Damien Sullivan's Reviews of Bloomington Restaurants

Notes on some of the restaurants in Bloomington Indiana.
There's a livejournal page for comments. Undated entries are probably from before 2006.

• Turkuaz, 3rd and Lincoln. Turkish. Service can be slow but everything I've had has been tasty. Usually I get pides, "bread boats". Small pide is about $6 and not that small, big is $9? Garlic (also tomato and oregano) pide + a meat is pretty good. Zehsu (spicy beef) is good. Turkish coffee for $2. Open 10am-11pm. [13 Apr 06: Since someone was paying, I for the first time got a big pide, red bell pepper + zehsu + garlic. Quite good. And I got baklava: SO GOOD BEST EVER. $3.50 for 4 small pieces, with no dry pastry layers, just nut and honey-saturated pastry, very soft and sweet.]
• Runcible Spoon, 6th between Dunn and Grant. Coffeehouse with food. Lots of people love the food and the food is good, it's just often not what I want, or expect from a coffeehouse -- too gourmety and pricey and big (full meal when I want a cheap sandwich). They have flavorings, I need to remmeber to have stuff like mint added to my mocha. Breakfast: $4.50 for your basic 2 eggs, toast, and meat, where one meat option is this pair of really good (seasoned, spicy) sausage patties. 8am-11:30am. Open to midnight. Live Irish music Tuesday from 7:30pm, "open mic" night on Wednesday. Great atmosphere (lots of books), but Turkuaz is closer to me and I more reliably want the food there. The Spoon's apple pie is good and their berry pie was great. Tuesday's $5.50 corned beef and cabbage special is good too, though I'm not thrilled by the cabbage. I took half the meal home.
• Le Petit Cafe, 6th and Madison, by the Encore Cafe. Only been there for Sunday brunch, $10.95, chef's choice of food, $1.95 coffee. Appetizers were really good bread + butter + tangerine jam, "French toast" which seemed kind of like ours but softer, maybe because it was saturated in syrup, a really nice soup with beans and which might have been cream based, and a little pastry, like a wonton, supposedly with lox in it though I mostly noticed cheesy white sauce with some solid bits which were presumably the salmon. "Salmon rangoon." Entrees were some quiche, I think I heard "pumpkin", which was fairly good, garlic chicken, and a huge pile of pork, both sausages and chunks of white meat. Turned out that none of the other three people really like pork so I've got meat for my next 3 meals in my fridge right now. I thought it was good though by then I didn't want a whole lot of sausage. Dessert was disappointing, some peach cream thingy. Maybe not as disappointing as the "lox", not *bad*, just I didn't want much by then. Coffee by itself was okay, coffee with cream was really good, an odd texture for me -- I suspect using real heavy cream or something. Maybe I was using a lot. [Buffet lunch on Thursday: $6.25. Menu lunch on Friday, same price. 11:30-1:30]
• Bombay House, 4th between Grant and Dunn. Indian. Has a lunch buffet I haven't tried in a while but was increasingly disappointed by. Dinner there in Dec 04 was good though, with chicken pakora, an appetizer of fried chicken pieces I'd missed since San Francisco. 28 Mar 06 update: dinner is still good. I had chicken pakora and butter chicken, both were fine. Other diners in my party also praised the food, though the mango milkshake was deemed disappointing. Entrees $11-13. Closed Sunday. [25 Apr 06: Vegetable pakora, chicken tikka, chicken biryani, butter naan, mango lassi all excellent. Some sort of lamb curry, good. Fish tikka I didn't like, though the one who ordered it did.] Closed Sunday. (2008 update: the chicken pakora doesn't see that good, heavily battered chicken pieces.)
• Shanti, Lincoln and Kirkwood. Indian. Tasty dishes include chicken tandoori (standard red-baked dish), butter chicken (rich cashew-based sauce), chicken keera (cumin-based; lunch only?) Chicken biryani at "medium to hot" had good chicken, but the rice was more about pain than flavor, until diluted with bread or more rice. Keerma (meat) samosa and garlic naan to go not that exciting. Dinner entree prices are about $12, lunch (Tues-Fri, 11:30-2) $6. Closed from 2-5, and Mondays. (2007 Jan 2: $13 chicken biryani, with complimentary yogurt salad and rice pudding dessert. Good and I took half the biryani home, spending $16 total.)
