IT FEELS SLIGHTLY DISORIENTING, pulling into downtown Greencastle on a Thursday night, when the sidewalks of the courthouse square are as lit-up and buzzy as any trendy swath of Indianapolis. So pardon me if what I am about to say sounds like it’s coming from a brochure for the Putnam County visitors bureau—but this little college town in the middle of nowhere does a good job of tempering its bucolic charm with a cultured nightlife and some pretty spiffy-looking people milling about.

Philanthropists Judson and Joyce Green (both graduates of Greencastle’s DePauw University) might have used a similar spiel during their national search for a visionary chef to helm their restaurant project in the center of town—and apparently it worked. When Bridges Craft Pizza & Wine Bar opened last August, an exposed-brick stunner with that softly stark West Coast wine-country aesthetic of white walls, natural wood, and dangling-bulb lighting, it boasted Culinary Institute of America–trained Sal Fernandez in the executive chef position