These 10 historic Indianapolis restaurants are still worth visiting all these years later

Indianapolis Star

10-07-2025

It's hard to keep a restaurant open. As in, extremely hard.
But amid what can feel like a revolving door in the dining scene, some Indianapolis-area restaurants have managed to stay open for decades and a handful have endured for more than a century. Today we commemorate some of those that have stuck around the longest.
First, a quick note: We've included eateries that have undergone name and location changes, so long as the establishment's central theme has remained the same. That means no Old Point Tavern, the 130-year-old Mass Ave watering hole that the Cunningham Restaurant Group purchased in 2017, closed and rebooted as the semi-upscale Tavern on the Point less than a year later.
We've also allowed for spots that briefly closed during their decades-long run. It doesn't matter how good your fried chicken or beef stew is; it's tough to navigate a world war or pandemic without missing a beat. But Barringer's Tavern, a longtime southside haunt founded in 1879, was disqualified because it was closed for six years before reopening in 2019.
With those disclaimers out of the way, here are 10 of the oldest eateries (including two bar-restaurants and a bakery) in the Indianapolis area, with a little of the history behind each.
372 S. Meridian St., [phone], slipperynoodle.com, opened 1850
Though it would be a stretch to call this bar that serves food a restaurant, Slippery Noodle's distinction as the longest-running bar in Indianapolis is undisputed. Many even consider it the oldest in the Hoosier State; its strongest competition, the Knickerbocker Saloon, which opened in Lafeyette in 1835, temporarily operated as a clock shop in the 1970s.
The Noodle has had many names. It began in 1850 as the Tremont House, a bar and roadhouse. In the 1860s the Tremont House became the Concordia House, named for the Concord ship that in 1683 carried the first group of German immigrants to the United States. (Per Slippery Noodle's website, the bar has historically been run by people of German descent.)
Eventually the Concordia House became the Germania House, but during World War I then-owner Louis Beck changed the name to Beck's Saloon due to anti-German sentiment. Under Beck's successor, Walter Moore, the bar became Moore's Beer Tavern, then Moore's Restaurant during Prohibition (though the "restaurant" still brewed beer in the basement).
Following a string of ownership changes between the 1940s and 60s, Harold and Lorean Yeagy bought the bar in 1963 and, after a 5 a.m. family vote, the Slippery Noodle Inn was chosen as the historic venue's new name. The Noodle steadily became one of the region's most popular blues clubs under the ownership of the Yeagy's son, Hal, and the name stuck when current owners Jason Amonett and Seth Lothridge took over the establishment in 2023.
The Slippery Noodle has served a wide variety of alleged business functions over the years, some easier to prove than others. According to the bar's website, the tavern has been a stop on the Underground Railroad, a brothel and a makeshift shooting gallery for the Brady and Dillinger gangs. What's certain is the Noodle's history is long, tangled and inextricable from downtown Indianapolis.
401 E. Michigan St., [phone], rathskeller.com, opened 1894
In 1893 the architectural firm of Bernard Vonnegut and Arthur Bohn (the former the grandfather of Hoosier literary legend Kurt Vonnegut Jr.) began building a German Renaissance Revival-style building on Mass Ave to serve as a community center for Indianapolis' large German immigrant population.
One year later, the basement of Das Deutche Haus (known as the Athenaeum since 1918) welcomed its first and only tenant, the Rathskeller. The Rathskeller — a German word that refers to an underground bar or restaurant — has served Bavarian fare including sausage and sauerkraut, schnitzel, soft pretzels and blistering hot mustard plus a healthy selection of German-style beers for more than 130 years.
The spacious restaurant features a dining room, event space and the Kellerbar, a cavernous hall of brick and stone lined with flags and the taxidermy heads of various antlered beasts. During the summer, the Rathskeller opens its enclosed outdoor biergarten, where bar crawlers drink pale gold pilsners and listen to live music.
