Pioneer - Revisit

My family has really enjoyed Pioneer in the past—and when given the option, the kids chose to go back. They have changed up the menu bit and our last visit was probably the best one yet. I also recently had the pleasure of a private wine dinner there and had a really good meal as well. It’s a place you should definitely check out if you have not already.

We started out with the everything pretzels ($8) with dill cream cheese and tomato olive schmear. I liked the play on an everything bagel, with the seasonings on the pretzels and the cream cheese. They are soft pretzels, but have a nice crusty crunch to them with the spices on top. As long as they’re on the menu and I am with my kids, I am pretty sure they will be ordered.

My daughter is also obsessed with arancini, and we had an order of these ($9). They have had a version of them in the past, but I think I preferred the lightness of these the most. They are rice balls that are seasoned with saffron, lightly fried and served with parsley aioli. Hubby wanted the meatballs ($12), and no one objected so we had those too. These were very tasty, even for meatballs. They were served with a rich red sauce and crostini. If you’re a meatball person, you should get them.

Hubby and I also ordered the frisee salad with a “fried” egg, guanciale, and fingerling potatoes. The only bad part of the meal was that they forgot to bring this until after we had already gotten our entrées, but we decided to eat it anyway, and I was so glad, because this is so good. I will certainly order this each and every time if it’s offered. The frisee is nicely dressed and acidic to balance the richness of the egg, which is barely poached and then breaded and deep-fried. It remains yolky and delicious. This is the perfect thing for me and I would happily eat this as my main dish—as it was I basically ate it as a dessert, which was fine by me.

Pictures from the wine dinner

Oh man, though, the star of the meal was the beer brined half chicken ($21). My son and I split it. Normally I don’t order chicken out, but this may change this practice. If you have ever been to San Francisco and ate the “chicken for two” at Zuni Café, this is very reminiscent of it. Pioneer does a bread salad underneath with greens—there’s a good amount of acid in the salad and it is so good with the extremely tender chicken. The chicken was just so good—it sort of fell off the bone and even the breast meat was tender and delicious. I highly recommend this dish.

Hubby and my daughter both had linguine and clams ($21). They both enjoyed them but agreed that other things were the stars of the night (hubby thought the salad and chicken were his favorite things and my daughter would say the pretzels). They use nice smallish clams and give you a decent amount of them. The sauce is flavorful, but could use maybe a little bigger punch of red pepper. 

Overall, this was a great meal and it’s a great place to remember when you want a nice local meal in Fountain Square.

Pioneer

1110 Shelby Street

Indy 46203

317/986-6761

www.pioneerindy.com 

Pioneer--Revisit (New Chef)

After spending three weeks in Italy this summer, my kids have been itching for some good Italian food. Yeah, we all know how that goes in this town. Particularly after you have actually experienced Italy and the wonderful variety of food that is offered (I know, I’m a broken record but it’s not just red sauce and alfredo people).

We decided to give Pioneer another try because I have been told they have a new(ish) chef (Lane Milburn) and that he used to work in San Francisco at Delfina, one of our old favorite neighborhood Italian joints. The menu has a Northern Italian/Alsace bent.

It’s a big place and I usually prefer sitting in the bar area for a bit of coziness, but we had the kids with us, and well, this is Indiana so we sat in the main room. I am happy to report that by the time we left, it was pretty full out there. And again, it’s big.

To start with, they brought us some little happy hour freebies (nice to see them doing this outside the bar area) of fried chickpeas, olives and sausage with pickled mustard seeds. It was a nice little treat, everyone loved the chickpeas and you know olives and me. Hubby was particularly fond of the sausage.

As appetizers, we ordered the pretzel with beer cheese and honey mustard ($6) and the short rib Milanese arancini ($6). The pretzel was a huge hit with all of us. It was obviously homemade, and had just the right amount of texture to it as well as salt. I am going through a little beer cheese obsession right now, and this one was just how I like it. More of a spreadable consistency (not melted) and had a nice kick from the beer. The honey mustard was also a nice variation or addition to the beer cheese. Pretty sure there will be two orders of this in the future if we take the kids again. The arancini were also very well received, particularly by hubby. The rice was nice and tender and stuffed with some short rib. The outside was breaded and fried just right so that it gave it the crunchy edge without drying out or liquefying the inside. They were sitting on a bed of saffron aioli, giving them a nice dipping sauce with just the right amount of tanginess.

Both the kids wanted to order pasta for their main dishes, so hubby and I went a little lighter on our choices because we knew we could eat part of theirs. When we were on the Amalfi coast in Italy, my entire family became obsessed with the tiny clams that are everywhere there. They are like the size of your fingertip. I have never seen them anywhere in the U.S. But there was linguini and clams ($21) on the menu at Pioneer, and my daughter was determined to get it and hopefully relive the vacation experience. While they weren’t the teeny tiny clams that we had (like I said I have never seen them here), they were nice and small and the dish was excellent. Definitely one of the better pasta dishes around town. The linguine was cooked just right and well seasoned with pancetta, red chili flakes, and white wine. The clams were small and tender.  A really tasty dish.

