Vegetable Buddies: the blues room on North Michigan, twice

documented by 1979 — the original long gone — revived by 2017 — closed again by 2023

The original: At 129 North Michigan Street stood the city's blues room. It is documented by 1979, when the Ball State Daily News sent a reviewer to a Willie Dixon show there and described a modest room — tree-stump tables, a capacity around 600 at the outside — that had "managed to land some top rate talent," the reviewer judging that no other Indiana club, Indianapolis's Vogue included, matched it for the music in so intimate a setting. The venue's own history, carried by the Music section, names the 1970s bills: Canned Heat, Duke Tumatoe, Muddy Waters, the New Riders of the Purple Sage; Lil' Ed Williams's first out-of-town gig was at Vegetable Buddies in the late 1970s, behind J.B. Hutto. A Ball State concert calendar for July 1983 lists John Lee Hooker and Duke Tumatoe playing South Bend in the same week — the room in its working years. The original Vegetable Buddies closed at a date the record reached does not pin; Notre Dame Magazine's 2020 bar retrospective already lists it among the vanished classics of the Domer canon.

The revival and the second closing: The name came back to the same address. A blues label's tour announcement put a U.S. tour's opening night at "the popular nightclub, Vegetable Buddies" on 6 March 2017, and Notre Dame's Scholastic profiled the "revamped" Fruit and Vegetable Buddies in the spring of 2020 — its promoter Nintendo Joe running a "Virtual Veggies" party under the stay-at-home order. The revival's end is documented the way such endings usually are: an April 2023 review mourning the room ("So sad that they're closed"), directory records marking it permanently closed, and the address passing on — to Cool Runnings Restaurant and Bar, and then, in the South Bend Tribune's report of 17 April 2026, to The Bend Lounge, the cocktail lounge opened in January 2025 in the Emporium Building at 121 South Niles Avenue, whose owners won a favorable recommendation that day for the riverfront liquor license that would move them into 129 North Michigan, the Vegetable Buddies address, in a larger room. The blues room's corner of North Michigan thus enters its next tenancy with the name changed again — the address's third act in a decade, each documented, none of them the room that heard Muddy Waters.

Sources:

1. Ball State Daily News, concert review and calendar (Ball State University Digital Media Repository) — the Willie Dixon show at Vegetable Buddies (Dixon at 64, so 1979–80), the room's description and capacity, and the July 1983 listings for John Lee Hooker and Duke Tumatoe in South Bend.
2. Music section of this history — the venue's own history naming Canned Heat, Duke Tumatoe, Muddy Waters and the New Riders of the Purple Sage in the 1970s, and Lil' Ed Williams's first out-of-town gig there with J.B. Hutto (Northwest Indiana Business Magazine, April–May 2019); the revival open by April–May 2019. Blujazz Records tour announcement (2017) — the Galen Weston tour opening at Vegetable Buddies, 6 March 2017; Scholastic (Notre Dame), spring 2020 — the "revamped" Fruit and Vegetable Buddies and "Virtual Veggies."
3. Restaurantji review record (April 2023) and directory listings — the revival closed; South Bend Tribune, 17 April 2026 — The Bend Lounge and L Street Kitchen's riverfront license recommendations; The Bend operating since January 2025 at 121 South Niles Avenue and moving to 129 North Michigan Street, "previously home to Cool Runnings Restaurant and Bar and Vegetable Buddies," opening targeted for 1 June 2026 on the license.