INdulge: Twist on German tradition at historic Indy restaurant is best thing I ate this week
127 S. Illinois St., [phone], stelmos.com, opened 1902
Indy's most well-known restaurant is also one of its oldest. St. Elmo — notably not St. Elmo's, though many Hoosiers say the name with an "s" and the restaurant even has one in its website URL — has occupied the first floor of the northwest corner of the Braden's Block building, now part of Circle Centre Mall, since 1902.
Founder Joe Stahr named the restaurant for Erasmus of Formia, aka Saint Elmo, the patron saint of sailors (and abdominal pain, perhaps the more relevant designation for those who have eaten too ambitiously at the steakhouse). In 1947 Stahr sold St. Elmo to local tavern boss Burt Condon, who just six months later sold the restaurant to brothers Harry, Sam and Ike Roth.
After his brothers left the business in 1956, Harry partnered with his friend Isadore "Izzy" Rosen to operate St. Elmo for 30 years before selling it to Noble Roman's founder Stephen Huse and fellow restaurateur Jeff Dunaway. Huse's namesake culinary group now owns St. Elmo, along with other Indianapolis-area eateries including the Harry and Izzy's Steak House named for St. Elmo's former owners.
Last year, Restaurant Business Magazine listed the Indianapolis institution as the 21st highest-grossing independent restaurant in the United States, generating just shy of $25 million in sales. Given its reputation and prime location near the homes of the Pacers and Colts, St. Elmo has become a beloved hangout for a who's who of high rollers including Peyton Manning, sports broadcasting icon Jim Nantz and several IndyCar drivers.
808 S. Meridian St., [phone], shapiros.com, opened 1905
In 1905, Louis and Rebecca Shapiro fled the Ukrainian city of Odesa (then controlled by Russia) to escape violence against the city's Jewish community, per the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. At the suggestion of the Industrial Removal Office, an agency that assisted European Jewish immigrants in the United States, the Shapiros settled in Lafayette before moving to Indianapolis. Using the $500 the office gave the pair (roughly $18,000 in today's money), the Shapiros established a grocery store and kosher deli at 1032 S. Illinois St.
In 1912 the store relocated to 808 S. Meridian St., where Shapiro's has stood ever since. Following Prohibition, the business transitioned into more of a food market, selling 10-cent bottles of beer, pastrami sandwiches and spaghetti with meatballs from the store counter. In 1940, after Louis retired and turned the business over to his sons Abe, Izzy and Max, Shapiro's steered into its modern identity as a cafeteria-style restaurant.
Now under fourth-generation owner Brian Shapiro, the great-grand-nephew of Louis, Shapiro's still dishes out cold cut sandwiches, soups like matzo ball and borscht, comforting entrées and a robust pie lineup. Shapiro's also operates a small and much newer counter-service outpost at the Indianapolis Airport, one of the warmer welcomes to the Circle City one can receive.
1146 Kentucky Ave., [phone], facebook.com/johnsfamousstew, opened 1911
This one gets a bit of an asterisk, as John's closed in early 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and announced in the summer the beloved southwest-side restaurant would not reopen. But in 2022 owner Mary Caito, whose father Tommy ran the business from 1975 until his death in 2018, sold the Kentucky Avenue venue (and a trademarked stew recipe) to Indianapolis entrepreneur Ryan Greb.
Greb inherited an institution that began in 1911 at 535 W. Washington Street, where Macedonian immigrant brothers Mike and Steve Strangeff started a restaurant that served stew cooked in cast-iron kettles over a wood-burning stove following the recipe of their mother, Dapa Strangeff. Following World War II in 1949, Mike's son-in-law, John Ziats Jr., took over the business.
In 1961 Ziats moved the restaurant to 441 E. South St. and renamed it John's Hot Stew. The original stew recipe, Ziats said in a 1977 interview with the Indianpaolis Star, featured a pinch of a potent Macedonian spice called chumbraka that Mike Strangeff grew in his garden.
