Aristocrat Pub & Restaurant is a local mainstay near the South Broad Ripple (SoBro) and Meridian-Kessler neighborhoods of Indianapolis. In August of 2011, an electrical fire started in the early hours of the morning in the restaurant. Aside from several pieces of stained glass, the resulting smoke damage deemed the entire front and back of the house a complete loss. The owner, Rick Rising-Moore, turned this devastating event into an opportunty to rethink the design and layout of the kitchen to accommodate the expansion of the surrounding neighborhoods. The restaurant was rebuilt and reopened in October of 2012.
Front of House Gallery
The Aristocrat serves great food, but first and foremost (even in their name) is a beloved neighborhood pub. Rick's younger brother, Spencer Rising-Moore, is the owner of Remote Beverage in Indianapolis. Spencer had replaced the beer system for the Aristocrat less than a month before the fire. With no salvageable components, Rick and Spencer designed a new draft beer system that nearly quadrupled the pub's draft beer offerings.
Rick partnered with C&T Design on the redesign of the Aristocrat's kitchen and bar space. An essential piece to the rebuilding process was to maintain the feel and ambiance the loyal customers had come to expect for decades, while modernizing the decor and establishing an open floor plan for changing neighborhood demographics. In the kitchen they added new pieces of equipment to the cookline. This addition of equipment affords them the opportunity to expand menu offerings if so desired in the future. The expansion of their cookline doubled the size of their exhaust system. The decision to add an elevator was made for two very important reasons: the first is to have the ability to safely transport heavy beer kegs and food deliveries downstairs and prepared food upstairs, the second reason is to offer handicap accessibilty to the private party space upstairs that is currently under construction.
Back of House Gallery
