Restaurants in Fort Wayne

Fort Wayne, Indiana, is frequently called the “City of Restaurants,” and boasts of over 600 eating establishments! What a Gold Winger’s paradise! After researching several sources, we have compiled a list of restaurants to please every palate and budget. Fort Wayne has everything from the popular chains to unique Fort Wayne institutions and everything in between.
Whatever your needs, from a quick bite of fast food to gathering old friends at a nice dinner house, Fort Wayne has so many choices you may need some help choosing. Our sources were Fort Wayne’s IN-D2 Chapter Director, Mike Murphy, the Fort Wayne Convention and Visitors Bureau, and a reader poll of restaurants from a local free publication called Whatzup Entertainment Guide.
Let’s start with breakfast, one of our favorite meals for restaurants. Bill’s Palace downtown features home-cooked meals, including breakfast, or you can sip gourmet coffee at Dash-In. Open through the week at 7:30 a.m., Dash-In was voted most popular coffeehouse by a whopping 45 percent of the readers of Whatzup. The same readers picked Klemm’s Candlelight Café as a classic breakfast spot.
Hungry for lunch? Most of the host hotels have fine choices for lunch and there are several Applebees and a Cracker Barrel nearby, but some unusual possibilities exist for the adventuresome.
Cindy’s Diner has been recommended as an authentic 50’s silver diner, and they tout their famously rude waitresses. They claim to serve the “Whole world, 15 at a time!” Come rub elbows, ’cause it’s “counter stools only” in this intimate place!

Anton’s Thai Cuisine, 4634 Coldwater Road. (219) 471-7040.
Applebees, 4510 N. Clinton. (219) 497-7404.
Banana’s Steak House, 2787 Maplecrest Road. (219) 492-0300.
Bandido’s, 933 Northcrest. (219) 482-9497.
Bill’s Palace, 1202 S. Harrison Street. (219) 422-9927.
Casa d’Angelo, 4302 Fairfield Ave. (219) 745-7200.
Catablu, 2441 Broadway. (219) 456-6563.
Chop’s Steaks and Seafood, 6421 W. Jefferson Blvd. (219) 436-9115.
Cindy’s Diner, 830 S. Harrison Street. (219) 426-3442.
Club Soda, 235 E. Superior Street. (219) 426-3442.
Cracker Barrel, 1609 W. Washington Center. (219) 489-1855.
Dash-In, 814 Calhoun Street. (219) 423-3595.
DeBrand Fine Chocolates, 5608 Coldwater Road, (219) 482-4373 or 6370 W. Jefferson Blvd., (219) 432-5050.
Don Hall’s Restaurants. Fifteen individual restaurants ranging from diners to dinner houses. Home of the original “Big Buster” double decker hamburger.
Eddie Merlot’s, Jefferson Point Shopping Center, 1502 Illinois Road South. (219) 459-2222.
El Azteca, 535 E. State Blvd. (219) 482-2172.
Joe’s Crab Shack, 5820 Coldwater Road. (219) 471-2206.
Hacienda, 10330 Lima Road. (219) 490-9550.
Klemm’s Candlelight Café, 1207 E. State Blvd. (219) 471-6828.
Mi Pueblo, 2419 W. Jefferson. (219) 432-6462.
Panera Bread, 4110 W. Jefferson Blvd., at Jefferson Pointe. (219) 432-8866.
Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant, 6410 W. Jefferson Street, Suite 9B. (219) 432-8993.
Takaoka of Japan, 305 E. Superior Street. (219) 424-2893.
The Home of Elias Ruff, 13531 U.S. 30, West at Butt Road, Grabill, IN. (219) 625-4181.
The Original Munchie Emporium, 2002 Broadway. (219) 426-2537.
The Pfeiffer House, 434 W. Wayne Street. (219) 420-1386.
Toast & Jam, 426 E. Wayne St. (219) 422-4JAM.

