I was out in Fort Wayne calling on our largest account and hosting a training session. My colleague was flying in from Montreal later in the evening, so I was on my own for food that evening. It had been awhile since I'd been to a brewpub in Fort Wayne, a city that has many very good brewpubs. I found one in the downtown area that I wasn't familiar with - The Hoppy Gnome. It had a fun name and sounded like a good place to get a beer and some food, so I headed there for dinner.
James Khan grew up on the southeast side of Fort Wayne and on the advice of his high school counselor he went to Purdue University to study electrical engineering. After 3 years, Khan decided to move back to Fort Wayne to finish his schooling at Indiana/Purdue-Fort Wayne (Now Purdue-Fort Wayne). After graduating, Khan took a job with an engineering firm in the city, but also took a part-time job as a food runner/bus boy at the brand new Biaggi's Italian restaurant. Within a month, Khan was promoted to server.
Khan was still working at the engineering firm, but was thinking more and more about the restaurant business. When Biaggi's offered him a chance to enter their restaurant management program, Khan jumped at the chance. He left the engineering firm and started as a manager trainee at Biaggi's for a paltry $8 dollars an hour.
Pictured right - James Khan. Photo courtesy Input Fort Wayne
Khan eventually made it to be the assistant managing partner at Biaggi's in Fort Wayne, but it was a phone call from an area restauranteur that put him on the path to owning his own restaurants.
Doug Wood and his wife Patty had just taken over BakerStreet, an upscale steakhouse on the city's north side. The Woods had met while both were working at the Cork 'N Cleaver for a number of years and took over the fledgling BakerStreet restaurant less than a year after it opened. They were looking for someone with restaurant managerial experience and turned to Khan. Khan wasn't certain he was up for the task, but the Woods offered Khan the position of managing partner of BakerStreet. In 2009, Khan left Biaggi's and became a part-owner in BakerStreet.
In 2014, Khan and partners Lysa Pelkington and Chad Kyle bought out the Woods and started a corporation - ObiCai Restaurant Group. In 2015, the trio began to develop a new restaurant, a bistro/brewpub with a focus on taqueria-style foods.
Just before the new brewpub was opened, Kyle left the group to become the executive chef at Parkview Health in Fort Wayne. Khan was able to convince Peter Shuey to return home from Southern California to take over as the head chef and director of operations for BakerStreet and the new brewpub. The name for the restaurant came about from a late night session with partners, managers and employees over what to name the new brewpub. It was almost called the Hoppy Dragon until Khan found out that Shuey liked gnomes. The Hoppy Gnome moniker stuck and the brewpub/taqueria opened in July of 2015.
In 2016, ObiCai Restaurants opened their third location - GnomeTown Brewing Company - a burger-centric brewpub that also allows people to come in and brew their own beers. And in 2018, Khan and his group opened Proxima, a Latin-inspired restaurant in downtown Fort Wayne that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. (As a side note - Lysa Pelkington left the company in 2019 to spend more time with her growing family.)
The Hoppy Gnome is located at the corner of E. Berry St. and the southbound lanes of US Highway 27 in downtown Fort Wayne. (see map) It's located on the street level of the Anthony Wayne building that Khan helped develop into restaurant, retail and condominium space in 2014.
I was able to find a parking space across the street from the brewpub near the stately Allen County Courthouse. The courthouse is an impressive structure and would rival some state capitols that I've seen during my travels over the years.
Working my way past the outdoor patio dining area along Berry Street, the entrance of the Hoppy Gnome takes you in to a large lobby that serves as a central point for both the Hoppy Gnome and the in-house brewery, GnomeTown Brewing Company. There was a large mural on the wall in the lobby that was sort of a flow chart of different types of ingredients that led to different styles of beer.
GnomeTown Brewing Co. maintains their own brewpub restaurant about 3 blocks away from the Hoppy Gnome, but this location is what is known as a "Brew-On-Premises" brewery that allows budding home-brewers to come in and learn about the brewing process from GnomeTown Brewing's brewing engineers. The GnomeTown facility is the only "Brew-On-Premises" site in the state of Indiana.
The brewing room allows people to come in and discuss the kind of beer they'd like to make, then pick out the ingredients and participate in the brewing process. The large brewing room also has tables and benches along with a small bar area where amateur brewers can invite friends and family in to try the beer once it's finished.
To the left of the lobby area is the entrance to the Hoppy Gnome. It was a large space with floor to ceiling windows along the west and south walls of the restaurant. The architecture of the restaurant was sort of what I would call modern industrial with exposed ductwork in the ceiling with concrete pillars standing at various points around the dining area.
Wooden cubicles around padded booths were the focal point of the dining area with heavy duty wooden tables with metal chairs throughout the room. A large window allowed patrons to look into the kitchen area. For as much wood, concrete and glass in the dining area, it was surprisingly not loud in the place.
