Roxanna Williams has spent decades in the food business, including at restaurants with more than 200 seats. For her own Thai place she wanted something smaller. "I wanted it to be like eating at grandma's house," she told Mirror Indy in May. She and her family renovated a former hair salon inside a house on Southeastern Avenue. They hung a large wooden sculpture from her childhood home, and her four sons work at the restaurant with her. Most of the recipes at Baan Thai Bistro come from her mother and trace back to Thailand's northeastern and southern provinces.
Williams also said something any Franklin Township resident who drives through Wanamaker will recognize: "a lot of people who live in Franklin Township don't even know that this little area exists." For years, the official plan for a Wanamaker "center" has been a 23-acre park still on the drawing board. Meanwhile, a few blocks of storefronts on Southeastern Avenue have become a working center on their own.
About a dozen places within a 400-number stretch of addresses
Wanamaker runs along roughly two miles of Southeastern Avenue. Mirror Indy counted about a dozen restaurants there and called the area an up-and-coming food scene. The restaurants aren't spread evenly across those two miles, though. Almost all of them are between 8505 and 8903 Southeastern Avenue:
- Milk & Honey Coffeehouse, 8505
- Randy's Tu Your Door, 8602
- Baan Thai Bistro, 8705
- Walker's Barbecue & Catering, 8760
- Gup Shup Punjabi Cafe and Street Food, 8808, announced in May as coming soon
- Sahara Bazaar, 8816
- Bread by Jen, 8831, Suite B
- New Bethel Ordinary, 8838
- Fizz'n, 8901
- The 3 Princesses Ice Cream, 8903
Brewskies Pub & Eatery, at 7925 Southeastern Avenue, is the main exception, west of the cluster.
Several of these are new. Mirror Indy reported that Fizz'n, a soda shop, Bread by Jen, a bakery run by a registered nurse, and The 3 Princesses Ice Cream, which also sells snacks, had all opened in the six months before its May 12 story. Sahara Bazaar, a small Indian grocery, had been open three years at that point. Its owners expected to open Gup Shup next door by the end of May. We haven't found a dated confirmation that Gup Shup has opened, so check before planning a meal around it.
The anchor that came first is New Bethel Ordinary, a family-owned pizza pub and bar. Mirror Indy called it one of the reasons Wanamaker has drawn visitors over the years. Jaida Austin, the manager, was born and raised in Wanamaker. She told the paper the business is now "completely different" from when she started: "Clientele, how much busier we are, how many people we see in a short amount of time. It's absolutely insane."
The hours fit together like a single business
These places together work like a town center because their hours barely overlap. Each one covers a different part of the day. Here's a Saturday on the strip, using the hours the businesses gave in spring and summer 2026:
- 7 a.m. Milk & Honey Coffeehouse opens. On weekdays it opens at 6 a.m. Owner Taylor Hummel, a New Palestine native, rewrites the menu every quarter. The summer 2026 menu had 11 coffee and matcha drinks, including a Campfire Latte with toasted marshmallow, cookie butter and graham cracker flavors.
- 7 a.m. Bread by Jen opens too. It runs 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.
- 9 a.m. Sahara Bazaar opens and stays open until 9 p.m.
- 10 a.m. Fizz'n opens for sodas.
- 11 a.m. Lunch is possible at four places: Baan Thai Bistro, New Bethel Ordinary, The 3 Princesses Ice Cream and Walker's Barbecue & Catering. Walker's is open only Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- 3 p.m. The coffeehouse and the bakery close.
- 4 p.m. Randy's Tu Your Door opens for the evening shift.
- 9 to 10 p.m. Baan Thai, Fizz'n and The 3 Princesses close at 9 on Saturdays, and New Bethel Ordinary closes at 10. On Saturdays, Randy's stays open until 10.
Going by the hours published in May, Friday and Saturday are the only days every business on that list is open. On Sundays, Milk & Honey, Bread by Jen and Walker's are closed. Bread by Jen is closed Mondays as well.
