WHEN CHRIS AND Ally Benedyk broke into the local dining scene in early 2015 with their playful low-meets-high brunch spot inside a defunct Subway on East 10th Street, I knew this was something Indy hadn’t quite experienced before. With all the pickling, curing, and fermenting happening in the storefront’s decidedly tiny kitchen just to create sandwich fillings and garnishes on breakfast platters, not to mention all the mixing and baking, I could tell the care being taken would make an everyday lunch plate something special, even spectacular. Even if I couldn’t make it in, Love Handle’s Instagram, which quickly became one of the city’s most colorful and beloved, filled my screen with salacious shots of towering pork belly breakfast sandos, beef tongue cheesesteaks, lox home fries, and biscuits and gravy the likes of which Indiana has never seen, often enlivened with shiitakes or summer squash gravy. Chris took the art of cooking with offal to new heights with fried gizzards, sweetbreads sandwiches, and his legendary Egg on Headcheese Mountain, a throwback ’50s aspic mold that you actually want to eat. Ally flexed her pastry muscle with innovative sweets such as tamarind coffee cake, excellent hand pies, and one of the best cheesecakes in the city. While the original Love Handle, which they operated for two years in Milwaukee before bringing it home to Indiana in 2015, was geared toward late-night revelers, the Indy spot, which moved from 10th Street to Mass Ave in 2018, excelled at hair-of-the-dog morning fare.
An inveterate late riser, I long waited for the Benedyks to add dinner service, but brunch was the couple’s mainstay. The menu they debuted at the 10th Street location was determined by the size of the kitchen. Brunch felt right and made sense. The pair flirted with evening meals on Mass Ave, planning for a chicken rotisserie focus that didn’t take off. And during Lent most years, they opened on select Fridays to honor the Wisconsin tradition of the fish fry, with platters of cod, catfish, and even rainbow trout and skate wing, complete with slaw, fries, and seasoned biscuits, that are nothing like the Catholic fish fries I grew up on in Illinois. But dinner came around only a few nights a year.
Recently, however, nights have gotten a lot more delicious. With 13 years of restaurant experience under their belts and the partnership of the affable, enthusiastic Dominic Senibaldi of Cat Head Press, who was brought on as a part-owner in early 2025, the Benedyks finally made good on their long-discussed plans to start dinner service, opening on Fridays and Saturdays in early April with a tight menu of classic Love Handle favorites and bistro plates. This means you can now get a slightly scaled-down version of the fish fry in the form of fish and chips, light and fluffy fingers of battered cod with sturdy potato wedges and some of the creamiest tartar sauce you’ll ever try. Select daytime sandwiches, bowls of chili with all the trimmings, and smoky wings with a variety of sauces are all good bets. A double burger with house-made sweet bread-and-butter pickles, onion, gooey American cheese, and Love Handle’s version of “special sauce” is enough to split. A recent special of smoked ribs served with a potluck-worthy broccoli salad and crisp-crusted cornbread lavished with butter is a supper you could skip eating all day for.
Ordering is still at the counter, and the dining room decorated with vintage trophies and paint-by-number still lifes has the same whimsy as always. But things are a bit spiffier since Senibaldi came on board to handle some front-of-house duties. You can now enjoy a buttoned-up steak frites plate made with skirt steak sauced with chimichurri and potato wedges with a side of horseradish aioli. And you’ll be hard pressed to find a steakhouse with a better wedge salad than the one here, served with a slab of utterly tender pork belly, pickled red onions, chunky blue cheese dressing, and a shower of bacon bits.
Dropping by in the evening means you can feel better about ordering a tallboy, and now there’s no excuse to not get one of Ally’s bright, tart lemon bars or a slice of Key lime with some of the thickest whipped cream you’ll ever sink a fork into. Brunch is still Love Handle’s focus, and its biggest crowds are still on weekend mornings. “I think what I’m most excited for with dinner is just seeing the growth,” Ally says. “Dinner has been a goal for a while now, and seeing it happen in a real way is rewarding.”
877 Massachusetts Ave.
317-384-1102
Hours
Sun–Mon 8 a.m.–3 p.m.
Thu 8 a.m.–3 p.m.
Fri–Sat 8 a.m.–3 p.m., 5–9 p.m.
Vibe
Rec Room Chic
Tasting Notes
Gut-busting brunch fare with Friday and Saturday dinner plates
Neighborhood
Mass Ave
Must-Order
A decadent dinnertime wedge salad atop a thick tranche of fork-tender pork belly; light, flaky battered cod with tangy tartar sauce, fries, and coleslaw; smoky, fall-apart ribs with crisp, buttery cornbread and broccoli salad; tart lemon bars and Key lime pie
