might speculate that those contacted had little interest in developing chronic lumbar pain and/or pesticide poisoning for $1 an hour, but I don't want to make assumptions. The United States has tried repeatedly to wean itself off immigrant employment, but cheap labor is a tough habit to kick. The agriculture industry remains one of the nation's largest employers of documented and undocumented immigrants, historically America's most willing suppliers of low-paying menial labor. This isn't meant to make you feel like a robber baron every time you buy a bag of Romas at Kroger, just a reminder that really good tomatoes are hard-earned, so enjoy the ones you can. I encourage you to swing by Goose the Market on an upcoming Thursday for a dish that's literally glistening with the flavors of a Hoosier summer. Bring your own bug bites. What: Burrata salad, $13 every Thursday while tomatoes are in season Where: Goose the Market, 2503 N. Delaware St., (317) 924-4944, In case that's not your thing: Sandwiches are the name of the game at Goose the Market. Sliced-in-house cold cuts and a variety of toppings adorn Amelia's bread on daily offerings like the Goose (prosciutto, mozzarella, basil, olive oil and pepper, $14) and the Batali (capocollo, soppressata, provolone, romaine, marinated red onions and tomato preserves, $14). There are also rotating daily specials, with vegetarian versions typically available. Broad Ripple Chips, gelato and cans of craft beer round out the menu.
Indianapolis Star
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indianapolis Star
INdulge: National dish of Brazil at new Mass Ave spot is best thing I ate in Indy this week
It was a blistering Fourth of July weekend, during which I exercised the full extent of my God-given right as an American to consume a nutritionally indefensible number of grilled meats on assorted buns. That said, man can not live on Hebrew Nationals alone (so I'm told). For this week's edition of INdulge, I swung by a new restaurant in my neighborhood for: Opened just over two years ago in Broad Ripple, Fernando's Mexican and Brazilian Cuisine has quickly made a name for itself with a menu inspired by the home countries of its owners, Elizabeth Fernandez and her husband Cristiano Rodrigues. Rodrigues' motherland gives us feijoada, the national dish of Brazil and a staple food throughout the Portuguese-speaking world. More in food: Historic Indiana tavern, opened in 1934, still 'kind of everybody's place' under new owner Brazilian feijoada (fay-zhwah-dah) is a stew of black beans (feijão is the Portuguese word for bean) and meat, traditionally pork and beef. Fernando's prepares its take with hunks of pork belly simmered to shreds and a scattering of sausage. The restaurant serves a dish called feijoada completa, which pairs the stew with white rice, cooked collard greens, orange slices and a fine powder of toasted cassava root called farafo, to be sprinkled on top for additional flavor and texture. What feijoada lacks in conventional attractiveness, it more than makes up for in flavor. It has the deeply savory taste and concrete-like consistency that make meat-studded stews of the American South so special, while the crunchy collard crinkles and farafo dust add lovely textural contrast. The meal gets an extra bit of pop from the accompanying vinegrete (also called molho a campanha), an acidic Brazilian condiment of minced tomato, onion and bell pepper similar to pico de gallo. At $30, the feijoada at Fernando's is substantially pricier than the dishes typically featured in INdulge, so consider saving this meal for a special occasion or a date night when you're especially invested in impressing your partner (the Broad Ripple Fernando's also serves a lunch portion for $15). The origins of feijoada are, supposedly, much more modest. A popular Brazilian story claims feijoada was created by indigenous and African slaves who added leftover meat to pots of cheap black beans. But many modern scholars argue it's unlikely a large share of the Portuguese settlers who owned slaves would have been altruistic enough to give them even the lowliest cut of livestock. Meat in any form has been a massive luxury for most of human history, which can be easy to forget if you grew up in a relatively prosperous nation where the Arby's '5 for $5' was a thing. Indy food history: These 10 Indianapolis dining institutions are still worth visiting all these years later Today, historians generally agree Brazilian feijoada probably descended from Roman stews that migrated to western and southern Europe, spawning a class of similar delicacies such as French cassoulet and Spanish cocido. Portuguese colonists likely carried their feijoada to Brazil, adapting it to include the black beans and cassava of native Brazilian cuisine. While feijoada's mystique as a dish created by and for the downtrodden doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny, more affordable home-cooked renditions are still common in Brazil. As someone whose cultural upbringing skews much closer to St. Paul, Minn. than São Paulo, I don't have strong feelings about how much feijoada should cost, though the dinner portion at Fernando's certainly isn't for penny pinchers. Personally, I'd be perfectly content to occasionally splurge on a hefty, well-rounded meal that tastes as good as Fernando's' feijoada, though I'll plan my visit a bit better next time. Brazilians typically eat feijoada for lunch on weekends for reasons that became brutally evident to me when I returned to my workday, my very full stomach churning through its recommended daily allowance of about five different nutrients. As several writers have noted over the years, recovering from a feijoada completa is the sort of activity for which you should probably clear your calendar. Where: Fernando's Mexican and Brazilian Cuisine, 834 E. 64th St., (317) 377-4779 and 888 Massachusetts Ave., (317) 771-6653, What: Feijoada, $30 In case that's not your thing: There's plenty of room to experiment or stick to your comfort zone at Fernando's, whose blend of Mexican and Brazilian dishes ranges from familiar American favorites like fajitas and enchiladas ($10 to $20 at lunch and dinner) to lesser-known Brazilian staples like chicken stroganoff ($24) or a dish of stewed chicken and okra called frango com quiabo ($24). Given the higher price point — and quality of food — I suggest taking a leap of faith and asking your server for advice.