The dining area was about half full when I got in to the Hoppy Gnome, so I asked the hostess if I could eat at the bar. She said, "Sure!" and she led me to a seat at the bar. Three or four people were already seated at the bar and there was a WNBA basketball game on the television.
The bartender that night was a guy by the name of Park. It's an unusual name as I've only known one other guy by the name of Park. This Park told me that it was a family name through generations. He placed a menu in front of me and asked what I wanted to drink. In addition to their beers from GnomeTown Brewing Co. on their beer menu, the Hoppy Gnome also features a number of craft brews from such regional breweries such as 3 Floyds, Founders, Half Acre, and Fort Wayne's Junk Ditch Brewery.
He had a couple hazy IPA's on the menu - GnomeTown's Prescription New England IPA, and the Mister Fahrenheit NE IPA from North High Brewing out of the Columbus, OH area. I really liked the Prescription hazy IPA and ended up getting a pint of that.
While tacos are a big part of the menu, they had a number of other interesting items on the menu. Actually, a few things got my attention as I was looking through the menu including the buttermilk fried chicken tenders (I don't know, I was sort of in a chicken tender mood that evening), the flank steak with cilantro chimichurri was another thing that caught my eye, as well as the seafood gumbo. The only thing that nixed the gumbo for me was that they put breaded and fried shrimp into the gumbo at the Hoppy Gnome. They also had a peach/habanero-glazed carnitas sandwich that jumped out at me.
But the tacos were very interesting to me. They had well over a dozen different types of tacos including a Thai meatball taco, a slow-braised pork belly taco and a smoked-jerk chicken taco. They also had a number of vegetarian taco options including a beer-battered fried avocado taco, a sautéed mushroom and garlic aioli taco, and the "Boom Boom Pow" taco that had crispy chickpeas in a chipotle honey glaze and jicama.
The great thing about order tacos at the Hoppy Gnome is that they'll allow you to order just one of whatever style instead of 3 of just one style some other places make you order. That allowed me to try smoked brisket taco, the pan-seared cod taco, and the "Lambda, Lambda, Lambda" taco - braised lamb in a coconut-curry sauce with a cilantro-lime crema topped with a diced cucumber salad on top.
Unfortunately, Park came back with the bad news - they were out of the lamb tacos that night. Somewhat crestfallen, I looked at the menu one more time and was back into a quandary - the pulled carnitas tacos sounded good, as did the carne asada taco with the salsa verde. And they had a slow-cooked short rib taco that sounded delicious. I ended up getting the pulled carnitas taco.
I have to say that it probably didn't matter which taco I chose as each one of the tacos were outstanding. From left to right: The fish taco - "The Ocean Called..." - featured pan-seared cod chunked up and topped with green cabbage, fire-roasted salsa, sour cream, an avocado slice and finished with fried fresno chile rings. The coolness of the sour cream was a great balance to the spiciness of the other toppings.
In the middle, the pulled pork came with a creamy Carolina barbecue sauce topped with a smoked jalapeño slaw. It had a bit of a bite, but I didn't think it was all that spicy. It was probably the weakest of the three in overall flavor, but not that it was bad - far from it. It's just that there were a lot of flavor explosions in each bite of the other two tacos.
The third taco - on the right - was the applewood-smoked brisket topped with a chipotle-cherry salsa, and finished with fried scallions. The brisket was tender, juicy and full of flavor. The chipotle-cherry salsa had that great balance of heat and sweet, and was a great combination with the brisket.
My colleague from Montreal got in later that night and the next day we had some time for lunch before we were to set up for our training session. I told him about how great the tacos were at the Hoppy Gnome the night before and the number of vegetarian options on the menu. "That sounds good," he said. We ended up going back to the Happy Gnome for lunch. That trip, I got the short rib barbacoa taco and the carne asada taco with the salsa verde. Both were absolutely fabulous. My co-worker got the Thai peanut rice noodles in a spicy thai peanut sauce with bulgogi marinated tofu. Chopped red onions, red bell peppers, carrots, cilantro and scallions were mixed in. "Wow," he said before he took a large gulp of his beer. "This is really good and it's really spicy!"
In a city with a lot of very good to excellent brewpubs, I have to say I have a new No. 1 in my book. The Hoppy Gnome had outstanding tacos, some great beers - both their own and from other regional breweries - and a great atmosphere with great service both times I was there. They have a "made-from-scratch" kitchen that allows patrons to add or subtract items from entrees, sandwiches and tacos. It's a great place for vegetarians and the tacos I had were simply excellent. The Hoppy Gnome should be the first place you want to try for a brewpub in Fort Wayne and then go from there to some of the other excellent brewpubs in the area.
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