This Carmel spot is the lone Indiana eatery on OpenTable's Top 100 brunch spots

Bradley Hohulin, Indianapolis Star
·2 min read

With ornate, towering cakes and an idyllic atmosphere, Gwendolyn Rogers' Cake Bake Shop in Carmel City Center seldom struggles for attention. And once again, it has received national recognition.

Ahead of Mother's Day, online restaurant reservation service OpenTable released its list of the top 100 brunch restaurants in the United States. The Cake Bake Shop was Indiana's lone representative.

Like any list, OpenTable's has its limits. While the company can point to the more than 14 million ratings users left for various restaurants, it can't account for the eateries that don't use OpenTable.

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Fans of Milktooth, Gallery Pastry and Love Handle can take solace knowing their favorite brunch spot didn't miss the cut so much as it was never even in the running.

Notably, the Cake Bake Shop doesn't have a brunch menu. Its lunch and dinner menu features coffee, two quiches, a croissant, a croque monsieur and a croque madame, not exactly your typical egg- and crêpe-forward fare. Then again, brunch is a fairly amorphous concept, and it's hard to argue with the more than 5,000 ratings the Cake Bake Shop has received on OpenTable, averaging 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Staff await the first customers at Cake Bake Shop, which opened July 1, 2019, at Carmel City Center, 800 S. Rangeline Road.
Staff await the first customers at Cake Bake Shop, which opened July 1, 2019, at Carmel City Center, 800 S. Rangeline Road.

The Carmel Cake Bake Shop opened at 800 S. Rangeline Road in 2019 following the smash success of Rogers' original Broad Ripple location, which opened in 2014. Fans of the 36-seat Broad Ripple shop quickly fell in love with the eye-popping layer cakes crafted with Rogers' decades of baking experience.

The 4,500-square-foot, 154-seat Carmel location paired those adored confections with a larger menu and opulent decor, creating a restaurant and tea room that doubles as an attraction — so much so that Rogers is expected to open a Cake Bake Shop on Walt Disney World's Boardwalk in Orlando .

Contact dining reporter Bradley Hohulin at bhohulin@indystar.com. You can follow him on Twitter/X @BradleyHohulin.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Carmel's Cake Bake Shop named among OpenTable's Top 100 brunch spots