• Peach Garden, 1st and College. My favored Chinese restaurant. Good are the orange chicken, chicken with broccoli, jade chicken (deepfried chicken with vegetables), sesame beef. Lots of other good dishes but these are what I've noted. The wonton soup was disappointing. Quarts of entrees are $8-10; lunch specials are $5-6. Closed 2-5, and Tuesdays. Delivers. [2006 Apr 27: I liked the hot and sour soup and steamed dumplings. Jade, empress, orange and curry chicken were all decent but bland, surpisingly so. I've mostly been with Doug before -- perhaps they know to be spicey for him?] [2006 Oct 23: The pattern has continued, and been noticed by others.]
• Anatolia, 4th near Grant. Turkish. I had a shish kebab (lamb) entree, which came with a choice of soup (red lentil for me, there's also white bean) and bread and a salad. Good bread. I prefer Turkuaz's soup. I had "yogurt and sauce" as well, which adds a dollar to the kebab, and the sauce is, surprisingly, some sort of marinara or pizza-like sauce. Someone's adana kebab seemed to have more meat, though I'm fearsomely stuffed and can't complain. Meat chunks and sauce over a bed of bread, rice and salad on the side. Good. Great bakhlava, too.
• La Dolce Vita Puccini's, 4th between Grant and Dunn. Italian. Nice bolognese and I'm picky about red sauce; I'm less thrilled by the Gorgonzola and pestos. Free bread and large portions, so the $16 I tend to spend covers two meals. (2007 February)
• Ashenda's Abasha, shares space with Puccini's. Ethiopian. I think only open 5-9, maybe -10 on weekends. My review here. Post-tip entrees about $17; yebeg wat and kategna good. (2008 Jul 14)
• Chow Bar, 3rd and Indiana. Chinese. Haven't had entrees in a while, but I liked it. Has some authentic seeming appetizers, e.g. invoving pig stomach or such. Lunch buffet is decent and $6.50; I gravitate to sesame chicken and a tofu dish, and the fried rice can be good by itself. They had a seafood dish with lots of little octopuses, which seems cool, though I didn't like the dish. Not a cephalopod fan.
• Lucky Express, 3rd and Lincoln. Chinese fast food. My main note is of Spicy Honey Shrimp, the closest I've gotten to a childhood Mongolian dish called Princess Prawns, featuring deep-fried prawns in a spicy honey sauce.
• Dragon Express, 3rd and Jordan. Chinese fast food. I was never that taken with it.
• Snow Lion, Grant between 4th and Kirkwood. Tibetan (the funny named dishes) plus lots of Chinese and Cajun(!) and others. For a long time I wasn't impressed by it (but got taken there a lot), with lots of dishes seeming bland or watery. However, a month ago (Feb 06) I was part of a huge party and enjoyed almost all the dishes. New cook? The free salads are still iceberg + mayonnaise, though. Sesame noodles: good. Sha shogo, beef with potatoes and rice: enh; not a good flavor distribution. [2007 Nov 8: back to the watery sauces, in a #3 poultry and a shrimp curry.]
• Little Tibet, 4th between Grant and Dunn (part of Ethnic Restaurant Ground Zero.) Tibetan and others, but unlike Snow Lion they have separate sections of the menu. I'd tended to prefer it to Snow Lion, though I have no recent recommendations. Closed Tuesdays.
• El Nortenyo, Walnut between 6th and 7th. Mexican. Probably my favorite Mexican in town but I haven't been there often. I recently (Mar 06) had their lunch fajitas which were quite good, though I forgot to pay attention to the guacamole quality specifically. I was quite stuffed too, next time I'd pre-emptively split my food into a takehome part.
• Japanee, 8th and Walnut, SE. Japanese. 8 piece sashimi + gyoza was not filling. Miso was good, free salad not so much, seaweed salad good. White tuna sashimi was good, red snapper bland, tuna and salmon okay. $18, not sure it was worth it. Atmosphere: dim red lights, random music, silent big screen TV, strange bathroom fixtures. Closed 2-5. [23 Oct 06: Christine doesn't like it. Lunch bento A is $4.99, salad, miso, chicken teriyaki, 4 Cali rolls, 2 gyoza, rice. Good gyoza. Chicken was less saturated with teriyaki than I'm used to but rolling it around repeatedly made it tasty. Quite filling over all.] [2008 update: Christine likes the bentos. Gyozas are still awesome, among the best I've had.]
• Sushi Bar, 10th and Bypass (west side of Bypass.) Japanese. I had gyoza and chef's choice sushi, standard tuna, salmon, yellowtail spread. I wasn't that thrilled by any of it, didn't feel worth $23.
