Food

Have you ever seen pictures of crazy-looking food and wondered to yourself "how do you even eat that?"

Have you ever seen those same pictures and thought "I'm sure they don't have foofy, uppity, arrogant restaurants like that in my town?"

What if you found out that there are places like that, even in not-all-that-different-than-your-midwestern-town Grand Rapids, Michigan?

What if, despite your blog's focus on hot dogs, chili and all things you can probably buy in a can, you said "Man, I'd really like to try eating something that's prettier than any painting I could possibly make in my life?"

Finally (bear with me here), what if you also thought to yourself "maybe food so attractive I'd like to take it out on a date isn't really uppity or arrogant at all but just a way to bring your other sense (sight) into something that was previously only the domain of smell and taste?"

So now you understand my mindset last week as Megan and I embarked on a date-night-dinner (which is a rare thing with two kids two-and-under at home) to Restaurant Bloom in the "hip yuppies" East Hills neighborhood of Grand Rapids, Thursday.

The restaurant is tiny (seats maybe 40 people? Maybe less), sparsely decorated (white, grey, black with tea-green highlights) and apparently staffed by 2 chefs and a single person to wait on tables, seat people, welcome you to their establishment and even provide menu suggestions like "I don't know what you should get, everything's really good." I had no idea how right she was (everything was really good).

Let's dispense with some formalities here:

• If you're looking for a 5,000 calorie glutton-fest for dinner, Bloom is absolutely not for you.
  
• If you're hoping that menu descriptions will sing the praises of a comforting balsamic reduction poured lovingly over Montessori-educated calf livers on a reassuring bed of baby spinach, you will be disappointed by the menu (but not the food, I promise).
• If you like your steak with a full bottle of single-malt, the lack of a liquor license might actually turn you off (to be honest, that is the sole draw-back in our eyes.... the food at Bloom aches for a glass of wine at its side).

With the negatives laid bare I will tell you why your next dinner absolutely must be at Bloom.

The menu
Nothing says "yeah, we'll figure out how to put these things together, you just pick what sounds good" like a menu seemingly typed by a 1970s Olivetti onto card-stock, listing only ingredients...no titles, no description of how the ingredients will be combined, and no assurance that you get to choose anything other than how rare you'd like your lamb-chops.

It sounds arrogant, and maybe it is. After all, the menu described my dinner as " lamb sirloin, chanterelle mushrooms, tomato, sesame " Turns out that means sesame seeds on the lamb, tahini on the side, mushrooms and tomatoes cooked together all laid out on my plate as though porcelain has replaced canvas as the artistic medium of choice in GR (If that's the case, I'm fully on board). I know this: The food was good enough that a little menu arrogance (or is it just understatedness? or a political statement that says "food is flavors, ingredients define flavors, anything else written on the menu would just be filler?") was perfectly acceptable, maybe even preferable.

The food
So the food was scrumptious. Seriously good.

While we waited, we were served small tapas of scallops, watermelon and peanuts all chopped up and mixed in with chives. We knew, immediately, that we were going to have a great dinner as this little snack hinted at what we were about to eat and left us licking our chops like Hadden Clark.

I started with "chilled tomato and watermelon soup, olive, pistachio, sour cream-horseradish sorbet." It was cold. It was sweet. I can also say that this was the first time in my life I ate "sour cream-horseradish sorbet." Surprisingly, it fit the soup perfectly and I can say that cold watermelon soup wasn't something I'd ever thought I'd be eating...much less enjoying.

While I was gazing lovingly at the soup in front of me, Megan was busy eating the only normal-sounding thing on the menu: " salad of baby spinach, market vegetables, bacon, vinaigrette, manchego." It was normal in ingredients and even preparation, but it was also very tasty and left Megan ready for her dinner, appetized if you will.

I had the aforementioned lamb, which was perfectly "cooked" (rare), stacked up like throw-pillows on my grandma's couch and sitting next to the mushroom-tomato arrangement I discussed above. A swatch of tahini sat below it making an exclamation point on my plate...as if to say "eat me, I dare you." I did eat the meal, it was very good, and I was left thinking that perhaps my previous opinion of food too-pretty-to-eat was off the mark. It was.

