Thank you Gayot!

Say hey, Cerulean... Way to go!!!

Top 10 in the NATION??!

Bruiser

• He called you Bruiser; he nicknames everyone & that was quickly yours; he said that he knew you would be tough
• When you were a baby, he was quite possibly your favorite; you would cuddle up on his chest & be so content
• He was a 6'2" athletic man but as a tiny baby, he would hold you as if you were breakable, so carefully
• He quickly taught you to appreciate 50's & 60's rock & roll, you would "dance" for him (and everyone) often
• You were his swimming pool buddy; he LOVED when you would get in the pool, kick your legs & splash with your hands. He could watch you for hours & thought you were so funny in there.
• He would often hold you & walk you around in the pool, bouncing along 
• He showed you how to "lounge" on a raft in the pool

• He would wave at you with both hands & you would smile so big. He would shout "Tennnnnnny. Whatcha doing Tennnnnnny?!"
• He would gently stroke your forehead 
• We visited him at the office a few times; we took him lunch & ate with him there at the board room table
• He would stop over to visit you at the house; he played "ball" with you rolling the ball back & forth on the ground
• You became quite afraid of him (and all men) & would not let him hold you for a time frame; you would "talk" to him & smile at him but as soon as grandma tried to pass you off, you would fuss!

• When he found out you were being rather fussy for me as a baby, he went out & bought you a swing. He & Grandma brought it over on a Saturday afternoon & he put it together for you. 
• You would always wave goodbye when he left
• At Christmastime he bought you a Colts football & a red & white striped basketball; you pound on them both & say "huh-huh"
• Everything you did was funny to him; you made him laugh out loud
• He came to be with you in the hospital when you had your surgery; he calmed me tremendously

• He was fascinated when you began picking up food on your own. He kept asking "When did he learn to do that? He's so big."
• He told my aunt Mag that you were really, really smart at 9 mos old
• The last night he visited you, he told you that once you got a little older, he was going to teach you all kinds of things
• The last night he visited you, you walked along the coffee table to him; you gave him a high five
• The last night he visited you, he said, "I know we're gonna be great buddies"
• He bought you a shirt that said "little dude" when you were about 3 mos old; he also bought you mini cargo shorts & thought they were hilarious; He would always ask, "Tenny, where are your cargos?"

• He told me that you would be the best thing I ever did… and he was right.
• He would always ask you if you wanted a cigar....then he would always ask me when he could give you your first cigar.
• He never talked baby talk to you but definitely had his own language just for you
• You get your stubbornness (and strong will) partly from him!
• His eyes LIT UP whenever you came around
• You went golfing together for the first time on Father's Day at Raccoon Run 
• You had your first bite of protein with him at Thanksgiving. We fed you turkey at the Conrad in Indianapolis. 
• I prayed to God before you existed to let me have a baby that all our parents (your grandparents) could meet... I praise the Lord everyday that Grandpa Jay knew you & loved you...

... My prayer now is that someday you will get to meet him & love him as well. 

Success amidst the Sorrow

My father was my biggest fan. My father was Caleb's biggest fan. My father thought Cerulean was the best restaurant "in Indiana." And if my father had traveled much outside of the Midwest, he probably would have said we had the best restaurant in the world. : ) (he was also a bit of an exaggerator) Needless to say, my father was quite supportive & quite proud... nothing wrong with that. As I reflect on my father & I's relationship, I realize that the things I have accomplished in my limited scope of a life, stem from a family & a father who made me feel like anything was possible. 

Thank you father for instilling confidence in me & always being my biggest fan. This one is for you!

Dining Out

RECENT REVIEWS

The Art of the Meal: A Review of Cerulean

With a stunning downtown dining room and a delicious fashion sense, Cerulean looks good enough to eat.

by Julia Spalding

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I glanced up from my butternut-and-acorn squash salad just as a group of business-dressed women in CityWay hard hats filed past Cerulean’s courtyard windows—on what looked like a guided tour of this $155 million mixed-use complex-in-the-making. When complete, the downtown site will house a boutique hotel, townhomes, shops, a park, a YMCA, and this gorgeous fishbowl of a restaurant where lunch arrives in westernized polished-walnut bento boxes. I wondered, as I plucked bites of balsamic-glazed pork loin, green beans spiked with vinaigrette, and spicy chorizo–crumbled potatoes from their individual compartments, if that tour group was as captivated by the soaring modern floorplan as I was by my lunch. It’s easy to get excited about this much new-urban design and sauce-painted dishware. But should we resist the temptation to fawn over all the pretty plates? Does the style have substance? Or have we fallen under the spell of a very impressive dog-and-pony show?

These are the questions you might ask yourself while sipping a bourbon cocktail that contains both fresh ginger and egg white in a dining room of soft leather clamshell booths, featuring a cozy enclosed area (inspired by an installation in a New York art museum) that looks like an Airstream trailer made of bent strips of wood. Before the November opening, chef-owner Caleb France personally hosted a series of private preview dinners and invited, among others, food bloggers and social-media mavens. It was not a bad idea, considering that many of Cerulean’s dishes need some narration.

