Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Farewell L'explorateur



It is with a heavy heart that I must report that one of my all time favorite restaurants in Indy, and one of the places that gave me hope when I moved here almost 3 years ago, is closing. After just about 3 years, L'explorateur will be closing as of January 31st. Thanks FeedMe/DrinkMe for the heads up. And you can read Chef Neal Brown’s farewell message on his blog Babelfish Tartare. You will be sorely missed.

I want to say that I agree with the FeedMe/DrinkMe sentiment about what this says about us as Indy diners. We need to support our independent restaurants and chefs or else we are relegated to crappy (and mainly chain) food. It is January which is a rough time for restaurants anyway, and in this economy, it is even harder for places to survive. Now I realize the restaurant-goers are probably being hit as well, but if you can, go out and support our local independent restaurants and chefs. SOON. Check out my list of favorites for some ideas—and right now, Devour Downtown is still going on right?, so you should be able to get some deals even if you are on a budget. Keep our chefs in our City—I started this blog to try and get people excited about what is going on in our dining scene—and to raise our standards. Don’t let me down!

On the bright side, after reading Chef Brown’s own blog, I am hopeful that L’explorateur will rise again (maybe downtown this time?) and I for one can’t wait! (Hey, Spring is my favorite food season, hint, hint!) And in the meantime, I will say it again, go out and support local chefs and restaurants, many of whom are doing great things. If you want suggestions, I am happy to give them!

To Chef Brown, goodbye, good luck, and we will see you soon!

3 comments:

  1. That's sad, we'd only had the pleasure of eating there once this summer and the meal was great - we haven't checked off all the places we wanted to eat in town yet, so we hadn't rotated back. Probably very tough for fine dining in this economy unless you're in a location where you can draw expense accounters. They'll probably do a lot better downtown, but he'll have to dumb down the menu for conventioneers.

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  2. Neal Brown opened Pizzaology and I hear great things about that! He was a great chef when he was at Hoaglin many years ago and I am sure he like a good wine gets better with age!

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  3. Emily: Yes, Neal Brown owns pizzology and you can find a review here on my blog if you are interested in my opinion on it. I hear he is also working on a new restaurant called Tiger and Taco with tacos and ceviche (according to his twitter account).

    I do still miss L'ex though.

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