Fire by the Monon — Restaurant in Indianapolis

In looking for a place to meet friends, Fire By the Monon would show up in search results. Finally in June 2015, my wife and I met friends for some light food and drinks. It was very nice and now is on my list of places to visit if I ever write that Indy travel guide!

The restaurant is quaint and cozy. It is locally owned by "Joe" who lives close by and always seems happy to talk with his customers. They are kid friendly. The kids menu even has an option to ask for additional plates and let your kids eat off your plate. The children will get a pack of crayons and coloring pages to keep them busy while waiting.

For the food: We've had a variety of dishes here. I love the fish tacos. My wife was talking with the owner about the tacos and said she wants to try them sometime with chicken. He said, "we can do that now if you want." So, she had them with chicken and loved them! There are a number of pork dishes and a number of mac & cheese dishes. The spicy pork bbq in mac and cheese was very good. The kids pizza is a good size. Our kids could split one (although they haven't yet - dad seems to find something to do with the left over pizza :) Burgers are great. We always get the beer cheese pretzels - hot pretzels with beer cheese dip!

Drink: there are excellent mixed drinks. See the photos for some of the offerings. Also the local beer selection is wide and accommodating.

Other: The bathrooms are very clean and updated. Again, they are also kid friendly with changing tables. My wife checked it out and added that there are even clean diapers in the bathroom - nice touch!

FBtM has great outdoor seating. You will see this right when you walk up. There are some seats close to an outdoor fire place if it is a chilly night and you want to sit outside. We did this once on a family visit. If you are sitting outside during the sunset, the seats on the west will get a short period where you cannot block the sun (it only lasts a bit until the sun is behind trees - still, sit with your back to the west and act surprised and concerned when the other people in your group pull out their dark sunglasses).

The location is in Broad Ripple down a side street and close to the Monon. Great location! They have a parking lot - not enough for everyone dining there to have a spot, but there is free and pay street parking close by. I have not every had a problem finding a free place to park.

I enjoy this restaurant and am glad I live close enough to...

The food was decent and the outside seating area seemed nice but we were not impressed with the service we received and the inside was very loud. It's an open floor plan with wood floors so sound carries and people walking and talking at normal levels sounded much louder than it would. But it was a 20 minute wait to eat outside (even though I saw several empty tables but maybe people had reservations) so we decided to eat inside. They were fairly busy but by no means slammed and our waiter was extremely slow. I ordered a white sangria and it took him about 15 minutes to finally bring it to me. At first I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe the bar was backed up but when he finally brought it to me it was literally just a little bottle that he opened and gave to me with a glass of ice. He could have brought it with our waters. It took awhile for him to come get our orders but the food was hot when it came out so at least it wasn't just sitting there. Then after all 3 of us were done eating we waited for at least half an hour for him to come get our plates. At one point he was walking down the hall and made eye contact with me as I was motioning for him to come over and instead he turned and disappeared into the back for another 5-10 minutes. I have never been tempted to just walk out without paying and the only thing that kept me from it was knowing that other people would be missing out on payment for their work and what they provided. I had been planning on ordering dessert but I didn't want to be stuck there for another hour. I'm giving this 3 stars because the food was pretty good, the outside seating area seemed much nicer and less loud, and the other waiters and waitresses seemed to be more on top of things. I think we...

I am basing this rating on one visit but I do plan to go back. The food I had was delicious. I had a grilled salmon sandwich without the bread so basically a nice size grilled and smoked salmon fillet that was SO good I've been craving it ever since. It came with a lemon dill mayo I believe which was very good and I had a side of fries - also quite good and I'm very picky about fries! It was also served with a YUMMY "house" sauce or dip of some sort that was a simple and delicious sweet pepper flavored concoction that seemed like a cross between homemade ketchup and maybe Thousand Island dressing? It was magically delicious! I ate it on salmon and fries and MAY have poured the rest directly into my mouth...but I'm not admitting that. The waiter was friendly without being at all annoying. He knew the menu well and made honest recommendations. We ordered the appetizer special - fried green tomatoes - but he came back out to let us know that he would not be serving them because he said they were just not great at this point because the tomatoes were too mushy. So glad he did that because I would have been really disappointed with a mushy version of one of my fav dishes. REALLY GOOD EXPERIENCE. I want to go...