Tuesday works differently. Bread by Jen's own website lists a Tuesday taco night from 4 to 9 p.m., separate from its bakery hours later in the week. Most of these hours were reported in May or June, and shops with ice cream and soda counters can change their schedules as the weather cools. Check each business's own page or social account before you go.
The pizza pub carries the town's first name
New Bethel Ordinary's name goes back further than Wanamaker's. The Franklin Township Historical Society dates the community to about 1834. It was first called New Bethel, after a nearby church. Residents then found out another place already had that name, and in the late 1800s they renamed the town for John Wanamaker, President Benjamin Harrison's postmaster general.
By the 1880s, about 150 people lived there. Around 1970 the number was about 4,500. That same year, Wanamaker lost its status as an independent town when Unigov merged the surrounding areas into a combined Indianapolis-Marion County government. Mirror Indy wrote that since then some residents have felt the area was forgotten. A town with no town hall of its own still has Southeastern Avenue as its common ground. The Franklin Township Civic League building is at 8822 Southeastern Avenue, between Sahara Bazaar and Bread by Jen. On June 28, children's activities for Wanamaker's Old Settler's Day car show and street fair were held there.
Fall dates around the township, starting from the strip
Most fall events in the area happen away from Southeastern Avenue, but the strip is a convenient place to start or finish. Here are the dates on the calendar now:
- Through October 25: The Fall Festival at Waterman's Family Farm, 7010 East Raymond St., is open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and Sundays and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturdays.
- Through October 30: Southeastway Park, 5624 S. Carroll Road, rents out hayride packages Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings from 5 to 10 p.m. Each package includes a shelter, a campfire and a tractor-pulled hayride.
- Tuesday, October 13, 6 to 7 p.m.: The Franklin Township Historical Society hosts Spooky Stories & S'mores at its Meeting House, 6510 S. Franklin Road. It includes a Big Run Cemetery tour, local mystery stories from author Laura VanArendonk Baugh and s'mores over an open fire. It's free and open to all ages. It's also a Tuesday, so Bread by Jen's 4 p.m. taco night can come first.
- Saturday, November 7, noon to 3 p.m.: The Historical Society's 2026 Harvest Dinner is at Grace Church, 5605 S. Franklin Road. It includes a catered meal, a history presentation, the Franklin Central Chamber Choir and a silent auction. Tickets must be bought in advance.
December comes back to the same stretch of pavement
Christmas in Wanamaker returns everything to Southeastern Avenue. The Village of Wanamaker describes it as a free annual event downtown. It usually runs on the first Saturday in December from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with the parade from 1 to 1:30 p.m. The Village's activity list includes photos with Santa, Mrs. Claus and the Grinch, a vendor market, a gingerbread contest, a petting zoo, Touch a Truck and a trolley shuttle. Last year's festival was Saturday, December 6, 2025, with a Polar Express theme. This year's first Saturday in December is December 5. As of early October, though, the Village's festival page only says to stay tuned for 2026 details. Treat the date as expected until the organizers confirm it.
The planned park could eventually give that festival a permanent home. The Village of Wanamaker is working with Indy Parks on about 23 acres of undeveloped land southwest of the old schoolhouse. The Wanamaker Revitalization Plan behind it drew more than 200 community participants and was adopted by the Metropolitan Development Commission. It calls for an amphitheater, a festival building that could host a farmers market, room for Old Settlers Days and Christmas in Wanamaker, pickleball and basketball courts, play equipment and a civic plaza with a smaller stage for community groups and churches. The Village says the design is almost ready to share with the public. It also says the project needs grant money, which will slow it down. No construction timeline has been announced.
Until the park is built, the 8500 through 8900 blocks of Southeastern Avenue will keep hosting the parade, the coffee runs and the Saturday lunches.
If you keep driving past the Bread by Jen sign on your way somewhere else, maybe this is the Saturday you stop. And if you start wondering what owning a home within walking distance of a Wanamaker taco night would look like, I'm your gal. Angi Oakes knows Franklin Township block by block. Let's Connect and start your home search, or get a free home valuation of the house you're in now.