Megan then had " side of pork, sweet corn, capers, cucumber" which apparently means cucumbers sliced paper-thin and rolled up, pork side cooked to perfection (so tender I almost shed a tear when I tasted it) with cute little piles of corn-n-capers next to the pork almost as if to say "we're here for you, tender pork. Be strong." Her pork may have been slightly better than my lamb, but it's like asking which Lexus says "I'm an arrogant prick" when in reality they all do. The dinners were great, the dessert was just as good.

Dessert
Recently I was on here singing the praises of the Chop House downtown. It's a great place, but we've started abandoning most restaurants before dessert so that we can just go to San Chez and eat dessert there. Thankfully Bloom had impressed us so much with the dinner that we decided we could pass up the tres leches cake for one night to try something fun for dessert.

Megan had " chocolate goodness, ginger sorbet, hazelnut, sea salt." Apparently "chocolate goodness" is just that...it's chocolate (pudding? mousse? whatever) laid out like those yellow/pink/blue/black/green ribbons you see on the trunks of SUVs these days, sprinkled with sea salt in the middle, hazelnuts at one end, and sitting next to what must be homemade ginger sorbet. Megan hates ginger but needs chocolate like only a true chocoholic can, so she ate all this, tried the sorbet (which had some candied ginger root on top I think) and then passed me the left-over icy-gingery taste-fest. If you like ginger ( hello ) this was great.

My dessert consisted of "roast fig, olive oil ice cream, cucumber, candied pine nut". Yes, olive-oil ice cream. It was really good. I'm a total fan of those candied figs you buy at the middle-eastern markets so I tried this with that in mind. I wasn't disapointed. It was very good, the ice cream just sort cooled it all off and the cucumber cubes were an interesting addition.

In the end, Megan has decided this is her new favorite restaurant. I don't go there... picking favorites between a gyro-bar and a "food as art" place seems almost unfair to the gyro-bar. I will say this, if you can stomach the idea of eating food so hot you'd like to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant, then Bloom is well worth a visit.

One request to the Bloomers: Find a way to get a liquor license. I'm not sure whether a wine called "Temparanillo, glass, cork, oak barrels" would go with your food better or worse than "Water, hops, yeast, malt, barley" but I'd sure like to find out.

When we lived in Kalamazoo, there was a hole-in-the-wall Mexican grocery-store/restaurant that I completely loved. Authentic food, everyone working there seemed to be family, and the atmosphere said "hey, velvet paintings of half-nude Aztec princesses relaxing next to waterfalls is pure quality art." Yeah, it was great. One of my favorite things about Juanita's though was the tacos. Warmed, soft-shell corn tortillas with shredded pork, cilantro and onions....and nothing else, made for the lunch of champions. In fact, I ate there nearly every friday for 9 years. I tell you this so that you understand: I'm really picky about my mexican food. Don Pablo's won't do, Chi-Chi's is an abomination and I don't really have any room in my life for Rio Bravo or any of the other "giant burritos are AWESOME BABY" restaurants that mistake quantity for quantity.

Imagine then my pleased surprise to stumble into a nicely decorated mexican joint near Ikea (where you don't necessarily expect to find great food) in strip-mall-ville USA (Canton, MIchigan) that served authentic Puerto Vallartan dishes at incredible prices, and even put up with two toddlers throwing salsa like it was confetti.

Mariachi Restaurant came highly recommended (passionately recommended even) by a good friend of mine, Erik, who also works for a hospital as a P.A. (so I assume he knows what's good for me). I had him tell me what to order and how to get there. I even let him tell me which beer to get (when it comes to making my own choices beer ranks up there with hot dogs as something about which I arrogantly claim expertise).

The lunch was outstanding. I'm drooling as I write this. Mariachi (there were no Mariachis by the way...that's a dinner-time feature I'm told) has several home-made salsas to mix with their home-made chips. They were all great of course, but there was one that had cucumers and jalepenos that was so delicious (sweet and hot at the same time with that unique coldness that only cucumbers can impart) we were left wishing it came in giant soup bowls so we could stuff ourselves.

Thankfully we resisted the urge to goldfish on chips and salsa. The ceviche was a great starter, served on nice crispy tostadas, and sprayed with lime wedges. I'm pretty sure "real" seviche is raw and this stuff was cooked (I think) but it was really good. Good enough to get again and certainly good enough to recommend to others.

