Heart breaker for burger fans: Irvington restaurant closes to give space to other concepts
Owners of Heartbreaker burger restaurant in Irvington permanently closed Thursday to make way for expansion of their other Indianapolis café, bar and food concepts.
Neal Warner on Thursday confirmed in a post to a neighborhood Facebook group that Heartbreaker, 118 S. Audubon Road, would close.
Warner and his brother Paul Warner own Small Victories Hospitality restaurant group, which includes Provider café in the Kennedy King neighborhood and Coat Check Coffee operating from the Athenaeum downtown. They again announced the decision Friday morning on the Heartbreaker Instagram page.
“Most of this decision comes down to physical space and management bandwidth,” Neal Warner said, explaining that the group acquired the space at the beginning of the pandemic for the kitchen that would serve Strange Bird tiki bar and Landlocked Baking Co., a bakery in development at the time. All three concepts were housed in the same strip mall.
Landlocked, which opened in the fall of 2020, would go on to supply baked goods to all of the operation's cafes; so it needed more space for pastry production. Strange Bird would become home to the pop-up Shoyu Shop ramen concept.
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“As much as we love burgers and fries, we're more in our element serving coffee, cocktails, ramen and pastry, and we're going to narrow our focus to those,” Warner said in the post.
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Landlocked will be moving into the Heartbreaker space and begin serving made-to-order brunch and brunch cocktails.
The move also will provide more seating for Strange Bird, which will take over the current Landlocked space.
Small Victories had planned to operate Heartbreaker through the weekend, but after rumors began circulating on social media, customers descended upon the spot and supplies were exhausted, said Jes Nijjer, director of marketing and communications.
Fans of the burgers and fries can still find them on the Strange Bird menu, which has featured the items since last summer, she said.
The shuffling is the latest in a series of moves at the company, the development of which it recently saluted in a social media post, noting its beginning five years ago and its growth to 80 employees.
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In November, it closed Certain Feelings Coffee Co. café at The Garage Food Hall — another project started during the pandemic. And in early February it opened Chalet, a coffee shop and bar at a former firehouse in the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood.
"We're really excited about Chalet; and now with the brunch coming to Landlocked, these are just things that are a little bit more fundamental to all of our expertise and just what we do as a company," Nijjer said. "That pastry and beverage focus has always been pretty core to what we do. So with Landlockekd expanding into that and Chalet being open, we're in a pretty good spot. I think this is gonna be it for a while."
Contact IndyStar reporter Cheryl V. Jackson at cheryl.jackson@indystar.com or 317-444-6264. Follow her on Twitter: @cherylvjackson.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Irvington's Heartbreaker restaurant closes to make way for expansion
