There is a moment that happens to every first-timer at St. Elmo. The shrimp cocktail arrives, you take a normal-sized bite, and roughly two seconds later your sinuses file a complaint. Everyone at the table watches. They know. They have all been there.
That has been happening at 127 South Illinois Street since 1902. St. Elmo Steak House opened before the first Indianapolis 500 was ever run, and it is still on the same corner.
From Saloon to Institution
Joe Stahr opened St. Elmo in October 1902. The restaurant says Stahr was a Navy man, and that he named the place for Erasmus of Formia, the patron saint of sailors, better known as St. Elmo. It is the sort of origin story a restaurant tells about itself, so take the Navy part as the house version, but the name is real and so is the saint.
What you walk into now is not a reconstruction. The tiger oak bar, the brick, the tile, the wall of photographs. It has been added to over 123 years, but the bones are the same room Stahr opened. That is the actual rarity here. Plenty of restaurants are old. Very few are old in the same room.
About That Shrimp Cocktail
The sauce is the thing. It is horseradish forward in a way that is not a garnish or a suggestion. It is the point. St. Elmo grinds it fresh, and the story the restaurant tells is that Stahr's original menu listed the shrimp cocktail at ten cents.
The right move is to not be a hero. Take a small bite. Have bread ready. Do not, under any circumstances, lean over the plate and inhale.
The 1933 Lounge, Explained
Upstairs there is a bar called the 1933 Lounge, and the name confuses people constantly. It did not open in 1933. It opened in 2011.
The name is a reference to December 5, 1933, the day Prohibition ended. Which, for a place that had spent the previous thirteen years being a steakhouse that legally could not sell you a drink, was a fairly significant date.
The Accolades
The James Beard Foundation gave St. Elmo an America's Classic award in 2012, which is the award that goes to regional institutions rather than to chefs chasing trends. It is the right category for this place.
The current era started in 1986, when Steve Huse and Jeff Dunaway bought the restaurant for $2.5 million. Huse's son Craig came aboard in 1997, and the family has run it since. That is four decades of not ruining it, which is harder than it sounds.
Go, But Book It
St. Elmo is a reservation restaurant, especially on a race weekend or a convention weekend, which in Indianapolis is most weekends. Walking up at 7 p.m. on a Saturday and expecting a table is optimistic.
If you are building a downtown night around it, the Garage Food Hall in the Bottleworks District is a different kind of evening entirely, and we rounded up the best date spots in Indy if you want options.