For lunch Megan had enchiladas (shredded beef) which were expectedly tasty (can you crew up enchiladas?) but nothing terribly unique. Just good wholesome enchiladas.

The stuff that sealed the deal was the tacos, Vallarta style. We had carniatas and birria tacos, along with a couple fish tacos. The meat was tender, perfectly seasoned (not over-seasoned which would kill the flavor of the cilantro y cebolla) and served on warmed, soft, corn tortillas. I immediately had a flashback to the Aztec princesses of Juanitas. Only here at Mariachi, the meat was more tender (especially the birria), the tables were cleaner and they served beer.

Essentially, and I suppose this is all that really matters, I'd say we'll be eating here again for sure. It's close enough to Ikea to be worth a jaunt any time you're shopping at the blue and yellow box, and in a world of Taco Bells and Chi-Chi's it's always refreshing to find something that's on a different level.

Sometimes price and size matter. We've eaten at Voila 3 times in the past 8 days. I think they've only been open for about 2 weeks, so if nothing else we're clearly supporting a new restaurant.

Why on earth would you eat at the same place 3 times in 8 days you might ask? Well, that's easy: picnic, breakfast, dinner.

Cafe Voila is owned or managed (or something) by the family that brought us all Arnie's bakery and restaurant (a Grand Rapids tradition that at this point seems to be poised to suffer the same fate as Bill Knapp's: When your clientele is all over 80, your restaurant isn't long for this world). With a small, but attractive interior, the restaurant seems destined to rely on take-out and out-door dining (they have tables in the plaza adjacent to the East).

Picnic
They do take-out, we do take-out, and Voila is within walking distance of both our house and the venerable John Collins Park on Reeds Lake in East Grand Rapids. Voila provides big meal-sized salads for $8 a pop. That's almost impossible to believe in this day and age but it's true. To be sure, I've had a better salad in my life than the Tuscan salad from Voila. But I've never had a better take-out-ready-in-ten-minutes salad. That's for darned sure. What's more, I've never had a take-out-ready-in-ten-minutes-for-eight-dollars salad in my entire life. That I can guarantee. So, we bought the salads, carried them to the park and ate in peace. Bonus.

So anyway, Megan had a fruit-nut salad that was a little bland for her liking. The mandarin oranges were canned, the strawberries fresh (though clearly not from-Michigan-fresh), the lettuce crisp and the dressing very mild. In all it was a good meal for a picnic in the park.

My tuscan salad consisted of romaine, red onions, grated cheese, grilled chicken, hard salami, ham, turkey and weighed in at a pound and a half. It was epic, and tasty too. If you have to pick between these two salads, I have to say we both agreed the Tuscan was the winner.

Breakfast
They also do breakfast! Sure, the menu is limited (6 or 7 items?), but if you have the Bananas Foster French Toast you will only bemoan your inability to eat more...not the lack of menu options. Megan had the aforementioned B's Foster French Toast and I have to say, my crepes with Bavarian creme with fruit (some of which sure seemed to have come from a can...tsk tsk) were good..but the French Toast was divine. Their spinach quiche was great as well and I could easily be talked into that next visit (and yes, there'll be more).

Did I mention they bake their own danish pastries? We had 2 raspberry danishes (which looked stunningly like this one on Wikipedia) and they were also quite tasty. Light fluffy dough, perfectly cooked and not so large you have to feel incredibly guilty afterward. At only $2 they're a steal-and-a-half.

Though I've mentioned before that they offer outside dining, I should point out again how refreshing it is to find a restaurant in Michigan that has more outside dining than inside tables. At least it feels that way.

Dinner
There's something attractive about prix fixe dining. I think the lack of choices actually makes me feel like I'm embarking on an adventure. We ate al fresco yet again (third meal at Voila, still haven't eaten indoors), this time with a party of 14 adults and 5 children (under 7). When you've got kids galore, outside dining on a plaza away from any streets can be the kind of option that changes a restaurant from a special occasions place to a permanent fixture on your dining circuit. In our case, the outside-option, combined with prix fixe menu at $15/person made for an interesting connundrum: Lack of kids menu vs. perfect setting for kids to eat outside.

