Expanding the Hoosier palate

Taste of Indiana
White River State Park
Last weekend

Uncle Artie scored with a hot sauce that was anything but tame.

What does Indiana taste like? For the over 25 restaurants, caterers, beverage vendors and food producers who participated in last weekend’s Taste of Indiana at White River State Park, the answer was crab cakes with a chipotle cream sauce to Three Floyd’s Gumball Head Ale. Surprisingly, not a single pork tenderloin was in attendance at the event, making some diners wonder just what constituted Hoosier cuisine.

That’s not to say that old favorites didn’t show their faces aplenty. Among local, old-school standards were the famous bourbon ham sandwich and pea salad from Ralph’s Great Divide and the days-gone-by chicken salad and ice cream pecan ball from the L.S. Ayres Tea Room at the Indiana State Museum, just across the park. St. Elmo’s Steakhouse offered its now ubiquitous, tear-inducing shrimp cocktail, and Ruth’s Chris served up samples of some of its steaks as well as rich creamed spinach, one of its side dishes diners have come to love.

But a few area establishments pushed the flavor edge with something slightly more creative, such as the cranberry-raisin bread pudding with a whiskey sauce, offered by Brownsburg’s Boulder Creek Dining Company, and some decadent, outsize fried biscuits with apple butter from Charbono’s in Avon. The latter also prepared some deliciously respectable crab cakes for land-locked Indiana with a little inspiration from the Southwest.

Uncle Artie’s and Hogheads BBQ went head-to-head with their rib tips, with Uncle Artie’s scoring with a hot sauce that was anything but tame. Maple Leaf Farms passed out samples of ready-to-eat duck, spreading the word to fowl skeptics that duck can be just as lean and as easy to prepare as more common culinary birds. Chains were represented in the form of Hard Rock Café and T.G.I. Friday’s, both featuring their trumped-up brand of bar fare. Even Jose Cuervo lent some spirit to the event.

A dearth of seating near the food booths left many diners colonizing sculptures and sidewalks, but from the looks of things on Friday night, event planners were able to draw a decent slice of the after-work crowd they were aiming for when they switched to a Friday-Saturday format rather than the more family-friendly Saturday-Sunday schedule from past years.

The biggest question of the weekend, however, was whether the smattering of restaurants represented could even come close to encompassing the breadth and variety of cuisine in the Circle City. While eateries as diverse as African Palace, the authentic West African eatery on 22nd Street, and Avon’s Big G’s BBQ offered up their house specialties, most of the big players in the Indy food scene were noticeably absent from the event. A demonstration stage sponsored by Deano’s Vinos brought in chefs from Peterson’s and R Bistro on Saturday.

But anyone hoping to sample a good cross-section of the culinary treasures of this growing metropolis left knowing they’d have to visit the restaurants themselves.