Where We're From
Cafe Patachou began with a simple belief: quality ingredients, serious cooking, and genuine hospitality should be part of everyday life.
In 1989, Indiana grew exceptional food, but very little of it reached its restaurants. Breakfast and lunch were often treated as lesser meals focused on speed and volume, while thoughtful ingredients and "true cooking" were reserved for white tablecloths and special occasions.
Cafe Patachou opened at 49th and Pennsylvania to offer something different: a neighborhood cafe useful enough for an ordinary morning and good enough for an occasion. The Cafe bought from small producers, cooked from scratch, and served local eggs and proteins, seasonal salads, house-made soups, breads, and locally-roasted coffee. It trusted that people would recognize the difference and return for it.
They did, and the small restaurant quickly filled with neighbors. Guests came for the food, but over time the Cafe became second nature to their lives in other ways. It was a place to meet, work, celebrate, linger, and be known.
The Cafe soon called itself a Student Union for Adults. The name captured what the neighborhood had made of it: not simply somewhere to eat, but somewhere to belong. Different generations and kinds of people occupied the same room. The food was taken seriously, but that expectation was never passed onto the guests.
Even in growth, our core principles have been unchanged since day one: exceptional ingredients, scratch cooking, remembered guests, cared-for spaces, and respect for our people. Cafe Patachou is still where your neighborhood happens and we look forward to seeing you!
A Founder's Story
Martha Hoover built the restaurant she believed should exist.
Before opening the first Cafe Patachou in 1989, Martha Hoover was a deputy prosecutor, not a restaurateur. She’d never cooked professionally, waited tables, or managed a restaurant, but she had one unwavering conviction: a restaurant could give people more than a meal. She understood that most of life is made up of ordinary moments, and believed those moments deserved extraordinary care.
At a time when much of the industry prioritized convenience, speed, and sameness, Martha saw value in sourcing from local producers, cooking from scratch, treating employees with respect, and creating a place people would make part of everyday life.
Martha entered an industry she didn’t know and learned it without surrendering her judgment to the way things had always been done. She questioned practices others took for granted and held firm to her standards for food and hospitality. She did the work to make her independent restaurant succeed and proved that the kind of place she believed in could not only last, but thrive.