There's a building that sits along E 82nd Ave. in Indianapolis near the Keystone Fashion Mall that I've driven past many times on my trips out to Indianapolis. I remember it was a music venue for awhile, then it became a restaurant - one that I was planning on trying. However, when I went there in the Fall of 2013, the place was closed up. This past summer, I noticed that a new restaurant had opened in the spot. After a morning meeting with a dealer in Indianapolis not long ago, I decided to stop in at The District Tap before heading up to Fort Wayne.
The building that houses The District Tap has had a checkered history in keeping businesses in the place. For a number of years it was a Discovery Zone children's entertainment center. In 2005, it became the Music Mill, a music venue that featured primarily smaller national acts. The recession in 2008 hurt the owners of the Music Mill and they were forced to close the following year. The venue was bought by another set of investors later in 2009 and reopened, but by the end of the year it had closed for good.
The place that I wanted to go to - Brownstone Beer Co. - opened in 2011 and appeared to be doing pretty well. I went there one night and the place was packed. It was going to be a long wait for a table or even a seat at the bar and I didn't want to wait. So, when I decided to go back when I was in the area in October of 2013, I was surprised to see that the place was closed. It closed in August of 2013.
In 2014, Kurt Cohen - the owner of Arni's, a pizza restaurant with two locations in Indianapolis - got together with Bob Kort and Michael Cranfill to take over the space for a new restaurant concept. Kort was the owner of an Indianapolis area building company - Kort Builders - that specializes in build outs of restaurants and retail spaces, while Cranfill was a senior associate for Sitehawk Retail Real Estate, a company that specializes in finding retail and restaurant locations for clients. With Cohen and Kort as the co-owners and Cranfill as the proprietor, The District Tap opened in October of 2014.
It wasn't far from my dealer to The District Tap on E. 82nd St. (see map) I had to be in Fort Wayne around 4 p.m. for a meeting and it was around 1:30 when I got into The District Tap. When the owners took over the old Brownstone Beer Company, they found that the interior really didn't need much revamping. They wanted a place that was welcoming and comfortable - sort of like a neighborhood bar/gastropub type of feeling. While the footprint of The District Tap is pretty big, it does have a sort of pub type of feeling to the place.
There was a gaming area in the back with nice pool tables and some very elegant walnut shuffleboard tables. The stone work in the gaming area and an arch accented a TDT signifying the logo for The District Tap. This was a very nice place.
They also had a nice outdoor patio on the front side of the place. The large doors opening to the outside were open on a nice fall afternoon, but it was a little too cool to be sitting outside, even in the sun.
I took a seat at the bar area and got a menu from Scotty who was working as a bartender that day. They have 60 beers on tap at The District Tap and the beers were available in 14 or 20 ounce glasses. I got a 14 ounce glass of the Railsplitter IPA from the Triton Brewery located not far away on the northeast side of Indianapolis.
The food on the menu at The District Tap is a bit more upscale compared to other places. But the whole place felt a little upscale for a gastropub-type establishment. The had a number of gourmet-style burgers on the menu, all made with a mixture of brisket, chuck and short rib beef, ground in house. The Good Egg burger featured a burger topped with cherrywood smoked bacon, an egg over-easy, American cheese, tater tots, tomato jam, lettuce and onion. I almost got that.
Then I noticed that they had some sandwiches, wraps and salads on the menu. Nothing tripped my trigger until I took a look at the various salads they had to offer. They had a steak with blue cheese crumbles salad that they finished with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. It sounded pretty good. That is, until I saw that they had some gourmet mac and cheese pots. The Smokey Mac featured gouda cheese, cherrywood-smoked bacon and a chipotle barbecue sauce. The Mac Daddy Mac had pulled pork, cherrywood-smoked bacon, cheddar cheese and roasted red peppers. But the one that tripped my trigger was the Cajun Mac - andouille sausage, shrimp, roasted jalapeƱos, Cajun spices and spicy Parmesan cheese. I was just about ready to order that from Scotty until I saw something else that made me change my mind.
I ended up ordering the grilled mahi mahi street tacos. If you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you know I'm a sucker for fish tacos. They grilled a mahi mahi filet and cut it into chunks and placed it in three flour tortillas. They topped the tacos with cole slaw, sliced avocado, pepper jack cheese and a mango salsa. A big bowl of Spanish rice came on the side. I threw some of the rice on top of the tacos before I dug in.
The first bite told me that the mahi mahi was, well, a little fishy in taste. It wasn't that bad, but it was noticeable enough. The toppings that went with the tacos - including the Spanish rice - helped with the overall taste. On their own, the mahi mahi would have been too fishy. With the other toppings, it was barely noticeable. They were good tacos and pretty good sized.
Looking back, I wish I would have tried either the Cajun mac or one of the gourmet in-house-ground burgers at The District Tap. The mahi mahi tacos were all right - a little fishy - but not that bad. And there was a lot of stuff in the tacos. Two would have been plenty, three was almost too many. Overall, the experience at The District Tap was pleasant, they had a lot of beers on tap to choose from and the service was fine. The menu is interesting enough to entice me to go back to The District Tap at some point. This is a place that may just stay awhile in what has been sort of a jinxed building for sometime.
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