INDIANA
Michelin-Worthy Restaurants in Indiana: 17 Top Spots Across the Hoosier State
By Eric Barton | July 3, 2025
Vida
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
There’s no Michelin Guide for Indiana—yet. But if the inspectors ever made their way here, they’d find more than enough restaurants worth recognizing. The Adventurist team spent months crisscrossing the state, from big cities to no-stoplight towns, searching for the kinds of places that go beyond expectations. These are the spots where technique meets hospitality, where chefs cook with a sense of purpose, and where you’d absolutely believe a Michelin star—or at least a Bib Gourmand—belongs. So until there’s a Michelin Guide for Indiana, here are the state’s restaurants that deserve the recognition.
Arbor – Fort Wayne
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The white-tablecloth set has a new favorite in Arbor, where every course feels quietly extravagant. The menu leans into hyper-seasonal Midwestern cooking with global winks—think dry-aged duck with mole or king trumpet mushrooms with sesame. The kind of understated fine dining that’s easy to underestimate.
Award: One Star
Beholder – Indianapolis
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Jonathan Brooks doesn’t do anything halfway, which is why the menu might offer lamb tongue pastrami next to scallop crudo and duck-fat potatoes. The dining room feels brutalist and stylish, and the cooking is refined, risk-taking, and dead serious. This is Michelin’s kind of weird.
Award: One Star
Belly of the Wolf – Evansville
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Belly of the Wolf takes its name seriously—this is food to sink into, not nibble at. Dishes like duck cassoulet and bone marrow toast deliver French bistro indulgence in a city not known for subtlety. Michelin would see the technique hiding under all that comfort.
Award: One Star
Birdie’s – Westfield
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This country-club-adjacent spot charms with its warm service, lush plating, and the rare sense that everyone genuinely wants to be there. Dishes like halibut with saffron beurre blanc and housemade pappardelle straddle fine dining and comfort. A Bib-worthy restaurant in golf-cart country.
Award: Bib Gourmand
Bluebeard – Indianapolis
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The house that Tom and Ed built still turns heads a decade later, with dishes that make Indiana corn and local rabbit feel like luxury ingredients. It’s the kind of place where the sourdough is sacred, the pasta is handmade, and the kitchen keeps reinventing itself without chasing trends. If Michelin ever stopped by Indy, they’d start here.
Award: One Star
C3 Bar – Bloomington
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This moody, wood-walled spot feels like a secret Bloomington locals keep from the undergrads. Chef Matthew Smith’s kitchen turns out precise, ambitious plates like pork belly with coconut curry and a goat cheese panna cotta that could headline in New York. It’s quietly one of the most creative restaurants in southern Indiana.
Award: Bib Gourmand
Corridor – Indianapolis
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Chefs Erin Kem and Logan McMahan dial it way down at Corridor, an airy modern bistro with soft lighting and shockingly good vegetables. The flavors here—creamy leeks with trout roe, Wagyu with burnt onion—are quiet, confident, and composed like chamber music. Michelin loves a restaurant that doesn’t scream.
Award: One Star
Feast – Bloomington
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Feast Market & Cellar makes its name with unpretentious plates that surprise you by being kind of perfect—duck leg confit, handmade gnocchi, or whatever’s on the chalkboard that day. The wine list is smarter than it needs to be, and the service makes you feel like you accidentally wandered into someone’s dinner party. Bloomington’s best-kept secret isn’t so secret anymore.
Award: Bib Gourmand
Good Omen – Zionsville
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There’s a seriousness to this tiny Fort Wayne dining room, like chef Nicholas Gattone is aiming higher than anyone expects. His team takes a slow, seasonal approach, with plates that look more Napa than northeast Indiana. A textbook Bib Gourmand: modest setting, impeccable food.
Award: One Star
Provision – Indianapolis
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This sprawling, glass-box restaurant could feel corporate if the food weren’t so dialed in. There’s a rigor here—perfect sears, thoughtful sauces, the restraint of a chef, Aaron Bender, who knows when to stop. For a restaurant in a shopping complex, it hits way above its weight.
Award: Bib Gourmand
Rune Restaurant – Fort Wayne
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Part dinner party, part chef’s lab, Rune offers a seasonal menu from chef Sean Richardson that impresses with every course. The setting is minimalist, the vibe quietly reverent, and the pacing nearly flawless. Michelin loves a good narrative, and Rune delivers one, course by course.
Award: One Star
Story Inn – Nashville
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This destination restaurant in an old general store serves some of the state’s most ambitious rural dining. The $75 prix fixe menu leans local but refined—beet tartare that’ll make you sweat off meat, at least until the venison with elderberry jus arrives. If all that sounds too fancy, come on Sundays for brunch in the connected tavern. Michelin would go for the charm and stay for the execution.
Award: One Star
Strings Ramen – West Lafayette
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With house-made noodles and broth simmered for 18 hours, Strings takes ramen as seriously as any Tokyo alley counter. It’s casual, yes, but technically on point—and that’s what earns a Bib. Michelin loves when comfort food gets the respect it deserves.
Award: Bib Gourmand
Vida – Indianapolis
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Thomas Melvin’s tasting-menu fortress is where every meticulously-sourced ingredient is arranged with surgical precision and foie gras sometimes appears under glass. It’s sleek, expensive ($135 per person before adding wine), and perhaps the only place in the state with an on-site herb wall. Whether you’re into edible flowers or not, there’s real technique on the plate.
Award: One Star
Yak & Yeti – Evansville
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In a modest strip mall, this Nepali spot delivers deeply spiced momos, goat curry, and the kind of hospitality that makes inspectors swoon. Nothing here is flashy, but the flavors and execution are rock solid. Bib Gourmand, no question.
