Bluebeard chef Abbi Merriss gains acclaim with comfort food, upscale cuisine

The down-home credentials of Abbi Merriss are displayed on her left forearm in a tattoo that reads, “chocolate cake, steak and potatoes, fried chicken dinner.”

You need to take her word on this, because the words are depicted in squares, triangles and other symbols of a dingbat typeface and essentially gibberish to anyone who views the tattoo.

The tattoo seems appropriate for Merriss, the co-owner of Bluebeard restaurant and six-time James Beard Foundation Award semifinalist who built her reputation on upscale cuisine while never straying from the basics.

It’s important, Merriss said, that Bluebeard be approachable to everyone.

“You can have your pasta Bolognese or you can have the hamachi crudo and then foie gras,” Merriss said of the restaurant’s menu. “I guess that is where my head is always at. I want the comfort, but I also want the high-end Le Bernardin-style food.”

Indianapolis residents don’t have to travel to New York City’s Le Bernardin, honored with three Michelin stars, for an acclaimed fine dining experience. Bluebeard emerged 11 years ago in a previously abandoned Fletcher Place building, immediately gathering accolades and contributing to the city’s ascent as a culinary destination.

With ownership partners Ed Battista, Tom and Sherry Battista, and Charlie and Tiffany McIntosh, Merriss devised what she calls an “eclectic restaurant in a great little neighborhood.”

An initial idea of an Italian theme was discarded in favor of contemporary American so Bluebeard wouldn’t be pigeonholed. “We can have ramen and tacos on the menu at the same time,” Merriss said.

Fellow Indianapolis chef Chris Benedyk, co-owner of Love Handle, suggested the restaurant’s name as a tribute to Indianapolis author Kurt Vonnegut and his 1987 novel “Bluebeard,” the story of an abstract expressionist painter.

Jared Thompson, a high-profile saxophone player in the city, worked for six years as daytime manager at Bluebeard, 653 Virginia Ave. Thompson said the restaurant’s staff is populated by “artists and community-driven people.”

“It’s high-quality food without the stuffiness you get at a steakhouse or that assumed air of pretense,” Thompson said. “It takes all of that away. It makes for a really good environment to be yourself.”

In 2012, Bluebeard was a nominee in the James Beard category of the nation’s best new restaurant. Positive press has followed in Food & Wine magazine, New York magazine and The New York Times.

Merriss said she had an idea about Bluebeard’s emerging popularity when the restaurant launched around the time Virginia Avenue was partially dismantled for construction of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail.

“There were dirt piles outside and bulldozers in the way,” she said. “People climbed over the dirt piles to get inside. We thought, ‘What have we started here?’”

Merriss collected James Beard semifinalist honors in the Great Lakes Region—which includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio—each year from 2016 to 2020 and again this year. The 20 semifinalists for 2023 were narrowed to five at the end of March, with Merriss and fellow Indiana semifinalist Samir Mohammad of Noblesville’s 9th Street Bistro left off the list that includes three chefs from Detroit and two from Chicago.

Liz Biro wrote about Bluebeard’s rise while covering the food scene for The Indianapolis Star from 2014 to 2020.

“Abbi has this level of humility you don’t see as often among chefs at her level,” said Biro, who now works as a food journalist in North Carolina. “You don’t see her on social media. You don’t see Abbi promoting herself.

“She loves what she does, and she does it without any of the fanfare. All the fanfare goes on around Abbi. James Beard comes knocking on the door. Various national publications talk about Bluebeard. And Abbi is at the center of it. It sort of revolves around her, and she just goes along her merry way doing what she does.”

A productive spring

Her reputation as a behind-the-scenes talent aside, Merriss is scheduled to make a handful of public appearances this spring.

She will celebrate her 40th birthday on May 6 by participating in the annual Rev fundraiser for the Indianapolis University Health Foundation. More than 3,500 attendees are expected to attend the sold-out Rev party at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

On April 24, Merriss will collaborate with fellow chefs Carlos Salazar (who’s launching his Lil Rook food truck this spring) and Dean Sample (Big Bear Biscuits) to prepare a three-course menu as part of the Culinary Crossroads 2023 Spring Dinner Series at Highland Country Club. The four-week series is raising money for an Ivy Tech Community College culinary scholarship.

And Merriss will be joined by 9th Street Bistro’s Mohammad, Jonathan Brooks (Beholder, Milktooth) and other chefs on April 30 for Ramp Fest at Kan-Kan Cinema and Brasserie, 1258 Windsor St. The event is a fundraiser for the American Civil Liberties Union and a scholarship in honor of Greg Hardesty, the late Indianapolis chef who gave early-career jobs to Merriss and Brooks.

The “ramp” of Ramp Fest refers to the wild plant that’s not quite a green onion and not quite a leek—but is a celebrated spring ingredient among food enthusiasts.

