Spoke + Ivy Still Holds Its West Main Bet

Spoke + Ivy carries a 4.6 score from 120 ratings at 1402 W. Main St. in Fort Wayne. Johnny Perez and Esli Barron opened the room in February 2025 as their third restaurant, an upscale steakhouse pitch on a street they called the next dining hub.

By September 2026 the filet shares a New American card with latkes and an espresso martini, and Monday is dark. The week on the door looks like a restaurant that found the days it can fill.

Perez and Barron Took the Bet Off Downtown

Perez told an interviewer on Feb. 13, 2025, that he started in restaurants at about 14, washing dishes and helping out, and never looked back. With Barron he runs Te Gusto Hospitality, which had already opened Mercado on the Landing and Papi’s Pizza before this West Main room.

He framed Spoke + Ivy as the upscale steakhouse feel in that set, a chance to get in early on a corridor he thought could grow. Barron put the same move in plainer neighborhood terms, away from downtown’s 99 blocks.

West Main has a lot of historical roots in Fort Wayne, and I just wanted to create a place that would hold the test of time.

Esli Barron, co-owner, Te Gusto Hospitality

Perez’s own condition was the crew, not the concept. “The only reason it’s possible is with the team that we’re building with,” he said that week. “Their help and their energy is why we’re able to build something great for downtown Fort Wayne.”

A local newscast in February 2025 grouped the opening with Riviera Maya Mexican Grill among new rooms in the city. The company site still asks diners to book a reservation on West Main, with the bicycle-and-ivy mark over 1402 W. Main St.

120 Ratings and a 4.6 Score

An August 2026 listing for Spoke + Ivy, updated Aug. 27, 2026, scores the room at 4.6 from 120 ratings and prices it at $$. Service leads the three subscores. Food sits a notch below the room itself, which is the usual pattern when the lighting and the glass do as much work as the plate.

THE AUGUST 2026 SCORECARD

• Overall: 4.6 from 120 ratings, with 80% of them five-star.
• Service: 4.8, the highest of the three published subscores.
• Atmosphere: 4.7, ahead of food at 4.5.
• Price band: $$ on an American card, not a white-tablecloth tariff.

Eighty percent five-star with 8% four-star, 5% three-star, 4% two-star, and 3% one-star adds to a full 100. That is a local sample, not a national poll, and it is large enough that a dying room would not still be sitting at 4.8 on service.

In March 2026 a local newsletter used the cafe as a subscriber perk, a free drink up to $8 with a dine-in purchase. A mid-September 2026 dining video still walks the interior. Someone heading out to celebrate in Fort Wayne in March 2026 named Spoke and Ivy on Main Street as the plan, which is the quieter test: people still pick it on purpose.

Filet, Latkes and an Espresso Martini

Perez sold an upscale steakhouse feel in February 2025. The card that diners keep repeating is broader than that pitch. Company notes around the launch also called it a New American food experience, and the dishes that show up as favorites read that way.

WHAT DINERS KEEP ORDERING

• Chicken Milanese: An October 2025 review called out pesto, herbed goat cheese, and Fresno chile honey on a light breading.
• Filet and pork belly: September 2025 notes called the filet tender and the pork belly the dish to check.
• Shrimp & Gritz: Listed among favorites with crab stuffed mushrooms, potato latke, and the Luxe Burger.
• The sweet side: Tiramisu, chai tiramisu, beignets, cinnamon roll, and strawberry ricotta cake, several of them described as large enough to share.
• The glass: An old fashioned, an espresso martini, the East Side Baddie, and a vanilla raspberry latte.

The espresso martini has turned into a calling card in a city that already has plenty of steak. Walleye, steak and egg, a half Ivy salad, and vodka sauce sit on the same list, which is brunch-and-dinner cooking, not a temple of dry-aged beef.

The listing’s own roundup is blunter about the room than about the food. A high ceiling with weak acoustics gets loud when the floor fills. Large windows throw glare at midday. Restrooms are two single-stall units. Those are the complaints of a busy glass box, and they line up with a 4.7 on atmosphere from people who keep coming back anyway.

