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.
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| 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
Circle City
Sweets
Indianapolis
City Market
222 East
Market Street
Indy 46204
317/632-3644
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
Pete Schmutte
Pastry Chef