• Mikado, College Mall somewhere south of 2nd. Japanese. Went there a few years ago (May 04), had one of the $20ish combos, left satisfied and surprisingly stuffed.
• Asuka, Eastland Plaza (3rd and College Mall). Japanese. Last summer (05) they had all you can eat sushi for $16. I ate a lot of their eel. [2006 Oct 23: I went a couple of times this summer; all you can eat was up to $20. Rolls were disappointing, except for shrimp tempura rolls; nigiri are good, including an egg one. I've also had chicken hibachi which was pretty tasty, a big pile of chicken chunks in teriyaki-like style with some rice and vegetables. Miso is excellent, salad comes with weird orangey sauce.
• Esan Thai, Lincoln north of Kirkwood (behind Shanti). Thai. Has a weekday lunch menu, $8-9. The Pad Ka Prow, stir fried vegetables + chicken + rice + spices was good; medium spiciness made me blow my nose but wasn't painful.
• Samira, 6th and Walnut. Afghan. $7.50 weekday lunch buffet. Everything I sampled was good. Their fried chicken is among the best I've had outside my family's kitchens. The meatballs were good. The vegetarian stuff I don't remember much (there was okra) was good. The salad had actual greens, not iceberg lettuce. The standard Mideast cucumber-tomato salad was great. The baklava was really great. The free bread was good. The free thingies (tiny spinach quiche?) were okay. There's a lunch menu as well, for those who don't want buffet, but I haven't looked at it.
• Mother Bear's, 3rd, east of Jordan. Pizza + stuff. Excellent pizza; when I came here I was told Avers and Mother Bear's were the top two, but I think MB is probably better, though I've had more Avers (not out of my wallet.) My favored designed Avers pizza was garlic + italian sausage + extra sauce, and other people at COG-X liked it too since if I was late I wouldn't get any. At Mother Bear's I don't need to ask for extra sauce, there's plenty, and probably of higher quality. Good range of cheese and gourmet sausage choices as well, plus red peppers. The spaghetti and meatball dinner wasn't so good, though: overcooked pasta, accompanying salad with goldfish crackers. The meatballs and sauce were decent. [2006 Apr 22: Tonight I got to compare Marco's pepperoni and Mother Bear's Divine Swine, covered in Magical Animal products. No comparison really, MB provides a much better pizza.]
• The sub sandwich restaurant in the IMU food court. Good sandwiches but my main note is that they offer roasted red bell pepper slices as a topping! I like red bell peppers. Green, not so much -- I like my fruit ripe.
• Soma, across from Snow Lion. Coffeehouse, no food, lots of smoothies. Lots of people, can get too loud for me, both in people and rock-type music. Hot chocolate was quite disappointing; I think tasting liquid-chocolate quality drinks has spoiled me for powdered ones.
• Laughing Planet, above Soma. Burritos, mostly. Lots of people love them, I've been disappointed. Maybe they're better at the vegetarian ones than the chicken ones I get.
• Neannie's Cafe, 6th and Madison, other side of Encore Cafe. Open early, closes at 4pm -- Ladyman's Cafe niche, I guess. Looked a lot fancier in food, though; should check it out. [23 Oct 06: I did once, in the spring; had a prosciutto sandwich, maybe a bit dry.]
• Qdoba, 4th and Indiana. Tex-Mex; a Chipotle competitor. Guacamole is Bland Green Paste With Stuff In. The steak and chicken tacos are nice though, the meat chunks are juicy and tender, and they use the same meats for everything. Burrito was oversized and hard to eat. Chicken nachos were excellent.
• Trojan Horse, Walnut and Kirkwood. Grill? Serve burgers, gyros, expensive steak plates, fish tacos. I had the fish tacos last week and they were good. Price range is interesting, from $5 sandwiches to $16 vegetarian plates.
• Mandalay, 4th between Grant and Dunn. Burmese. Has a pretty good lunch buffet. Closed Monday.
• Basil Leaf, 4th and Grant. Asian fusion with Thai focus. Closed Monday; 11-2:30, 5-9. 9 dollar lunch buffet, which is quite good. Small dispenser bowls keep things fresh. Had fried rice, tofu curry, ginger pork, a chicken I forget, chicken Thai spice salad; all tasty without being too spicey. Tempura was eh. Entrees seem to be about the same price. Entree soups include udon and pho. (2008 June 27)
• Taco Bell, 7th and Walnut. Caroline got their cinnamon twists, which reminded me of Indonesia shrimp chips ("It's styrofoam! Made out of shrimp!") 3 out of 3 of us said "not good" though it was hard to stop eating.