Growing up, I often went with my mother on the street car downtown to shop. After a morning of wandering through department store aisles, we would go to the Russet Cafeteria, on south Meridian St. across from Ayres, for lunch. I can’t recall the entrée, but I’ll always remember the generous servings of mashed potatoes and gravy. Every so often we had lunch in the Ayres Tea Room; I don’t remember what I had but looked forward to my trip to the treasure chest which was filled with mystery trinkets wrapped in tissue paper.
The Russet Cafeteria, 37 S. Meridian St., was a popular Indianapolis “noon day” eatery from its opening in the spring of 1922. Four years later, an ad for the cafeteria contained the words, “at the Crossroads of the Nation,” a phrase which later became the city’s slogan. In the fifties the Russet opened a north side cafeteria at 6247 N. College Ave. and a south side cafeteria at 3325 Madison Ave. The restaurant continued to serve its Russet roast beef hash, a Hoosier favorite, until it closed in 1963 following the death of its owner, Lowell McPherson.
Across the street from the Russet on the fifth floor of the L. S. Ayres & Co. department store was the venerable Ayres Tea Room, a name in luxurious luncheons that continues to live on in its faithful recreation at the Indiana State Museum. The Tea Room opened its doors in the fall of 1905 offering “after a busy morning’s shopping” lunch amid “surroundings and service [that] are unsurpassed.” It immediately became a favorite Indianapolis dining place for a select group; for over sixty years like many other local public accommodations Ayres Tea Room was closed to the city’s black population. An African-American friend of mine told the story that she and her girlfriends would pool their money and send one of their light complexioned friends to the tea room for lunch. The remaining girls would then stand outside the tea room and watch their friend being served. She said it was great fun “to pull one over on the man.” Fortunately, with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, public access was assured, and all people of Indianapolis could share memories of the Ayres Tea Room and its famous chicken velvet soup, Ayres chicken salad, chicken pot pie, and frozen toasted pecan balls with Ayres fudge sauce until it closed in 1991.
In the decades of de facto segregation in Indianapolis, The Negro Travelers Green Book gave black visitors to the city a guide to restaurants along Indiana Avenue that included Lasley’s Home Cooking Café; Stormy Weather Coffee Shop, and Keyless Restaurant (Perkin’s Grill), “the Right Place for Family Dining.” Also, on the list was the Log Cabin, a swanky restaurant, which opened in the fall of 1939. With a unique log façade that continued the look becoming of its name on the interior with walls of rustic knotted wood and ceilings of split logs, the Log Cabin specialized in “delicious southern cooked barbecue.”
Several Indianapolis restaurants made it into Adventures in Good Eating, a travel guide to American restaurants, by Duncan Hines. The Russet Cafeteria was the first Indiana restaurant to receive a “Fifth of a Century” award for twenty years of qualifying for recommendation by Duncan Hines. Another “Fifth of a Century” award winner was the Hawthorn Room. The restaurant opened in the spring of 1942 on the northeast corner of 16th and Meridian streets in a one-story building of modified New England colonial design. The menu featured Roto-Cut steak, Indiana fried chicken, and butterscotch rolls, and, according to the guide “emphasis is not on quantity but on quality.” The Hawthorn Room closed in 1974 and in the summer of 1977 this iconic Indianapolis restaurant was razed to make way for a McDonald’s.
The developers of the Hawthorn Room were also owners of another elegant Indianapolis restaurant receiving the Duncan Hines stamp of approval. The Seville Restaurant in the lower level of the Kahn Building, 7 N. Meridian St., was a “good place . . . to stop for steaks and Southern fried chicken.” When it opened in the fall of 1929, the Seville brought “a bit of old Spain” to the city with wrought iron furnishings and a gold and black décor “suggestive of a Spanish courtyard.” In 1957, the Seville faded into history when the original owner transformed the space into the King Cole Restaurant with an 18th century English theme. Diners passed through a white marble and copper fronted entrance into an oak-paneled space graced with thirty-five original oil paintings by “famed European artists,” and beneath beamed ceilings they were seated at solid oak hand-carved tables and seats with leather-covered upholstering. Like its predecessor, the King Cole earned a listing in Adventures in Good Eating and catered to the discriminating palates with its select menu of steaks and fresh seafood. While known as the “businessman’s power lunch restaurant,” diners wishing to commemorate special occasions and out-of-town celebrities also frequented the King Cole. Although he can’t recall how he had the money, my brother took his prom date to the restaurant where he remembers seeing Paul Newman who was in town filming Winning. Whether it was the impressive surroundings of the King Cole or the presence of a movie star, my brother won his date over and the two later married. In 1994 the restaurant became a memory.
A very popular, but short lived, downtown eatery opened in the spring of 1937 at 46-48 Monument Circle. The Canary Cottage, “The South’s Finest Restaurant,” was the fifth establishment in a chain that had restaurants in Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio. A colonial motif was carried throughout the restaurant from the cottage façade of decorated wooden white painted stone to the interior wainscoting and paneling of knotty second-growth northern white pine and Philippine mahogany. Known for the mellow colorings and decorations, the Canary Cottage dining room walls were painted in Williamsburg blue with antique pieces adding to the décor. Offering Southern cooking gleaned from recipes found in Southern homes, the menu featured steaks, fried chicken, Kentucky hickory smoked ham, seafood, and homemade bread. The Canary Cottage was also the only downtown restaurant to have a “men’s only” dining room in addition to its regular one. A fire in July 1953 destroyed the restaurant and heavily damaged the building. After another fire in December, the building was condemned and razed. The Canary Cottage never reopened. In the sixteen years that it satisfied the hunger pangs of Circle City diners, the Canary Cottage earned a place in the pages of Adventures in Good Eating.
Today, many options for downtown Indianapolis dining continue the elegance and good food of establishments that are now only a memory. Bon appetit!