I might have better appreciated my plate of hay-smoked quail garnished with button-sized dollops of cherry butter had I known that the little gelatinous marble of brown juice that I popped with my fork was full of liquid boiled out of wood, not just your ordinary broth. As for the tufts of white foam that frothed amid miniature wedges of brown-butter cake and Earl Grey cream on my Chocolate & Citrus dessert plate? Turns out those were bubbles of orange juice and vanilla, emulsified and fluffed with an aerator. Basically, flavored air.

Whether or not Indianapolis is ready for food this highly evolved, or even grown-up enough to nibble a pork-belly macaron without giggling, Cerulean represents a turning point of sorts. The decor is as sleek as a W hotel, the plates art-directed right down to the last tire track of liquefied arugula. What we have here is the anti-Bluebeard—scruffy gourmet’s dandy cousin. And not since Neal Brown closed L’explorateur have we been this awestruck by our food.

The decor is as sleek as a W hotel, the plates art-directed right down to the last tire track of liquefied arugula.

The dinner menu opens with a grouping of small plates in the $3 to $4 range—just bites, really, of things like a little jar of mushroom custard and creamed rabbit rillettes on a pouf of horseradish. A second page of shareables might (depending on the season) include a wee brick of bison mousse alongside a tiny loaf of sliced bread, or chilled sweet-potato soup with a twig of nutmeg-thyme cracker.

France, who majored in business at Taylor University and had no formal culinary training when he opened his flagship Cerulean six years ago in Winona Lake, pulls out all the stops with the short list of mains. The tenderest slab of soft-braised beef short ribs rests atop a bed of crunchy ghee-fried spaetzle with baby-food dollops of brown butter and a bright-green smear of Swiss chard bleeding off the plate. Two pan-fried filets of sunfish lie next to a thick strip of cured pork, propped up on a miniature goat-cheese–beet cake. Desserts could range from a pretty plate of spiced peanut-butter ice cream with housemade toasted marshmallows and bits of burnt honey to Greek-yogurt panna cotta—sweet, silky, and cool.

Cerulean’s open dining room and cozy front bar have a sexy vibe at night, with the city lights twinkling just beyond the glass. But Cerulean also shines—perhaps even brighter—during the light of day. At lunch, mix-and-match mains and sides are parceled out in a 1:3 ratio and served inside those handsome bento boxes. A pair of seared scallops might join a small bowl of roasted-carrot soup, Brussels sprouts caramelized in maple syrup, and a crisp picnic salad of broccolini, cranberries, walnuts, and cured pork. The presentation is as sweet as a housemade marshmallow, as precious as a candlelit bentwood hut. Who could resist?

CERULEAN
339 S. Delaware St., 870-1320, ceruleanrestaurant.com
HOURS Mon.–Sat. 11 a.m.–2 p.m., 5–10 p.m.

Photos by Tony Valainis

This article appeared in the February 2013 issue, Indianapolis Monthly.

One week later...

As a little girl you think your father is the strongest man in the world. As you get a little older you think your father is the smartest man in the world. And moving into your adult life, you realize that your father is very strong and is very smart and is very wise but you also begin to see him for who he really is... You begin to see him as a friend. When he becomes a friend that's when the whole world changes. You have someone in your life that has not only known you since the day you were born but generally understands everything about you. He understands what makes you tick, makes you laugh, what makes you cry and why you even make the decisions that you do. Whether you want to admit it or not he probably knows you better than anyone else in the world. Except for maybe your own mother. If I were to be really honest, my father was probably the closest thing to me- in other words, we were a lot alike. I remember never wanting to admit the things that I would do that would be considered "just like my father." But the not wanting to admit they were "just like my father" is an exact trade of his, stubborn! 

Losing a father is like losing a piece of yourself, there's no way to replace it. My father always told us to just do the next right thing. When he's not here to remind me that, it's difficult to know what to do. He was a source of support and encouragement and I don't know what I'm supposed to do when I don't have his voice guiding me, telling me what the next right thing is... I have realized what a source of security he was in my life. Now that he's not there I find myself frantic on who I'm going to go to when I need advice or who is going to tell me how to live my life... or who is going to bail me out of the next speeding ticket?? My father had become my friend and I would get excited to see him. I would be excited to go visit him or to see him walk through my front door. I was excited for him to teach Tennyson to play basketball or baseball or any other sport for that matter. He was the sports guy. He was going to be so many things in my life, still. He was going to be so many things for Tennyson's life, still. I hate knowing that my son will never have his grandfather again... and that he will never get the wisdom & strength & the security & the friendship that I have had with that man. How will words even come close to doing justice to the father that I've had when I try to tell stories to my son? There are not enough words in the English language to express how great a man he was...