It's possible that Ziats wasn't entirely truthful in his description of the stew, or that his father-in-law called his special spice a term that isn't used elsewhere; online searches for chumbraka do not yield any results. Attempts to contact Greb for clarity on the mysterious ingredient were unsuccessful.
Regardless of what "chumbraka" was, John's stew began to amass its fame.
"It was amazing how our stew caught on," Ziats said in the 1977 IndyStar interview. "I had a large group of faithful customers who swore by — and sometimes at — our stew."
After a 1975 fire gutted Ziats' restaurant, for which he had no insurance, the 62-year-old restaurateur filed for bankruptcy. Then Ziats met Tommy Caito, a successful businessman who offered to revive the eatery with his money and Ziats' restaurant acumen. In May 1976 the duo opened the Paddock Lounge and John's Famous Stew at 1146 Kentucky Ave. Said Ziats in 1977, "Colonel Sanders made it in his 60s, so why couldn't I?"
The same year they opened John's Famous Stew, Ziats and Caito opened a John's Stew outpost in Irvington and sold their signature food at the Mousetrap at 5565 N. Keystone Ave. Now, John's operates just the Kentucky Avenue location under Greb, selling thick stews that threaten to spill over the rims of their bowls, hefty sandwiches and other comfort fare.
Whether or not the latest incarnation of John's Stew uses the mysterious Macedonian herb from Strangeff's garden — if such a thing ever existed — remains a mystery.
6216 Allisonville Road, [phone], taylorsbakeryindy.square.site, opened 1913
No one in Indiana has been slinging cakes, loaves and pastries as long as Taylor's Bakery, which began as Taylor's Grocery at 38th and Illinois Streets in 1913. Founder and Southern Indiana native Dennis Orville Taylor died in 1962, leaving the business to his daughter, Virginia, and her husband James Allen. Under the Allens, Taylor's steadily pivoted away from groceries and into baked goods, and in 1968 the Allens opened a second Taylor's location at 6216 Allisonville Road.
John Allen, the son of Virginia and James, and his wife Nancy inherited Taylor's in 1972. During Allen's tenure, Taylor's closed its 38th Street location and expanded to Fishers. John Allen's sons Drew and Matt joined the family business in 2001 and largely ran it in the years leading up to their father's official retirement in 2019. Allen died in 2022.
In 2023 the Allens sold Taylor's to Burrows Holdings under certain conditions, including that the bakery's full 50-person staff was retained.
While Indianapolis has recently grown rich in local bakeries boasting staggering selections of sweets, none has the staying power of Taylor's. The storied bakery has endured two world wars with sugar shortages, the Great Depression and the pandemic. One notable bit of Taylor's lore claims the bakery in 1954 supplied then-President Dwight Eisenhower with a 150-pound cake for his birthday at the president's speaking engagement at Butler Fieldhouse.
John Allen said in a 1987 interview with the Indianapolis News that the Secret Service stayed with the bakers for 24 hours to guard the ingredients. The same Indianapolis News story reported the 4-H members presenting the cake didn't realize the ceremony would include cutting the cake and did not have a knife; instead they used a metal nail file to lop off a piece for the commander-in-chief.
Neither the Indianapolis News nor Indianapolis Star mentioned that Taylor's had made the cake in their coverage of the president's birthday, but no other baker has since challenged Allen's account. So the legend has persisted, and longtime customers might argue that the cake's creator must have been Taylor's, as no other local bakery could have been entrusted with such a responsibility.
234 N. Belmont Ave., [phone], opened 1918
The purveyor of Indianapolis' most popular burger has changed more than you might think in its 107-year run, at different points serving 18-ounce T-bone steaks and daiquiris alongside its piled-high, practically see-through smash burger patties. But despite those changes, the Workingman's Friend has remained a quintessential blue-collar hangout for those 21 or older with a little cash (the only form of money accepted there) in their wallet and a lot of room in their stomach.
