Reservations are now open for the 2026 L.S. Ayres Tea Room holiday lunch buffet at the Indiana State Museum, bringing one of Indianapolis dining history’s most durable seasonal rituals back for another run. The buffet begins Nov. 27 and continues daily through Jan. 3, 2027, except Christmas Day.
The 2026 price is $39 for adults and $21 for children ages 4 through 12; children 3 and younger eat free. Tax and service are included, and seatings are limited to 90 minutes. Reservations can be made through the museum website, OpenTable or by calling the Tea Room.
The Holiday Buffet Returns Nov. 27 at the Indiana State Museum
The menu is designed less as a generic holiday buffet than as a preservation project with chafing dishes. Chicken velvet soup, chicken pot pie, cherry walnut chicken salad, tuna, cucumber and club tea sandwiches, miniature pastries and the mini pecan ice cream ball all appear on the 2026 lineup. Hot tea, coffee, iced tea, soft drinks and hot cocoa are included.
The current Tea Room is a 64-seat recreation inside the Indiana State Museum. It opened in 2002, reviving a dining tradition associated with the former L.S. Ayres department store after the original downtown Tea Room closed in 1990. For generations of Indianapolis shoppers, the restaurant was part of the downtown holiday experience, which is why the museum version carries more cultural weight than an ordinary seasonal buffet.
Chicken Velvet Soup and the Pecan Ice Cream Ball Return to the Menu
That history also explains why individual menu items matter. Chicken velvet soup is not simply soup in this context, and the small pecan ice cream ball has accumulated the sort of disproportionate emotional significance that only a department-store restaurant specialty can manage.
The practical date for returning diners is already here: reservations are open. The buffet itself starts the day after Thanksgiving.
