BUNNY BRUNCH Mother’s Day, New Year’s Day, and Easter are the three biggest brunch days of the year, which means getting a restaurant seat for some Easter eggs this Sunday might be pretty tricky. The Star has pulled together an extremely helpful list of restaurants where you still might be able to score a table on Sunday, and there are a lot of IM favorites there, like Easy Rider Diner (1043 Virginia Ave., 463-224-0430), Gather 22 (22 E. 22nd St., 317-258-2222), and Parkside Public House (2602 Shelby St., 317-868-4511). Were I you, I’d get hopping on a reservation at one of those spots before it’s too late.
GREENWOOD RISING Local sit-down mini-chain Verde Flavors of Mexico is heading south, expanding its reach from Zionsville, Fishers, Carmel, and Indianapolis to the Greenwood Park Mall. The company’s fifth location swung open this week in one of the shopping venue’s outdoor-facing slots (“Outside of Entrance 3 near the outdoor fountain, between BJ’s Brewhouse and Painting With a Twist,” a rep helpfully notes), with a menu of familiar Latin favorites for dinner and lunch.
MASS AVE MESS It’s only been a few weeks since a social media scrum focused national attention on Mass Ave standby the Chatterbox, but now another restaurant just up the street is making headlines across the country. This time, the venue is Thaitanium, an eight-year-old Thai spot at 735 Massachusetts Ave. In a now-deleted video posted to TikTok last weekend, a Black patron of the restaurant said she was told she needed to tip to dine there, while white customers were not told the same thing. When word of the viral video (which was widely reposted) reached restaurant owner Kanlaya Browning, she tracked down the diner, apologized, and filmed a joint video (which is viewable on the restaurant’s Facebook page) with a caption saying, “I fired the waitress instantly after I found out what happened. This type of treatment to any of our customers is unacceptable.”
MAGIC NUMBER Barrio Burrito Bar, a massive Canadian chain that purports to serve Tex-Mex food, is planning 69 new locations across Indiana, it announced in a press release. Franchisees Sonal, Amit, and Vishal Patel will make “the state of Indiana … their third Barrio Burrito Bar territory,” company founder/CEO Alex Shtein says. The deal puts the company at 1,170 franchisee-owned locations across the U.S. and makes it “Canada’s largest and fastest-growing burrito franchise.”
LITTLE 5 PREP Next weekend is the annual Little 500, the Bloomington bike race made immortal in the 1979 classic Breaking Away. It’s also a notorious party weekend in the college town, which is why servers at the city’s locations of homegrown sports bar Kilroy’s are currently undergoing training to recognize situations in which patrons might be at risk of sexual assault. Other bars in Bloomington do not train their bartenders to monitor for sex crimes, WTHR notes—but what the broadcast station doesn’t mention is the bars’ possible infamy. In 2011, 20-year-old IU student Lauren Spierer disappeared after a night at a Bloomington Kilroy’s location, making the venue nationally known for its role in the still-unsolved case and spurring excise action against its owners.
SPICE UP YOUR LIFE Claypot Coffee House (1551 E. Stop 12 Rd.) is set to open on April 25, with an official grand opening on May 17. Its sign promises kopi, a southeast Asian coffee drink made with an abundance of sugar and condensed milk. Owner Sang Par says the business will also serve Malaysian and Vietnamese coffee, “all-day breakfast with an Asian street food twist,” and mochi donuts.