Founder Louis Stamatkin was a Macedonian immigrant who in January 1918 opened the Belmont Lunch on Belmont Avenue on the Near Westside. The Belmont Lunch primarily catered to local railroad workers, many of them Central and Eastern European immigrants like Stamatkin. Over time, particularly when the railroad workers went on strike in the early 20s, Stamatkin developed a reputation for letting customers run up tabs without paying immediately, if at all.
Stamatkin's altruism earned him the nickname "the working man's friend," and after he died in 1945 at less than 50 years old ("after staying up two nights straight playing poker," his granddaughter Becky later told the Star), Stamatkin's sons Carl and Earl took over the tavern and renamed it in their father's honor. Eventually, Working Man's Friend was shortened to two words.
During the '60s, Carl and Earl added a higher-end dinner menu to the tavern's fare, including steaks served on sizzling platters for $7.50. In a 1978 interview with the Indianapolis News, Carl's wife and veteran line cook Mary Alice Gill said Workingman's Friend still used broilers it had purchased from long-closed LaRue's Supper Club and Charlie's Steak House. Gill estimated one such broiler had been in near constant use since 1928.
"I'm going to use it for my tombstone," Gill said of the ancient piece of cookery.
Earl retired from the tavern in 1968, though Carl's daughter and current owner Becky Stamatkin told IndyStar in 2018 the brothers "got drunk and got into a fight, and went their own ways."
Becky took over the family business in 2008 and has run it ever since. In February, she told IndyStar she has been looking to sell the restaurant for years and will do so when she finds a suitable buyer. For now, Indy's oldest burger joint remains an institution enshrined in grease and glory.
8110 N. College Ave., [phone], hollyhockhill.com, opened 1928
Nearly 100 years ago, German immigrant Vincent Vincent (his real name, though he went by his first and middle initials, V.D.) and his wife Elizabeth started hosting 30-guest dinner parties in the dining room of their home on the far north side. The Vincents named their in-house restaurant Hollyhock Hill for the flowers that bloomed on their estate.
Once the manager of the Chamber of Commerce, Vincent retired in 1930 to focus on Hollyhock Hill and his hobby as a collector of myriad curiosities; a 1939 IndyStar story following Vincent's death reported the restaurateur raised bees and squabs (juvenile domestic pigeons) on his property and built a small log cabin to house "American and foreign oddities he had picked up at various times," including a life-size wooden Native American that had been part of a cigar store sign.
The Vincent family continued to operate and expand the restaurant for eight years after V.D.'s death, with a few breaks during World War II. In 1947 Hubert "Hugh" Kelso purchased Hollyhock, hired more employees and substantially grew the business, so much so that the cost of a chicken dinner skyrocketed all the way up to $3. Kelso's brother, Charles, would later open a different iconic Indy fried chicken spot on the west side: the Iron Skillet, which closed last year after more than 70 years.
In 1992, longtime Hollyhock Hill employees Jay and Barbara Snyder bought the historic restaurant, which at that point sat 50 guests. The Snyders sold Hollyhock and its recipes in 2016 to Indianapolis telecommunications executive Kelly Haney, who has since made slight tweaks to the restaurant's still-homey operation. Guests at the unassuming white house can still enjoy heaping platters of pan-fried chicken and homestyle sides, plus newer items like filet mignon and gulf shrimp — all for a smidge more than $3.
317 S. College Ave., [phone], iariasrestaurant.com, opened 1933
Other than Shapiro's, no Indianapolis restaurant has stayed in the family as long as Iaria's. Italian immigrants Pete and Antonia Iaria opened the casual Italian eatery in 1933 out of their home of 20 years on South College Avenue (then Noble Street). Iaria's remains there today, with the fourth generation of the family overseeing operations.
