The Inferno Room

Ed Rudisell had been collecting Polynesian and Papua New Guinean art for years before he turned it into a bar. The Inferno Room opened on 11 September 2018 at 902 Virginia Avenue in Fountain Square — a building that previously housed a Marion County courthouse — with Rudisell, his wife Sasatorn Rudisell and partner Chris Coy behind it. What they built is a serious tiki room rather than a themed one: the drink list pays close attention to mid-century Polynesian restaurant menus, the rum selection is deep, and the collection on the walls is, by the bar's own account, among the largest holdings of Papua New Guinea native art outside a museum. The space divides into the Kahuna Lounge and the Luau Room, and the bar runs its own annual Infernohana event.

Tiki is a difficult category to drink in without alcohol, because the classics are built on overproof rum and the usual alcohol-free substitute is a glass of pineapple juice. The Inferno Room prints a MOCKTAILS heading on its cocktail menu and puts three drinks under it at $10 each, all constructed rather than poured. The Coocoonut Grove runs coconut and pineapple against cinnamon, lemon and walnut bitters, so it lands bitter and spiced rather than sweet. The Way to Eden is the most complex of them — passion fruit, orgeat, pineapple, kiwi, prickly pear and lemon. Veiled Virtues sits between the two, on strawberry, cinnamon, coconut, pineapple, lemon and orange juice. Local Dry January coverage has also listed a fourth, The Deceiver, which rotates on and off. Hours run to 11pm midweek and 1am on Friday and Saturday, and the room sits three blocks from Nine Lives on Shelby Street, which makes for one of the better alcohol-free evenings available in Indianapolis. Two things to plan around. The Inferno Room is small and does not take the whole neighbourhood at once, so weekend evenings run on a wait; going early on a Tuesday or Wednesday is the way to actually look at the art and talk to the bartender about what is in the glass. And the room is unmistakably a rum bar — the shelves, the smell and the conversation are all about overproof Jamaican rum and Swedish punsch, so if you are avoiding alcohol in a way that makes being surrounded by it difficult, this is a harder room than a café. If it works for you, though, it is the most ambitious alcohol-free drink in the city, and the only place in Indianapolis building non-alcoholic drinks around orgeat, prickly pear and walnut bitters rather than juice and soda.