The COURSE INSTRUCTOR
In early August, diners at Bluebeard had a chance to try the restaurant’s take on Puerto Rican red beans and rice. Their version included chicken quarters that had been marinated in a pique sauce of red Thai chiles and heavy pours of white vinegar and sugar. To serve, chefs added tomato concassé—blanched, skinned, seeded, finely chopped tomatoes—and finished the dish with more pique. If you had a chance to dab a fork into this complex sauce, you would have tasted mangoes, peaches, pineapple, and a fermented chili mash. As you admired the beautiful plating, you might have assumed that Bluebeard’s celebrated chef Abbi Merriss was responsible for the dish. But you would have been wrong.
“I’m just a line cook,” says Marcus Benassi, the 26-year-old novice who came up with the recipe. He first saw a bott le of pique sauce in a San Francisco restaurant. Back home in Indiana, he wanted to re-create it, so Merriss helped the recent Bluebeard hire get it right. She taught him how to conceptualize the end product before the process began, how to bring together salt, acid, and fat in perfect balance.
Benassi knows how lucky he is to be working under Merriss. A perennial James Beard Award semifinalist, she’s one of the city’s top chefs. Merriss has earned mentions in The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, Playboy, and USA Today. Perhaps more than anyone other than Milktooth and Beholder chef Jonathan Brooks, she’s responsible for Indy’s heightened profile among foodies in recent years. But the part-owner of Holy Rosary’s most beloved restaurant isn’t interested in putting this town on the map as the Home Of Abbi Merriss. She wants to mentor young chefs, who in turn may create a critical mass of talent to make Indianapolis a true food city.
Early next year, Merriss will take the next step toward that goal. Along with the prolific Batt ista family (development partners and property owners of Bluebeard, Amelia’s, Milktooth, and King Dough), she plans to open Kan-Kan Cinema and Brasserie, an arthouse movie theater and restaurant in Windsor Park. Although the menu is still being developed, it’s fair to
