SoBro's new dessert bar will leave you drooling

Watching pastry chefs making macarons, fruit tarts and fancy cakes while you’re eating macarons, fruit tarts and fancy cakes is an enviable position. Add a glass of wine (champagne, please) or a craft beer (Sun KingGFJ with chocolate preferred), and happy hour becomes so much sweeter.

That’s my new favorite bar scene. I found it at SoBro’s The Gallery Pastry Shop. It’s a stylish spot that opened recently at 1101 E. 54th St., about a half-mile east of College Avenue.

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Set your GPS and keep your eyes open as soon as you cross Monon Trail. The Gallery Pastry Shop is tucked in the back of a business complex across the street from The Dancing Donut.

Stepping inside is like the first reveal of a hidden treasure chest. A chain mail chandelier hangs over one hefty, vertical slice of tree trunk serving as a communal table. Funky leather chairs and red velvet benches encircle table tops sliced from massive tree trunks.

Another long slice of tree trunk lines the open kitchen. Pick a stool at this bar, and watch the chef Ben Hardy live.

Hardy and his team might be decorating elaborate cakes or flaming meringue atop lemon tarts. Often, they’re filling a rainbow of macarons, crisp-soft circles, luscious fillings, delectable flavors: raspberry rosewater, salted caramel, lemon curd, dark chocolate, salted chocolate, salted caramel. Sometimes, macarons are on sale for $1 each.  Sometimes Hardy lets you into the kitchen to help. Ask about pastry classes.

Hardy is a longtime pastry master in Indianapolis. The Modoc native worked sweets in and outside Indiana for 15 years. He clocked time at boutique hotels, chocolate shops, big wholesale bakeries, the Conrad Indianapolis hotel Downtown and the Country Club of Indianapolis.

The Chocolate Pillow proves his proficiency. Ganache glaze as shiny as polished mahogany conceals slightly sweet and so-silky chocolate mousse with a little hazelnut crunch set atop flourless chocolate cake. It’s the perfect combination, sort of like Hardy and his business/life partner, Alison Keefer.

The pair met at The Chef’s Academy. Hardy was the school’s pastry instructor. Keefer, from Fort Wayne, worked in admissions and taught nutrition. Hardy started leaving pastillage flowers on Keefer’s desk. They had drinks. He made her pasta carbonara. The pair started dreaming about their own bakery. Keefer had a business background. When it came to his craft, Hardy couldn’t shake a friend’s words of advice: “Don’t lose that passion. Do not be caged and tamed. You’ll see the life kind of slip out of you.”

“So we were like, 'Why not do this?' Keefer said.

Hardy produces European-style pastries, meaning delicate, beautiful and not-too-sweet things all made from scratch, even the pate a choux dough for real eclairs, much different from the Bavarian cream-filled long johns Dunkin’ Donuts passes off as eclairs. He spins sugar and curls chocolate. Watching him pipe buttercream on a specialty cakes is hypnotic. Wine, beer and coffee, including espresso drinks, are available.

These doughnuts won 1st prize at #DonutDayIndy

Sweets are not mandatory at The Gallery Pastry Shop. Nibble a local cheese and charcuterie platter with a glass of wine. On Sundays, for brunch, watch Hardy make your omelet to order on a work table pushed up against the bar. While  he is working, nibble a first-course, something like the recent watercress salad with watermelon, radishes, jalapenos, feta and lime and olive oil dressing. And forget what I said about sweets not being mandatory. Make the third course dessert, even if it’s a box of macarons to go.

Follow IndyStar food writer Liz Biro on Twitter: @lizbiro, Instagram: @lizbiro, Facebook and Pinterest. Call her at (317) 444-6264.