The Carriage House Dining Room and Gardens

A recipient of the prestigious AAA Four Diamond Award for more than two decades, The Carriage House Dining Room is devoted to both preparation and presentation—they use fresh, gourmet ingredients to craft artfully arranged dishes. Within the Main Dining Room, guests select from a seasonally changing menu of recipes prepared in a traditional French method, in accordance with the vision of the restaurant's founder, Indiana Restaurant Association Hall of Famer Evelyn C. George. Today, her daughter and son-in-law, Judith and Adrian Coté, hold true to Evelyn's focus with dishes such as steak diane: all-natural beef-tenderloin medallions sautéed with shallots, parsley, and cognac and served with creamy dauphinoise potatoes. The Carriage House Dining Room has been a perennial winner of Wine Spectator awards since 1986; in 2012, the magazine honored the restaurant with its most recent Best of Award of Excellence.

The staff gathers fresh, organic herbs and vegetables from the restaurant's gardens, which also bloom with a rotating crop of flowers that includes more than 10,000 peonies. The Carriage House Dining Room, built as a church in 1851, boasts a rich interior of original hand-hewn walnut beams and a selection of decorative antiques, including fine Persian carpets, early-20th-century Impressionist oil paintings, and a butter bust of Louisa May Alcott.