Mercado Began With a Food Truck

Spoke + Ivy is the third restaurant, not the first kitchen. Mercado on the Landing still sells itself as Cali-Mex that Cali-Mex dining on the Landing grew from a truck, with Chicano-inspired tacos, Pachola burgers, seafood, and a bar built around agave and margaritas.

The truck that started that line is still named on the Mercado site as the Mercadito Taqueria food truck. Lunch there is flex-casual; dinner slows down. Brunch leans on chicken and waffles and micheladas. The address on the Mercado site is 111 W. Columbia St., Suite 103, phone (260) 387-6160, in the downtown Landing, not on West Main.

Papi’s Pizza was the second stop in the same company story. Public pages used for this piece do not give a clean address or a current score for that shop, so the pizza room stays a named rung on the ladder, not a second set of hours. Early company notes also floated a speakeasy, Black Rabbit, for the Main Street corridor. That name does not show up as an open listing beside Spoke + Ivy, and it is not treated here as a fourth room.

The through-line Perez described in 2025 was price, not cuisine. He wanted different menus so the same guests could use the company in different ways. A truck, a Cali-Mex dining room, a pizza shop, and a West Main New American card is that idea in four formats, even if only two of those formats publish a full public sheet.

Who Already Cooked on West Main?

Perez said he felt the street would become another hub for restaurants, maybe a small store and cafes. He was not planting the first kitchen on the block. The same August 2026 listing that scores Spoke + Ivy also points diners at neighbors within a short walk, and those names are older than a 2025 ribbon.

KITCHENS ALREADY ON WEST MAIN

• Paula’s on Main: Seafood, a long-running Main Street room rather than a new concept.
• O’Sullivan’s Italian Pub: Bar and Italian, the kind of holdover Perez’s “hub” talk has to live beside.
• A&O Sweet Shop Tavern: A bar on the same corridor map.
• Pedal City: A bar and party-bike stop, which tells you the street already had nightlife, not a blank wall.
• Redwood Inn: Pizza, vegan, and vegetarian, another existing ticket on the strip.

Barron’s line about historical roots is the better map. West Main was a neighborhood with memory, not an empty warehouse district waiting for a steakhouse. The wager was whether a $$ New American room could sit in that mix and keep a reservation book, not whether it could invent the street.

A December 2025 holiday dining column put Spoke + Ivy beside Charlie’s Place among rooms planning New Year menus, which is the company you want if the bet is legitimacy. Charlie’s Place also shows up in an August 2026 cluster of well-known Fort Wayne names that includes The Abstract, Copper Spoon, Tolon, and Proximo. That is the set Spoke + Ivy is being measured against, a year and a half in.

Monday Is Closed, Saturday Opens at 11

The hours posted at opening and the hours on the August 2026 listing are not the same week. Monday went dark. Weekdays lost the 10 a.m. start. Saturday gained the daytime.

SPOKE + IVY HOURS, 2025 VS 2026

Saturday’s open moved from 4 p.m. to 11 a.m., five extra hours on the one day that used to start at dinner. Sunday’s 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. window did not move. The trade is a classic independent-restaurant week: give the team Monday, spend the labor on a Saturday lunch and brunch service that the 2025 card did not try to staff.

A dark Monday can mean soft demand. It can also mean the crew Perez said he needed is no longer being burned through a seven-day book. The 4.8 service score is the clue that leans toward the second reading. In November 2025 the room also ran an Italian night starting at 4 p.m., a one-off that fills a shoulder the way Saturday lunch now does as policy.

Different Backgrounds, Different Checks

Perez’s other 2025 claim was about who walks in. He talked about a mixed demographic, people from different backgrounds, and menus at different price points so guests could use the restaurants in different capacities. Barron wanted a neighborhood spot, not another downtown trophy.

I’m really excited to branch out from that core downtown area and provide a more of a neighborhood spot.

Esli Barron, co-owner, Te Gusto Hospitality

The $$ band, the latkes, the Luxe Burger, and a filet on the same card are that idea without a speech. So is the company ladder that still runs from a taco truck through Mercado and Papi’s Pizza to a glass room on West Main. Nineteen months after the Feb. 13, 2025 opening, the August 2026 listing still has 120 ratings at 4.6, and Sunday brunch is the one slot that never had to move.