Indianapolis Star
27-06-2025
- Sport
- Indianapolis Star
INdulge: It's simply too hot. These ice creams were the best things I ate in Indy this week.
Well, folks, I hate to overreact, but I think it's time to call it a wrap on summer. Less than a week after the season officially began, Indianapolis has endured multiple heat advisories and watched the Pacers lose Game 7 of the NBA Finals in just about the most agonizing way possible. My disdain for summer is well-documented at this point, but so is my resolve to push through it with the help of empty calories. Needing a frosty assist more than ever, for this week's INdulge I toured our sun-beaten city for: In the time since the atmosphere started feeling like the steam that belches out of manhole covers, I've visited three Indianapolis ice cream shops in search of relief. Late last week, when the heat was just setting in and hope for a Pacers championship still sprang eternal, I began my quest with a cup of ube ice cream at Howdy Homemade downtown. Howdy, which shares space with Needler's Fresh Market at 320 N. New Jersey St., is one of six United States locations of the Texas-based mini-chain. Its silky-smooth take on the purple yam native to South Asia and Oceana is faintly fruity with a nutty taste strikingly similar to pistachio. I suspect a medical professional would advise against hydrating oneself by consuming frozen dairy instead of, say, water, but Howdy's ube ice cream is a remarkably refreshing and much better-tasting option. By the time I reached the second stop on my dairy drive, I was a different man. A broken one. Pacers star point guard Tyrese Haliburton had torn his Achilles tendon mere minutes into what seriously looked like a title-winning effort and I, a die-hard Pacers fan of roughly 40 days, was absolutely gutted. Prioritizing comfort above all else, a few days later I took a short trip up to SoBro, where longtime Indy ice cream vendor Lick recently opened a new shop just off the Monon Trail and 52nd Street. There, I snagged a scoop of blueberry and sweet corn ice cream. Lick's ode to summer produce is a pale purple blend speckled with blueberries and hunks of the shop's house-made corn cookies. The blueberry is pleasant if not especially strong, while the cookie chunks capture the butter-doused richness and unmistakable grit of a slab of cornbread. Perhaps I'm just another Hoosier in the pocket of Big Corn, but I find the mere idea of putting cornbread in ice cream frankly beautiful, and Lick's rendition was no exception. For one final affront to my arteries, I shot down Interstate 65 to Paradise Mx in Southport and purchased the closest thing to a pharmaceutical-grade mood booster I could find within the parlor's freezer case. That was Paradise Mx's Gansito, vanilla ice cream blended with chunks of the Mexican snack cake of the same name. For the uninitiated, Gansito (Spanish for 'little goose') is a small sponge cake topped with artificially flavored strawberry jelly and cream, all coated in a mixture approximating chocolate. Paradise Mx's twist on the packaged sweet is an all-out blitz on the dopamine receptors — an uber-dense, spoon-bending swirl with a degree of palatability typically found in the cellophane-wrapped creations of multinational food corporations. After all that, it's worth noting my ice cream escapades only briefly cooled me off. Ninety-five-degree humidity will have that effect. Nor did all that ice cream consumption much alleviate the pain that, for some cruel, unfeeling reason, tends to accompany sports fandom. Ultimately, I suppose only time (and another miraculous Finals run) can heal all wounds. I'm just saying, if you have a lot of time on your hands, there are worse things to fill it with than ice cream. What: Ube ice cream, $4, Blueberry and sweet corn ice cream, $5, and Gansito ice cream, $4.30 Where: Howdy Homemade, 370 N. New Jersey St., (317) 397-0008, Lick, (317) 979-0237, 1101 E. 52nd St., Paradise Mx, 7045 Emblem Drive, (317) 629-8450, In case that's not your thing: If you aren't looking for ice cream at one of these shops, you're in the wrong will return July 11. Have a wonderful Fourth of July.
