The Fountain Room Is Bottleworks’s Biggest Pop Star

A shareable facet of polenta-dense corn pudding and a scorching butter-topped steak are among the many supper membership requirements.

OVER THE COURSE of a leisurely dinner at The Fountain Room’s July grand opening, we watched via the floor-to-ceiling home windows as no fewer than three totally different beaming {couples} posed for skilled photographs in entrance of the bronze double doorways of the Bottleworks boutique lodge subsequent door. The 1931 landmark’s majestic entrance is ready in opposition to a sugar-white Artwork Deco façade, the centerpiece of the 12-acre, mixed-use Bottleworks District that opened final 12 months after a $300 million revamp of what was as soon as the most important Coca-Cola bottling plant on the earth. Immediately, wrapped in glazed terra cotta and strung with twinkle lights, it stands as one in all downtown’s most beautiful step-and-repeat backdrops.

“We knew we wished to benefit from that nice view of Bottleworks,” says Blake Fogelsong, proprietor and director of operations for The Fountain Room’s 57-year-old mother or father firm, Clancy’s Inc. Restaurant Group. By the identical token, perhaps the grand previous lodge ought to flip its Nice Gatsby gaze within the course of this good-looking new construct with two ranges of wonderful decor, together with however not restricted to: cobalt-blue tufted leather-based chairs, a classic Akai reel-to-reel sound system, marble bartops, cascading chandeliers, terrazzo flooring, efficiency shelving, pops of shiny ceramic tile and boldly patterned wallpaper, plenty of dramatic lighting, and 6,300 sq. ft of curated aptitude. There’s a lot to absorb at “Mass Ave’s Most interesting Supper Membership.”

After which there’s the meals. The menu, and govt chef Andrew Popp’s unusual course, merges the very best elements of a retro-classic steakhouse with the big-shouldered consolation of a Wisconsin supper membership. Popp wished to give attention to housemade family-style sides, freshwater catches that you just would possibly deliver again from a fishing journey up north, ice cream–primarily based desserts like grasshopper pie, and proteins that pair effectively with aged cocktails. A jumbo plank of beer-battered northern Canadian whitefish served with fennel slaw and tartar sauce is one in all his extra apparent nods to the backwoods-gentleman vibe. In the identical vein, Popp does a basic supper-club relish tray of home pickles up to date with peppadew jam and pimento cheese. The French onion soup’s herbed beef broth is deceptively gentle underneath its toasty mantle of fontina. The roasted carrots put on a bourbon glaze. And diners can improve their Licensed Angus Colorado steak with a horseradish crust, or maybe a market-priced lobster tail.

Supper membership or not, an ordinary Wisconsin restaurant goes to serve some model of fried cheese. “However I wished to do one thing a bit of totally different with that,” says Popp. As an alternative, he stuffed pickled peppadew peppers with pimento cheese and rolled them in panko earlier than frying the tongue-twisters to a gooey-cored crisp. It is smart that the identical kitchen would know its method round a showstopping wedge salad (a cold iceberg doorstop piled with Gorgonzola, pickled purple onion, chopped egg, pork lardons, and buttermilk dressing) after which prepare dinner a 20-ounce cowboy ribeye with precision charring.

The Fountain Room is happy with its purple meat. You possibly can inform by the best way each server talks up the sirloins, strips, and filets. And rightfully so. Prime rib is served by the fatty slab day by day in three sizes—a 10-ounce Mass Ave lower, a 12-ounce queen lower, and a 16-ounce king lower—with heat, salty au jus poured tableside. Wagyu fanatics can get their repair of exquisitely marbled beef within the type of meaty Bolognese; a hulking burger topped with pimento cheese, Nueske’s slab bacon, bread-and-butter pickles, and onion jam; or Fountain Room’s elevated meatloaf with its baked-on glaze of housemade ketchup.

Chef Popp, who labored beforehand at Blind Owl Brewery and Cortona’s Italian Delicacies & Wine Bar in Fortville, reveals his creativeness in a hen and dumplings do-over that makes use of three items of fried hen. All thighs, in fact. He replaces the usual plugs of broth-steamed dough balls with crispy Fresno-cheddar biscuits. Creamy, pepper-flecked velouté poured over the biscuits like white gravy filled with carrots, celery, and onion is the one acquainted touchpoint out of your grandmother’s Dutch-oven recipe.

Cream-based dishes are, the truth is, their very own meals group right here. And whereas the luscious mouthfeel is overkill in a gloppy button-mushroom casserole, it’s pure bliss within the chipotle corn pudding thickened with polenta and lavished with bitter cream. The identical goes for decadent whipped Yukon gold potatoes fortified with butter, and a silky lobster bisque that needs to be on each soup-lover’s bucket checklist. The inventory is wealthy and briny, the flavour intensified with sherry and amaretto. Each spoonful dredges up mind-blowing quantities of candy, tender claw meat.

Begin with creamy, scoopable brie brûlée and a basic cocktail with branded ice dice within the cozy, low-slung bar.

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The prime rib French dip and noble Coca-Cola ribs are predictably scrumptious, however I’ve by no means tasted something just like the luscious brie brûlée, served in a shallow dish with a crushed-pistachio crust. You scoop up the honey-sweetened delicate cheese lower with cream (in fact) to present it the supple consistency of savory gelato—on skinny crostini, selecting up bits of onion jam and Luxardo cherry juice.

Meals like that is scrumptious sufficient to present you tunnel imaginative and prescient. Slicing right into a blue cheese–crusted filet or making an attempt to share a velvety bittersweet chocolate pot de creme topped with crushed cookies, whipped cream, and macerated berries, you would possibly lose sight of the grandeur of this restaurant that was two years within the making, that waited out a pandemic to make its dramatic entrance. “I bear in mind after I first toured the constructing, they usually shut down per week later as a result of pandemic. I wasn’t positive this was ever going to occur,” says Fogelsong, whose very fashionable restaurant (designed by famend Indianapolis agency Phanomen Design, which additionally gave us HC Tavern, Vida, and the Ironworks Rize) nonetheless manages to really feel timeless. Perhaps that’s as a result of The Fountain Room is a tribute—proper all the way down to the stylized water-feature brand—to its traditionally effervescent neighbor subsequent door.

How refreshing. 

INFO
830 Massachusetts Ave., 463-238-3800, thefountainroom.com

HOURS
Mon.–Thurs., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–11 p.m.; Solar., 11 a.m.–9 p.m.

VIBE
Hoosier supper membership

TASTING NOTES
Up to date variations of basic Midwestern dishes.

NEIGHBORHOOD
Mass Ave

MUST-ORDER
Brie brûlée, lobster bisque, and the complete rack of braised pork ribs flippantly dabbed with Coca-Cola barbecue sauce. Chocolate pot de creme for dessert.

3 STAR RATING
★★½