On a business trip to Indianapolis in late fall, I had finished up the day with a meeting in Fishers on the northeast side of the city. I was staying out that way and decided to try and find some place to have dinner. There were a couple restaurants not far from the hotel - one was an English-style pub and the other was more of a stylish, yet casual cafe that featured locally sourced foods. Quite surprisingly, I chose the cafe that goes by the name of Pure Eatery.
Pure Eatery started out in Indianapolis in June of 2010 by the husband and wife team of Jon and Amy Andrus. At first, the little restaurant located in the Murphy Arts Building in the fun and funky Fountain Square neighborhood just south and east of downtown Indianapolis focused on breakfast and lunch. Things were tough from the beginning for the Andrus' venture - construction in and around Fountain Square made it difficult to Pure Eatery at times, then Amy found out that she was pregnant with the baby due in September of 2011.
Faced with the task of raising a family with no health insurance, Jon Andrus decided to join the Navy Reserve to gain health benefits for his family. But that meant nine months of basic training in South Carolina and Amy would have to move there with him. And that meant that he'd either have to close Pure Eatery or sell the place. He didn't have to look too far for a suitor to take the place off his hands - his brother Dave Andrus, Dave's wife Courtney, and their friend Jason Jacobi were interested in taking over the restaurant.
Dave Andrus had been in the restaurant business for a number of years before he moved to Indianapolis to open a little pizza pub not far from Monument Circle called Pearl Street Pizzeria. Jacobi was an Iowa native from a small town just west of Cedar Rapids who moved to Indianapolis a few years before to work in management at a couple of downtown Indy restaurants. The Andrus' and Jacobi saw the potential Pure Eatery could bring and they intended to tweak the concept a bit to help grow the business.
The restaurant was awarded a license to sell beer, wine and liquor (known as a three-way license in Indiana) in late 2011. Dave Andrus and Jacobi built a small bar area inside Pure Eatery after they took over in early 2012 and they eliminated the breakfast service to focus more on lunch, evening and late night patrons. After a dismal first month of sales, Dave Andrus and Jacobi decided to do a complete remodel of the space. They shut down for a month to retool. During that time they built a bigger bar, made the restaurant space more intimate, hired a wait staff and got rid of the counter service that Andrus' brother had in place from the start. When the new and improved Pure Eatery reopened in the Spring of 2012, it turned out that the new concept complete with full bar was going to be a hit. Sales took off and Pure Eatery became a hot spot in the up and coming Fountain Square neighborhood.
By 2015, Jacobi and Dave and Courtney Andrus thought that expansion to the north would be a good thing. Communities like Fishers, Carmel and Noblesville were growing at a fast clip and the opportunity to put another restaurant on the far north side of Indianapolis became a distinct possibility. The trio opened a second Pure Eatery along 116th Street in Fishers in the Spring of 2015.
Not all of Pure Eatery's story has been successful. Dave Andrus had previously owned an Irish pub in Lafayette, IN before moving too Indianapolis. He thought a Pure Eatery would go over well in the college town and the group opened a third restaurant in July of 2017. But the responsibilities of running not only two Pure Eatery locations in the Indianapolis area along with a new one over an hour's drive away, coupled with opening a second Pearl Street location near the Andrus' home in the upscale Geist area of far northeast Indianapolis turned out to be too much for the group to look after the Lafayette location. That location closed in September of 2018.
The Fishers location for Pure Eatery is located in a strip mall on the south side of 116th St., the main road through the town. (see map) Pure Eatery really stood out among the other businesses in the mall with their brick facade and four faux second story windows over the entrance. There are a couple three other restaurants in the small shopping complex, so the parking lot was sort of packed when I pulled in just after 6 p.m. I was able to find a parking spot out on the far side of the parking lot.
Inside Pure Eatery, I found an open, well-lit space that had a series of tables and booths interspersed throughout the room. Just beyond some artwork hanging from the ceiling via chains was the bar area. Bistro-style seating along a curved wooden banquette wall gave it sort of a classy vibe. Yet, the place was far from pretentious.
Artwork from local artists was on display throughout Pure Eatery. I'm not much of an art critic, but I did linger after I finished my dinner to look at some of the interesting items hung on the wall.
The bar was small, but it featured a distinctive back-bar shelving unit that I found out was made with old barn wood salvaged from a farm in Iowa. Other wood accents in Pure Eatery also came from salvaged barn boards.
I took a seat at the bar and was greeted by a pleasant young lady by the name of Katie. She dropped off a menu and asked me if I wanted anything to start out with for a drink. I took a quick look at their tap list on the wall next to the bar and decided upon a Bell's All Day IPA.
Pure Eatery tries to locally source their food when they can and they had a number of items on the menu including pork and chicken that they get from locally-raised farms. In fact, when I first walked into the place, the smell of roasting pork permeated the air. It smelled wonderful. And they had a number of roasted pork items on the menu - roasted pork tacos, a pulled pork sandwich rubbed with ground coffee and ancho peppers, and a pan-seared bone-in pork chop. Pure Eatery also featured a number of wraps and sandwiches, as well as entrees consisting of a grilled sockeye salmon, a curry tilapia, a Cajun-spiced tuna steak, and a four-cheese pasta dish.
Interestingly, there was little to no beef dishes on the menu at Pure Eatery. They only offered an Impossible burger and no regular burger. They had marinated beef tips for an entree, and they also had a meat loaf sandwich. I didn't really think I was in the mood for beef that night anyhow as my new sales manager and I pigged out on steak the night before in Chicago.
As I said, the aroma of roasted pork smell first hit me when I came into the place lingered throughout my decision making process. I ended up ordering Pure Eatery's version of the Cuban sandwich. I know that most places in the Midwest don't have anything close to a really Cuban sandwich like I've had in Florida - the sweet Cuban bread is usually replaced by an ciabatta or Italian bread in the Midwest and grilled panini-style. But if you can get past the fact that it's not the same as what you can get in Florida, some of the Cuban-style sandwiches in the region are not that bad. I was banking on the flavor of the pork at Pure Eatery being as good, if not better than the smell emanating from the kitchen.
When I ordered, Katie asked me if I wanted to zip up the taste a bit by substituting dijon mustard for the usual yellow mustard that comes on the sandwich, as well as having pepper jack cheese instead of the normal Swiss cheese. I signed up for that immediately. The sandwich was presented to me on a long and narrow plate served with house-made chips and a pickle spear. The taste of the pork in the sandwich was simply wonderful. It was much more prevalent in taste over the sliced ham they put on the sandwich with it. The panini-grilled ciabatta bread had a nice crunchy texture to the outer shell, but it wasn't overly chewy. The pepper jack and dijon mustard added a bit of a zip to the overall taste, but I wouldn't call it spicy in the least. It was a killer sandwich all the way around.
I had my choice of restaurants in the immediate area that evening, but I'm certainly glad that I gave Pure Eatery a try. In addition to it being a nice little place, the Cuban pulled pork sandwich that I had was excellent. The service I had from my bartender/server that evening was friendly and laid-back, not pressuring me to order quickly and she allowed me to linger after finishing my meal to have another beer. Pure Eatery is an enjoyable place and one that I would recommend giving a try if you're in the Fishers area and looking for a nice lunch or light dinner.
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