Indianapolis Star
20-06-2025
- General
- Indianapolis Star
INdulge: Traditional Nigerian stew with rich history is best thing I ate in Indy this week
Juneteenth, which commemorates the day the last slaves of the Confederacy were freed in 1865, has come and gone. However — if you'll allow me a brief moment on my radical, extremist soapbox — one could argue you don't need a federal holiday to support Black-owned businesses in your community. Among those businesses are Indianapolis' various West African restaurants. For this week's INdulge, I sampled a sliver of that robust culinary tradition with: If you're unfamiliar with Nigerian food, I suspect you could wander up to just about any restaurant that serves it, order a dish completely at random and end up with a memorably flavorful surprise. For an idea of where to start, consider the ayamase at Jollof Buka on the Near Westside. Black-owned restaurants: 40 to check out in the Indianapolis area Ayamase (aye-ah-mah-shay) is a thick sauce made with a blend of green peppers (usually bell peppers and/or unripe chilies), aromatic vegetables, hard-boiled egg and irú, fermented African locust beans. Various cuts of meat are also a common ingredient; Jollof Buka prepares its ayamase ($16.95) with shreds of turkey and chicken. These components are cooked in bleached palm oil, which has a distinct yet hard-to-place flavor I can best describe as hardy. The ayamase has a semi-dry, fibrous consistency similar to other spice pastes like Mexican salsa macha or Indonesian sambal. It packs a slight vegetal sweetness thanks to the peppers, while the meat and egg make it a well-rounded, savory meal. Though the stew is not especially spicy, an overly ambitious spoonful won't go unnoticed on the way down your throat. While not as well-known as jollof, Nigeria's national dish of spiced rice from which Jollof Buka gets its name (buka is a term for a casual restaurant in Yoruba, one of three major languages spoken in Nigeria), ayamase is extremely popular in the West African country. Unlike centuries-old jollof, ayamase has likely only been around for about a hundred years. The most popular origin story for ayamase tells of a woman living in the small Nigerian town of Ikenne named Felicia Ajibabi Adesina, who in the 1920s developed a sauce of peppers and palm oil to serve at her food stand with Ofada rice (ayamase is often referred to as Ofada stew). Supposedly, Adesina's short-tempered husband would often get into scraps with neighbors, prompting concerned friends and family members to call him Mase, a Yoruba word that means 'don't' — as in, come on, man, don't hit him. In turn, Adesina's wildly popular sauce became known as obe aya Mase, meaning 'Mase's wife's sauce,' and eventually just ayamase. Previously in INdulge: Why do dads love to grill? This BBQ dish was best thing I ate in Indy this week While the fun stories behind our favorite foods typically fall apart under scrutiny, the legend of Felicia Adesina actually seems to hold up. It's the only historical explanation for ayamase I can find, including in one of Nigeria's oldest independent newspapers, The Guardian. Amid a lack of contrary evidence, I'm content to believe the tale of Adesina's fiery entrepreneurial spirit and similarly combustible husband. Whoever its inventor, ayamase remains a strong representative of Nigerian cuisine. Though summer generally doesn't stir cravings of hot, spiced stew, I'd say a visit Jollof Buka is worth the sweat. What: Ayamase, $16.95 Where: Jollof Buka, 2501 W. Washington St., (317) 384-1575, In case that's not your thing: Jollof Buka's menu caters to diners of widely varying curiosity levels, so it's OK if you're totally new to Nigerian food. The jollof with jerk chicken ($18), fried spiced chicken wings ($9) or vegetarian okra soup ($16.49) should all ring reasonably familiar to the Western palate. Meanwhile, more adventurous eaters can swing for peppered ponmo (cow skin cooked in chili paste, $16) or the spicy goat stir fry called asun ($16, weekends only).