My son went with the rigatoni with “Sunday supper sauce,” meatballs, ricotta, and pancetta bread crumbs ($19). You want a rich and hearty (and delicious) plate of pasta? This is for you. I loved the balance with the creamy, tangy ricotta and the texture offered by the breadcrumbs. It was a deep, rich red sauce with a lot of flavor, but was so much more interesting because of the other things going on in the dish. Really well done. Again, one of the better pasta dishes I have had around Indy.

Like I said, hubby and I got appetizers as mains (and some sides) because we shared the pasta. I ordered the beef Carpaccio ($13) with radicchio, caper berries and Parmesan and hubby ordered the warm chicory salad with a poached egg ($11). We also ordered a side of the spatzle ($5) and the German potato salad ($5). The Carpaccio was a little different than most I have had—the beef was sliced a little thicker, but it was very good. It was so tender it was not hard to eat, even though it was a bit thicker. Loved the caper berries that were sliced on the plate to give it the acid that Carpaccio absolutely needs. The Parmesan added some saltiness. My kids were begging me for more bites of this all through dinner. It was a crowd pleaser for sure. Personally, I may have slightly preferred the chicory salad though. Wow, that was a great salad. It was slightly warm, so the chicory wasn’t too tough and it was dressed with a garum vinaigrette, which is a dressing made with a spice blend that gave it a great flavor. Plus there was more shaved Parmesan, croutons, and that wonderful poached egg giving it a rich creamy decadence. A wonderful salad. I highly recommend.

The sides were the only things that didn’t really impress as much. The potato salad was the better of the two, and was seasoned with gorgonzola, bacon, and dressed with Banyuls vinaigrette. It sounded much more interesting on paper than it actually tasted. I was looking for more kick from the dressing and the blue cheese, but it was kind of bland. Not bad, just not as exciting as I had hoped. The spatzle was quite dry and didn’t seem to have any seasoning to me. It was supposed to have lemon and black pepper, but I wasn’t really getting much of it. We left most of this one.

All in all though, this was a really, really good meal and I look forward to returning soon. If you are looking for some interesting Italian dishes, go give this place a shot. I still feel like it flies under the radar a lot more than it deserves. Go give them some love. (Only downside here...what is up with the parking in Fountain Square? Oy. Although Pioneer does have it's own parking lot in back).

Pioneer

1110 Shelby Street

Indy 46203

317/986-6761

www.pioneerindy.com 

Pioneer - Revisit

Hubby and I had an opportunity to go back to Pioneer the other night. We were walking around Fountain Square trying to decide where to go. We were going to try Thunderbird again, but they were full, so we walked across the street to Pioneer. The nice thing about this place, while it was doing a good business, because it’s so big, they could seat us right away. We asked to be in the bar, because it’s cozier, and they happily obliged.

We wanted to try different things this time from the last time so we started with the pork rillettes ($11) and the frisee and endive salad ($12). Man, they know how to do salads here. They may only do one on each menu, but so far, they’ve been totally worth ordering. Last time we had the butter lettuce salad and loved it. This time it was the frisee and endive lettuces topped with some shaved fennel, hearty chunks of blue cheese, toasted pumpkin seeds and “Austrian” ranch. Really good. The lettuces certainly have a touch of bitterness to them, but they were so nicely balanced with the creamy cheese and dressing. Loved the salty, crunchy kick from the pumpkin seeds as well. I would try any salad they offer. I find well-balanced, properly dressed, interesting, salads to be a struggle to find at many places.

The rillettes were not bad—they certainly know how to toast a piece of (Amelia’s) bread with a bit of oil just perfectly, but the pork itself was a little bland for me. I longed for the stronger flavor of the chicken liver mousse we had the first time. We did get the proportions of meat and the whole grain mustard served alongside just perfect though. The key was to spread a little mustard on the bread and then put the meat on top so you didn’t taste the mustard first---otherwise it tended to overwhelm the pork a bit.

For the main part of our meal, we had two more small plates, the pork belly ($14) and the potato pancakes (Kartoffelpuffer) ($10) and then the spatzle ($13). The pork belly was very good—two nice pieces of pork belly that weren’t too fatty, sitting on top of purple cabbage puree, pink oyster mushrooms and garnished with curry pickled mustard seeds. This was a lovely and tasty dish—although it was small, it was extremely rich. The spatzle was probably our favorite thing of the evening—the little spirals of hand cut pasta were so tender and cooked just perfectly. The creamy Comte Mornay sauce was so rich and cheesy. And the bits of spinach in there were a nice variation. This would definitely be a recommended order, and I know when we go back, hubby will insist on it. 

The potato pancakes were good—but so large and filling and not as interesting as the other things—they were basically like chunky mashed potatoes that were pan-fried and served with a bit of bacon jam, mustard crème fraiche and chives. That bacon jam was delicious for sure. Every bit of it got eaten, even if all the potato part did not. I recommend this as a good share for more than two people.

You definitely see certain themes on this menu—a lot of pork and a lot of mustard. Luckily we like both of those things a lot. Your vegetarian options are more limited, but the two we had (the salad and the spatzle) were actually the best two dishes of the night. So there you go.

