On today's Dopest we're covering:
Devour Indy — 100+ restaurants, three-course value menus, and a very good reason to eat out every night next week
Laurine's Coffee — a Near Eastside coffee shop that feels like visiting your favorite relative and tastes even better
Ripple Boulder — Broad Ripple's new boutique bouldering gym with a founding membership deal worth locking in now
Thanks for reading!
-Hillary
The Dopest Sponsor — Trevor St. Aubin | Realtor
Homeownership Is More Possible Than You Think
Everyone online has an opinion about why now is a bad time to buy. The headlines are loud and mostly wrong. Buying a home in Indianapolis is still one of the smartest moves you can make. Trevor has been helping first time home buyers in central Indiana for years and broke down the process step by step.
📞 317-809-3088 📧[email protected] @trevorstaubin
Download A Free Buyer Guide!
Via @devourindianapolis
🍽️ The Dopest Foodie Event — Devour Indy
Once a year, Indianapolis does something exceptionally generous for our inner fat kid. Devour Indy brings together more than 100 local restaurants — chef-driven, locally owned, all over the city — and drops value-priced three-course menus for one week only. It is the best time of year to try somewhere new, revisit a favorite, or finally make that reservation you've been putting off since January.
The lineup spans every corner of the city — downtown, east, midtown, north, south, and west — and you can filter by cuisine type, price point, and ownership category. Which means there is no good reason not to find at least five places you want to go. The hard part is narrowing it down. The easy part is making the reservation.
This is Indianapolis's restaurant community at its best — over 100 chefs and owners putting their best food forward at a price point that makes it accessible. Go multiple nights if you can. Live a little. That's the whole point!
August 24 - Sept 6
The Dopest Tip: Make reservations early — the most popular spots fill up fast. Pick a spot that has always felt out of reach and make an event out of it.
Via @laurinescoffee
☕ The Dopest New Coffee Shop — Laurine's Coffee
Candis Taylor named her coffee shop after her grandmother Laurine and designed it to feel like her living room. That's the whole vibe and it absolutely works. Laurine's Coffee sits on the Near Eastside right across from Arsenal Tech — one of those spots that the neighborhood has and the rest of the city hasn't fully caught on to yet. Family trinkets, local artwork, house-made syrups, and the kind of atmosphere that makes you want to stay way longer than you planned.
The drinks are fun and creative. Peach Cobbler Chai. Iced Cookie Butter Latte. Big Mama's Southern Sipper. These are not the drinks of a coffee shop playing it safe. The rotating baked goods — peach cobbler, pound cake with homemade caramel icing, cookies — are the kind of thing you think about on the drive home. This is as local as Indy gets. Black-woman-owned, built for the neighborhood, by someone who loves this city and means it.
Unpretentious designed with Indy in mind. Take my money.
📍 1507 E Michigan St
The Dopest Tip: Peach Cobbler Chai plus whatever is baking that day. Then walk next door to Gravesco. Buy something. You'll feel good about it.
🧗 The Dopest New Gym — Ripple Boulder
Broad Ripple now has a bouldering gym and it's not the kind of place trying to be everything to everyone. Ripple Boulder is 4,000 square feet of boutique climbing space right off the Monon Trail — walkable, bikeable, and built with the actual Broad Ripple community in mind. Not just the climbing community. The whole neighborhood.
Founder Collin Jester and co-owners Caleb Johnson and Madeline Mackinnon didn't open this place to compete with big box gyms. They opened it because Broad Ripple deserved a climbing space that was thoughtful, focused, and community centric— the kind of place that earns its spot in the neighborhood rather than just occupying it. Routes change weekly so the experience stays fresh. Serious climbers will find a quality product built with them in mind. Members get 24/7 access because that's what a gym designed for climbers actually looks like.
"Bigger is not always better." They mean it — and it shows in every decision they've made, from the location to the route-setting philosophy to the way they talk about being a good neighbor first and a gym second. Founding memberships are still available at $59/month — price locked for life!
📍5255 Winthrop Ave
The Dopest Tip: Bike the Monon, pop into the gym and check it out then grab dinner next door at Half Liter BBQ.
The Dopest This Week:
Indianapolis Indians Vs Louisville Bats | Thursday | 6:30
Speed Dating | Upland FSQ | Thursday | 6:00
Wine and Candle Workshop | Buck Creek Winery | Thursday | 6
Tedeschi Truck and Alabama Shakes | Ruoff | Saturday | 7:30
George Lopez | Helium Comedy Club | Sunday | 7
Indy is always up to something. So are we.
See you next week! — Indy's Dopest
Got a friend who thinks Indy is boring? Forward this. We'll take it from here.