Food Pantry Box Strategically Placed Near $1,000 Chicken Wing-Dinner Restaurant In Indy

Indianapolis restaurant Beholder is an ambitious restaurant with an up-and-coming chef. The restaurant is also known a somewhat controversial mural that showed two bunnies in a compromising position (it has since been painted over). But the posh restaurant located near a Family Dollar store still boasts some cheeky, perhaps ironic statements on luxury dining, such as a $1,000 fried chicken wing dinner-for-two that includes "two Caesar salads, 24 twice-cooked wings, fries, shaved black truffles, a can of Royal Belgian Osetra Caviar, a chilled bottle of Cristal, two shots of VEP green chartreuse, two shots of anything else at the bar and unlimited Pabst Blue Ribbon while you eat," according to Fox 59 News.

Elysia Smith took offense after Beholder co-owner Jonathan Brooks wrote in "a profanity laced post that has since been removed... 'You're welcome for the rising property values.'" In an effort to make a statement on the gentrification effects restaurants like Beholder may have on struggling neighborhoods, Smith then teamed up with Sierra Nuckols.

Nuckols is the founder of the Community Food Box Project, which offers free-food-box pantries throughout the state, focusing on food deserts. The two women decided that directly outside Beholder would be a perfect place for the project's 50th box. The box is sponsored by Smith's business, Irvington Vinyl & Books. Says WISH-TV, "The box displays written messages about the negative effects of gentrification."

Nuckols told WISH-TV, "We also wanted to show the juxtaposition of a restaurant that serves food that ranges up to $100 versus a food box that has to provide free food to people in the neighborhood that don't have any food at all."