Merriss said ramp season means busy days are just around the corner.

“I’m preaching to my kitchen right now: ‘Organization, organization, organization,’” Merriss said. “We’re going to be getting [a lot] of produce in from local farmers, and our walk-in is going to be overflowing in abundance of beautiful vegetables and greens.”

That’s a good thing, she said. “That gets me so tickled. I’m excited about that.”

Ken Honeywell, the retired founder of Well Done Marketing, is a vegetarian who witnessed Bluebeard’s stature grow from his old office near the other end of Virginia Avenue in the business district now known as Fountain Fletcher.

“The culinary scene here has improved dramatically in the last decade or so,” Honeywell said. “I don’t think we were used to that kind of recognition before that. But it’s certainly well-earned by Bluebeard.”

Honeywell cited Bluebeard and Tinker Street, 402 E. 16th St., as the Indianapolis restaurants he most often visits.

One of his favorite menu items at Bluebeard is a modest pasta dish of spaghetti, creme fraiche, parmesan, olive oil and gremolata.

“There’s nothing over-thought about it,” Honeywell said. “It’s simple and consistently excellent.”

Training days

Merriss graduated from F.J. Reitz High School in Evansville and then moved to Norfolk, Virginia, where she envisioned a future as a visual artist.

Instead, she found work at the Ten Top, a bistro where she attended to customers at the counter before being promoted to a management role.

“I realized I had acquired a little interest in cooking,” Merriss said. “That was my first culinary job. That’s what started it all.”

Her family had moved from Evansville to Indianapolis, so that’s where Merriss moved when returning from the East Coast in 2005.

Her mother suggested one of Hardesty’s restaurants, Elements, presently home to Bru Burger Bar in the Mass Ave Cultural District, as a place where Merriss might like to work.

Mom was correct. “I had this weird feeling that was overwhelming,” Merriss said. “I knew I had to be there. I was very adamant about trying to get a position there.”

The only snag: Merriss wanted to work as a server, a job she hadn’t previously done.

“I kept calling and calling,” she said. “Finally, Greg sat down with me. He said, ‘I’m not going to give you a serving job, because you don’t have any real history of doing that. But I’m going to give you a position in the kitchen.’ That’s when I started cooking in the kitchen.”

Hardesty, who died in June 2021 after being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, offered more than technical guidance to employees such as Merriss, Brooks and Pizzology founder Neal Brown, according to Biro.

“I think one of Greg’s greatest gifts to Indianapolis is helping these chefs see clearly what really matters in their profession,” Biro said. “It’s the food and how it tastes and how it’s prepared and how it’s respected. It’s the presentation and celebrating how people respond to it.”

In turn, Merriss is becoming known as a mentor. After serving as executive chef at Kan-Kan, a not-for-profit movie house and restaurant, from its opening in 2021 until the end of 2022, Merriss passed the torch to Michael Conley.

As a supervisor, Merriss doesn’t follow the over-the-top example of TV chef Gordon Ramsay, the seething intimidator of “Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Spending a lot of your time in that super-intense environment is exhausting,” Merriss said of the kitchen. “I like to pick my battles, and there are ways to educate and get things done in a calm manner.”

Her preferred approach is to fix a problem in the moment and talk about it later.

“Nothing is getting done while someone is being yelled at,” she said.

A culinary life

When she’s not at Bluebeard, Merriss said, she enjoys walking with her pit bull terrier near her Garfield Park home.

Playing video games and backyard gardening are diversions, and Merriss enjoys checking out other Indianapolis restaurants with her boyfriend, Bryan Kanne, who works as a sous chef at Bluebeard.

“I think it’s vital for a city the size of Indianapolis to have a thriving culinary scene,” said Honeywell, co-founder of the Tonic Ball concert fundraiser for Second Helpings, the not-for-profit that collects prepared and perishable food from wholesalers, retailers and restaurants.

“I told Tom Main at Tinker Street that people have moved to that area because Tinker Street is there,” he said. “And I think people have moved to Fletcher Place, Holy Rosary and Fountain Square because Bluebeard is there.”

Thompson, the saxophone player who leads the Premium Blend jazz band, said he met Merriss the music fan before he worked at her restaurant.

“When Premium Blend played Sundays at the Chatterbox, she would race out of work to catch the last tune or two we played,” Thompson said. “She sat at the very back table and requested songs she wanted to hear. That was her way of unwinding after work. And that meant a lot. When I applied for a job at Bluebeard, we already had an understanding. It was me going to her gig now.”

Reflecting on more than a decade of comfort food and haute cuisine served at Bluebeard, Merriss called it a natural success story built on teamwork.

“To see how that has inspired and encouraged other people to join us in this neighborhood, it’s special,” Merriss said. “I’m still in awe when we have a full dining room, and 70% are people who are here for the first time. It still happens, almost every weekend.”•