Unusual sandwiches like the Veggie Sandwich and Turkey Vegetable Pocket are specialties of The Pheiffer House in downtown Fort Wayne. If you love restored houses, come dine in this 1905 house and savor both the food and the historic atmosphere. Toast & Jam is similarly housed in an 1888 Victorian setting.
Panera Bread is recommended by Whatzup’s owner, Doug, for great sandwiches and soups. As the name indicates, the bread is the star at this restaurant, and you can buy loaves of your favorites to take home.
One final lunch place keeps appearing on our sources’ lists, and that is Joe’s Crab Shack. Here hungry Wingers can find Southern-style seafood featuring fresh crabs and fun entertainment.
We can move on to the interesting dinner spots, but remember most of these establishments are open for lunch as well. For example, Anton’s Thai Cuisine has, “excellent, authentic Thai and is moderately priced,” according to Mike Murphy. He also lists the Taj Mahal Indian restaurant, and says, “Both of these restaurants are frequented by folks who consider them just food from back home.” If you don’t want to commit to this more exotic food for dinner, try them for lunch.
The better choices for Mexican food per Mike Murphy are Mi Pueblo, Bandido’s and Hacienda. Fort Wayne locals voted in Whatzup’s reader poll for El Azteca as best Mexican, Casa d’Angelo as the best Italian and Takaoka of Japan for best Asian.
A tip of the hat should go to Don Hall and his family of Fort Wayne Restaurants. The legendary Don Hall started out with a meat market. He expanded this business, but shrewdly realized the advent of the refrigerator and later the “super market” or grocery store would eventually consign the butcher shop to extinction. The original restaurant was opened in 1946 as a drive-in. Proceeding on a “pay-as-you-go” basis, he had acquired six more restaurants by the time of his death in 1972. His son, Sam Hall, says four of the sons, “…were foolish enough to carry on the tradition!” Don Hall’s restaurants now number 15, and range from diners to dinner houses. Sam says they have retained their father’s standards of providing “substance and value.” This family must have met some Gold Wingers along the way!
This writer’s philosophy for restaurant dining is to go with the local specialty, and from the number of steak houses and what we know about the Midwest, beef is one of the prime choices of the area—both puns intended. Choose from Banana’s Steak House, Catablu (housed in a restored theater), The Old Gas House, Club Soda (what a great name!) or the new and very up-scale Eddie Merlot’s. Chop’s Steak and Seafood is Mike’s favorite and 31 percent of the Whatzup readers’ poll voted Cork and Cleaver the number one steak house.
There are two final restaurants we think sound very intriguing, but they seem to escape categorization. The Home of Elias Ruff Restaurant is in nearby Grabill, Indiana, and is located in a log cabin built by a Mennonite minister in 1791. It features authentic regional cuisine served in the atmosphere of the 1800s. Forty dishes are rotated and reservations are recommended for Friday and Saturday dinners. Sandy Thorn Clark of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette writes, “Just when I thought things couldn’t get better, the right-out-of-the-oven apple dumpling and peach pie were delivered. They were tremendous!”
Springfield, Missouri, may have the oddly-named “Home of the Throwed Rolls,” but Fort Wayne has equally strange-sounding The Munchie Emporiums. There are four versions, each reported to have unique personalities. Restaurant reviewer Alex Vagelatos has this to say, “A city’s good restaurants are like old friends. You know you can visit anytime and share an enjoyable meal. You know what to expect, but because your friend is an interesting old coot, it’s a little different every time. You’re never bored, and you’re glad you found the time to get together again. For 20 years, the original Munchie Emporium, 1109 Taylor St., has been that good friend to thousands of customers. Eclectic, sometimes noisy, occasionally a challenge, it beckons you back time after time.”
These fun family restaurants were the first to be mentioned by all of our sources, and the bits and pieces of information we have gathered have guaranteed the original Munchie Emporium is a “must do.” The owners are rumored to have paid for the recipe and technique to make Chicago’s famous Uno’s pizza, and all reports are that it is something special. Umm, the mysteries of the perfect pizza—save some pepperoni for us!
This overview does not begin to cover all the wonderful dining possibilities in Fort Wayne. There were many whose recommendation, description or menu intrigued us, but due to space limitations, we could include only a few of these from each category.
Come with us to the “City of Restaurants,” Fort Wayne, Indiana, for Wing Ding XXIV, and know you will enjoy the food. Oh, and for one truly decadent dessert, serious chocolate aficionados will stop at DeBrand Fine Chocolates!