Good Omen: Zionsville's Best Wine List Comes With a Northern Italian Menu to Match

Just a mile from the charming brick street of Zionsville, Indiana is a similarly charming suburban shopping center. On the header of one of the tenants in a small font reads “Good Omen,” its orange “open” sign glowing in a small, café-curtained window.

Inside, the landscape changes dramatically. The space itself is almost shotgun-shaped, long and narrow. Oversized wicker light fixtures hang from the ceiling and draw your eye through the dining area and toward the back, where a handsome bar anchors the room. On the wall behind it are oversized black and white photographs. One: a man in a suit, smoking a cigarette inexplicably on skis in a snowy scene. Another features a woman holding an enormous fish. Both photos are extremely Italian. At the host stand is Diane, mother of the chef and co-owner of the restaurant, warm and eager to seat you.

This restaurant, tucked into the Boone Village Shopping Center, shares space with a nail salon, an ACE Hardware, and a Kroger. The location is notable, sure—but fine dining in a strip mall can be found all across the country. Food writers have chronicled the phenomenon for years, from the Hudson Valley, where the restaurant Il Figlio Enoteca, run by CIA-trained chef Scott Rosenberg, is tucked into a commercial plaza, to Indianapolis’ own James Beard-recognized Oakley’s Bistro, located in a shopping center just eight miles away.

Good Omen, however, was not conceived with ample parking and affordable rents in mind. The original concept of Good Omen was planned 650 or so miles east of Boone Village, in Philadelphia. After culinary school and stages around the world, chef Nicholas Gattone was finally ready to make the dream of his own restaurant real. Almost immediately, he was dealt a hard blow: the owner of the space they planned to lease pulled back, and everything fell apart.

The Midwest, with its alluring affordability and family still local to the area, brought Nicholas back to Indiana in search of a second chance. Spots in both Fountain Square and on the brick main street of Zionsville were scouted, but what checked (almost) all the boxes was a little restaurant available for lease in the Boone Village Shopping Center. It had the bones Nicholas was looking for, and they set to work. Now three years in, Good Omen has settled into a rhythm of its own.

The original concept of the restaurant was a true enoteca: a place that starred wine as its feature, with bites alongside. To this point, they are excelling; the wine list at Good Omen is arguably one of the best in Indianapolis. Naturally, the restaurant features a deep focus on Italian wines, but stocks bottles from across the winemaking world, at all price points. Along with the wine list comes a truly knowledgeable and friendly staff to guide diners in their selection.

What was originally conceived as an enoteca has blossomed into a full-fledged ristorante. The ever evolving menu at Good Omen is highly seasonal and designed with high-end sensibility. On a recent visit, a bowl of fennel sausage stuffed olives, lightly breaded and fried, made a perfect accompaniment to a chilled glass of white. I was especially delighted to see Jerusalem artichokes with Meyer lemon aioli on the spring menu. Light and perfectly fried, these harbingers of spring and warmer weather to come are a seasonal staple in Italy, and something not often found on a Midwestern menu.

The creste di gallo (“rooster’s crests”) pasta with duck Bolognese, a year-round offering and the number one seller, is popular for a reason: made in-house daily on bronze dies imported from Italy, the pasta has a texture that traps the flavorful Bolognese sauce. While pasta is a standout, the menu is much more. A pan-roasted brown trout with crispy charred dew drop cabbage punched above its weight with the help of a deeply savory anchovy cream sauce. Desserts include house-churned pistachio gelato, which alone is worth a trip.

With summer comes a new menu, naturally highlighting the coveted summer bounty of the Midwest—tomatoes, corn, squash, and others—but also stretching a bit as they move into their third year, allowing newly hired cooks with roots and experience in New York and Miami to flex their point of view in the kitchen.

The evolution and constant change is what makes Good Omen special. It’s flexible—not caught up on itself and what its identity was “supposed to be”—ever shifting from the original vision of a wine bar in Philadelphia to Italian ristorante in a Midwestern shopping center, to perhaps something that bridges the “Italian way” of cooking across a variety of cuisines. A restaurant that draws you back in with its constant evolution, its genuine hospitality, and its ample parking lot.