I feel like this place flies under the radar a bit with everything that’s opening up right now, but it’s totally worth a visit. I can’t wait to see what the next salad is.

Pioneer

1110 Shelby Street

Indy 46203

317/986-6761

www.pioneerindy.com 

Pioneer

I told you hubby and I are trying to catch up on the new places in town—so the other night before heading to a concert downtown, we decided to try Pioneer. This is the newest spot in Fountain Square located in the old Deano’s Vino. It’s right across from The End of the Line.

spiced walnuts

The first thing I noticed as I walked into the place on a chilly December night was it was warm in there! Hallelujah! A restaurant that is at a proper temperature that you don’t need a parka. Seriously, I always dress in layers in restaurants in this town. Seems like summer or winter, they’re always freezing. But this place was perfectly comfortable. Cozy even. The main dining room is actually pretty large though—and with a stage on one side is maybe less so—we were seated in the bar space, which I thought was done well. It feels more like the size of your average Fountain Square restaurant—it had nice tables and comfortable chairs and a rustic vibe with the bare brick walls. I liked it.

The menu is a little bit different—it has a lot more sharable small plates then it does regular-sized menu items. This is totally fine with me, because I like getting lots of things, but some people might feel differently. My only gripe about the set up was that it seemed like many of the small plates were cold items, which might be a bit strange if you’re making a full meal out of them, particularly in the winter.

We started with the spiced walnuts ($6), the chicken liver mousse ($12) and the butter lettuce salad ($12).  We really enjoyed the chicken liver mouse and the salad—the salad was particularly good and different from most. I honestly rarely order salads out because they kind of bore me a lot of times, but this one sounded good on the menu and it was good. It was large leaves of butter lettuce properly tossed and fully dressed (but not too much) in blood orange and basil citronette. It was topped with fresh ricotta, shallots and fried crispy chicken skin. Why are more people not topping salads with crispy chicken skin? It was very well done—just exactly the right mix of stuff on the salad to give you an interesting flavor profile, but not just piling so much stuff on top that you can’t tell it’s even a salad any more. 

The chicken liver mouse with schmaltz, pickled veggies and Amelia’s bread was also very tasty. I use that word tasty because it really did taste good—the look of the dish was not overly appetizing though. The mousse was kind of smeared on the plate in a heap. The bread was amazing –split and buttered and toasted and just exactly right. The mousse was rich a creamy without being gamey the way chicken liver things can sometimes be. It was very good, even if it wasn’t the prettiest thing.

The walnuts? Well, they were fine, but I wouldn’t be itching to get them again unless you have a really large group to share them with—they are extremely strongly seasoned with rosemary, salt, and pepper, and while I enjoyed a couple of them, I didn’t want to eat much more. Actually, all of these “small plates” would be better with at least four people sharing I think—they are pretty good-sized portions, and I would like to try a few more things than we were able to.

steak tartare..so pretty

For the next course, we ordered the steak tartare ($15) and the cavatelli pasta dish ($13). You know it’s easy to lure me in with a tartare, even though I am particular about it. This one though? It was one of the better ones I have had in recent memory, and it was truly beautifully presented. I was suspicious that they are using ribeye in their version, but was pleasantly surprised by the luxuriousness that the extra fat gave to the beef. It was plated so well too—in a line with perfectly bite-sized house made croutons placed throughout. And the whole plate was then artfully dotted with aioli and mustard and topped with fried capers and chives. It was done in such a way, that it was so easy to get a perfect bite each time (ok, I secretly wanted like one more crouton, but that’s just me). I was truly impressed with this dish. I felt like it had so much finesse—and more so than say the chicken liver, even though it tasted good as well. I would highly recommend this dish.

The pasta was good, although not as good as the other things in my mind. Hubby really enjoyed it though. It was cavatelli pasta (kind of looks like little shells that are tightly wound) with rapini, leeks, chili flakes and a white wine and butter sauce. It had a little kick from the chili flakes—not too much though. I do like the way much of the food had a little heat in it somewhere—even in the salad—I think it was the way the chicken skin was seasoned. The pasta dish was a nice dish to have with other things, but I just don’t think I would want a whole plate of it as my main dish—it is definitely a better dish served to share. Hubby managed to finish it all up though. 

We were totally not going to get dessert, but I was lured in by the apple strudel—it was wrapped in phyllo after all. This makes something almost a guarantee I will get it. And I was very glad I did—it was really tasty. I liked it because it wasn’t overstuffed with apples, leaving the phyllo nice and crispy. It was topped with a caramel sauce and some cinnamon sugar topping and a buttermilk Chantilly cream. Really nicely done—not over the top on anything and cooked just right.

Overall we really enjoyed our experience at Pioneer. It was comfortable and our server was friendly. On the whole, the food was very good, even if some things were just okay. But I would be happy to go back and try some other things. And get that tartare again for sure. Let me know if you have been and if so, what you thought.

Pioneer

1110 Shelby Street

Indy 46203

317/986-6761

www.pioneerindy.com