Indianapolis Star
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Indianapolis Star
INdulge: Why do dads love to grill? This BBQ dish was best thing I ate in Indy this week
A month after florists and brunch restaurants encouraged us to treat our mothers like the angels they are, the great big capitalist machine offers a different approach to celebrate dad: why not give some meat to the old fart? The bond between grilled meat and the platonic ideal of an American dad is as strong as his stereotypical monstrous calves and as enduring as the combover he refuses to let die. Ahead of Father's Day, for this week's INdulge I explored that relationship with a hefty portion of: Drive past the intersection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and 25th Streets with your window down, and you'll likely catch a whiff of the all-consuming aroma radiating from the stout white brick building that houses Bar-B-Q Heaven, pitmaster Ronald Jones' 73-year-old Indianapolis institution. One source of that smoky siren call is Bar-B-Q Heaven's turkey ribs, which I shamelessly scarfed down on a recent visit. Beat the heat with a cold one: 12 Indianapolis breweries to visit this summer Notably, turkey 'ribs' aren't ribs — the mighty feathered terror that is the turkey doesn't yield chest bones with much meat on them — but rather the bird's shoulder blade. Three such slabs comprise Bar-B-Q Heaven's turkey ribs ($16.49 with two sides), which come doused in a reflective orange-red coating of barbecue sauce. The faux rib is as tender as white meat gets, practically ejecting itself from the bone. The sauce, which I ordered hot (you can also choose sweet or mild), livens up the turkey with faintly fruity sweetness and a brief yet punishing flash of heat. Whether from the sauce, mid-June humidity or sheer meat consumption, you're unlikely to conclude a meal on Bar-B-Q Heaven's patio with a dry forehead. We've discussed previously in INdulge how American barbecue is inextricable from Black culture — Bar-B-Q Heaven is one of Indy's oldest Black-owned eateries — dating back to enslaved Africans who adapted the native Jamaican Taíno technique of cooking meat on racks of sticks called barabicu. For today's column, though, I wanted to examine barbecue specifically as it relates to dads. Previously in INdulge: These jerk chicken wings are best thing I ate in Indy this week In the 1950s, the commercial availability of outdoor gas and Weber charcoal grills offered anyone with a backyard the power of the fire pit. Though many early advertisements for grills marketed the product toward America's homemakers, aka mothers and women, the target audience eventually swung to men. Researchers have offered several explanations for why that might be, many of which center around the naturalistic fallacy that men were simply made for meat and fire. Brands were quick to lean into that somewhat dubious (today's scholars suspect prehistoric gender roles were much less defined than originally thought) yet widely embraced belief. Summer is (almost) here: 20+ Indy-area patios for dining and drinking outside Nowadays, you don't have to search too hard online to find some pseudoscientific dreck about how eating meat connects a man to his primal forefathers. The same corner of social media that instructs men to triple their testosterone by guzzling raw milk often bemoans how far we have fallen from our elite hunter ancestors, as if the fellas were out in the tundra throwing haymakers at woolly mammoths all day. It may well be that grill makers and meat producers pounced on that vague association, profiting enormously. American psychologist and marketing expert Ernest Dichter, for one, in 1955 encouraged companies to brand foods as tied to gender identity, such as selling men the idea that meat was inherently manly. Frankly, as someone who grew up in the digital age, I find the line between genuine human experience and manufactured marketing content can blur. There are plenty of so-called masculine activities I do thoroughly enjoy — grilling, drinking beer, reading Hemingway — in a way that feels totally natural, even though I'm pretty sure cavemen never shotgunned a Miller Lite nor read 'A Sun Also Rises.' Moreover, the exact science behind the phenomena doesn't change the fact that many men, dads certainly included, simply love barbecue. The next chance you get, consider celebrating Pops with a heavy-duty clamshell box of turkey ribs, even if that's a minuscule repayment for someone who helped raise you — which, to me, seems like a terrifying and impossibly difficult task. Then again, if it nets you free barbecue once a year, perhaps I do see the appeal of this whole fatherhood thing. What: Turkey ribs, $16.49 Where: Bar-B-Q Heaven, 2515 Dr. MLK Jr. St., (317) 926-1667 and 877 E. 30th St. (closed Sunday and Monday), (317) 283-0035, In case that's not your thing: If it fits in a roasting tray, there's a decent chance you'll find it at Bar-B-Q Heaven. The eatery's ribs ($16.49 with two side) and pulled pork (listed as BBQ on bun, $13) are the headliners, but you can also find uber-tender pig feet ($10.49) and a treasure trove of sides and desserts including thick macaroni and cheese ($3.59 to $8) and chess pie ($4.29 per slice). Though a bit lacking in options for those with dietary restrictions, Bar-B-Q heaven is never short on nap-inducing comfort food.
