City Market Dinner

This isn’t exactly my regular type of post, but I wanted to let you all in on something I have been working on for the last couple of months—an idea from Brad Gates that we talked about back in February when he was dropping off our annual Valentine’s Day dinner.  This past Saturday, I helped to organize what I hope with be the first of many market dinners at the City Market downtown.

We kept it fairly small for the initial attempt. I invited several people I know and several of you I feel like I know through the blog.  There were about 30 of us and we sat upstairs at large tables at the market and enjoyed food from Brad Gates Catering, Circle City Soups and Sweets, Fermenti Artisan, and pastry chef Pete Schmutte.   

Photos courtesy of Brown Sugar Meatloaf

I love the fact that we got to sit in an historic Indianapolis building eating local seasonal food prepared by market chefs—and we tried to keep the price reasonable at $45 per person.  We wanted the dinner to be accessible to lots of people in terms of price and formality.  I think people genuinely enjoyed themselves and it was great to interact with both old and new friends.

Dinner started with cheese and various pickled veggies.  The next course was homemade beet pasta with housemade salmon pastrami and a fennel cream sauce. The main course was bison medallions topped with cabbage, favas, pea shoots and a Vidallia onion demi glace and a baby root vegetable pot pie topped with Capriole farms goat cheese. Dessert was a lovely chocolate namelaka with passion fruit ganache (with lots more to it). The dessert was almost too pretty to eat.  Almost.  We were also treated to a plate of various flavors of macaroons and even more cheese. 

The dinner was even better than I hoped for food-wise, the setting completely casual, and it was great to bring various Indy food loving people together over a meal.  I know the market vendors hope to make these types of dinners recurring events and that is why I am doing this post.  I want to help them compile an email list for future dinners of anyone who might be interested in attending that I can pass along to them (and also for purely selfish reasons—I want to attend more of them myself!)  When they’re announced, the menu and the price are set (and payment is made in advance).  If you are interested in being included in the mailing list for future dinners, please leave me your contact information in a comment below (or if you were there, let me know what you thought about it) or email me at erininindy@gmail.com.  I can’t wait for the next one and I can’t wait to meet more of you!

***Special thanks to Brown Sugar Meatloaf for having the good sense to take some proper photos (I took a couple, but hers are so much prettier).  The photos here are her work. 

Brad Gates Catering

Indianapolis City Market

222 East Market Street

Indy  46204

317/445-0105

www.bradgatescatering.com

Circle City Sweets

Indianapolis City Market

222 East Market Street

Indy  46204

317/632-3644

www.circlecitysweets.com

Circle City Soups

Indianapolis City Market

222 East Market Street

Indy  46204

317/956-2395

Fermenti Artisan

Indianapolis City Market

222 East Market Street

Indy  46204

317/493-1652

www.facebook.com/fermentiartisan

Pete Schmutte

Pastry Chef

Pete.schmutte@gmail.com