Iaria's steadily made a name for itself with affordable plates of Italian and Italian American favorites including pastas, pizza and piccata. In the mid-'50s the restaurant advertised in the Indianapolis Star, boasting an air-conditioned atmosphere in its then-modern brick building where diners could enjoy dinner for $1 or carry out a pizza.
In 1947 the family business expanded when Roccie Iaria, the brother of then-owner Matthew "Mate" Iaria, opened Iaria Bowling Lanes in the art deco building attached to the restaurant at 325 S. College Ave. Roccie's son, Pete, grew up around the lanes and developed quite the talent for bowling; in a 1987 IndyStar article he claimed to have bowled 299 in a game when he was 15.
In the summer of 1986 a fallen beam crushed two of Pete's fingertips, ending his ambitions of becoming the oldest professional bowling rookie. But shortly thereafter in the dining room of Iaria's, Pete ran into local businessman Linton Calvert, who had purchased Iaria Lanes in 1981 and operated it for a few years as Action Bowling. Iaria and Calvert would go on to open what is credited as Indy's the first duckpin bowling alley in the former Iaria Lanes/Action Bowling space. Calvert relocated the duckpin lanes to the Fountain Square Theatre Building in 1996, where they have been ever since.
Although the Iarias' bowling alley was turned into an office space in the 2010s, traces of its history remain at the restaurant. In 2015 the Iarias used wood salvaged from the bowling lanes to build three dining tables that instead of enduring the rumble of bowling balls now support the calorie-dense heft of fettuccine alfredo and tiramisu.
5170 N. College Ave., [phone], redkeytavern.com, opened 1933
The Meridian Kessler building that has housed the Red Key for nearly a century started as a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in 1927. Piggly Wiggly's downsizing amid the Great Depression led to the store's closure in 1932, but the repeal of Prohibition one year later led two enterprising Brits to open the Old English Tavern on Dec. 6, 1933 (one day after the 21st amendment was ratified).
Brothers George and Richard Duke ran the Old English for less than two years, at which point Brownstown native Alva "Jack" Buening purchased the bar and renamed it the Red Key Tavern. Per the Red Key's website, Buening largely used his watering hole to sell Patrick Henry Beer, essentially a Miller Lite prototype produced by the Marion-based Kiley Brewing Company in the late 1930s. While the light ale was brewed for less than a decade, it advertised heavily in Indianapolis newspapers and at the height of its popularity even sponsored a Marion County amateur softball team.
The Red Key changed hands just one more time before local bar owners Russ Settle and Fran Gasper purchased it in 1951. Gasper retired in 1970, leaving Settle to run the Red Key until his death in 2010. His son Jim then took over operations.
The tavern has served several notable bargoers over the years including author and Indy native Dan Wakefield, whose 1970 novel "Going All the Way" prominently features the Red Key. A 1997 big-screen adaptation of the book starring Ben Affleck features scenes filmed in the Red Key.
The same barstools that Affleck and co-star Jeremy Davies sat in are still there, as is just about every piece of furniture that has occupied the Red Key since Settle and Gasper purchased it. The bar's neon sign, which depicts a Manhattan — not a Martini — and a music staff with four notes that comprise the melody of a Prohibition-era anthem colloquially known as "How dry I am," buzzed from 1953 until 2016 when patrons raised nearly $10,000 to replace it with an identical replica.
In February 2024 Jim Settle underwent open-heart surgery to remove multiple blockages just weeks after his wife, Dollie, succumbed to cancer. To help pay Jim's medical expenses, longtime Red Key staffer and Second Helpings Chief Program Officer Nora Spitznogle started a GoFundMe page that raised nearly $30,000 in six days.
In addition to its devoted clientele, Red Key is known for the list of 10 rules Russ Settle put in place. The list demands various decorum at the cash-only establishment, such as "no cursing" and "always hang your coat on the rack." Known affectionately as "Russ' rules," the charter kicks off with rule No. 1, "Never question Russ," and ends with rule No. 10: "Any questions refer to rule 1."