First the good:

1. Prix Fixe menu had a beef, chicken, fish option. Great for people avoiding red meat.
2. Potato tart was fabulous
3. Owner and Chef came to talk to us
4. Setting in the plaza (shaded during dinner, plenty of room for us to eat, room for kids to squirrel away the last 30 minutes of dinner)
5. DESSERT WAS FABULOUS. Literally. You can tell Arnie's is at work here as the cakes were outstanding.
6. The price: $15/person for a 3 course dinner is an unbelievable steal. It really is. You got a Caesar salad, entree, potato tart, veggie and slice of cake for that price. The cake alone, in any other restaurant, would have been $5 or more (leaving $10 to feed me a steak and salad....yeah right).

There were kinks. I'm sure it had to do with eating there on their first saturday in business, but a few of the problems were inexcusable:

1. Out of beef tenderloin, went and bought NY Strip, not everyone liked them...several at our table thought they were chewy. The owner tried to explain away the change "hey, you got a bigger steak" when he should have just given those folks their meal at a discount or something. Weird.
   
   
2. Out of diet coke? Fine, go buy me one at the 5 take-out places within walking distance. Rather than doing that, we sent a couple of people from our table across the street to buy diet cokes for us. How do you run out of pop anyway?
   
   
3. No kids menu. Seriously folks, this is EGR, home of more children than adults. Get a kids menu and take notes from Rose's too because they do it right (kid-friendly gourmet is better than the standard hot-dog, grilled-cheese, mac-n-cheese, chicken-fingers kids menu from 99% of american restaurants). Solve this problem and you would have sold food to 5 kids this weekend (rather than us walking to Rose's to buy pizzas).
   

That said, when the price is right you'll overlook problems. My overall take on the pace matches that pretty well. The prices are great, the food is good, the atmosphere is perfect and the restaurant will endear itself to the EGR community just by offering breakfast. In the end, I left the place assuming that we'll be back over and over, especially for breakfast but also for dinners.

We had a great dinner here on Monday. It wasn't the first time we've eaten at Olive's, just the first time I've bothered to write about it.

Something about tiny (in my book at least) local restaurants sets my heart aflutter before we even walk in the door. Olive's despite it's confusing name (it has no relation to the venerable "Olive's Express" in downtown GR). This trip the occasion was Megan's birthday (see once you have 2 kids under 2 at home, you're basically out of the foodie scene for a while). We needed someplace relatively close to home and we let Monday night (most restaurants are plum empty on Mondays) dothe rest of the work for us.

We enjoyed the calamari for an appetizer in their unique conical serving dish. It's greasy (deep-fried in fat) and comes with two dipping sauces. Nothing all that different than calamari anywhere else, but if you like it everywhere else, you'll like it at Olive's.

Moving onto our main courses of spinach gnocci (Megan, of course) and "tuna mango tango" (seared sashimi with some rub and a mango/soy sauce) I re-lived college for a moment: They were out of Oberon and somehow I'd managed to drink the keg dry. IN my youth that might have been cause for a trip to the liquor store but on Monday it just meant a switch to Guinness. Ahhhh the wisdom of old age.

At any rate, the tuna dish I had was spectacular. I got really sick of seared tuna a few years ago...seemed like every restaurant was serving it and for some reason I was eating it everywhere I went. I'd forgotten in fact how tasty it can be when prepared with something other than a sesame crust and wasabi (hello, J.Alexander's). The sauce was perfectly thick, fruity and tart and the sticky rice under the fish (and mangos and peppers) gave me a great excuse to smear up the left-overs (and show off my skills with a mean set of chop sticks).

My suggestion: If you're in EGR for dinner and you've eaten at Rose's every time you've ever visited (like most people do...that place is always packed) you might want to saunter on over to Olive's. Megan and I agree: The food is better at Olive's so if you're just after a good meal, that's your best choice in our little hamlet.

Of course the location, ambiance, view, deck, drinks and people-watching is better at Rose's, so let's not write them off yet. :)

Anniversary dinners are supposed to be special. With that in mind, we set out to find a killer steak in downtown Grand Rapids. I have one word for our dinner at The Chop House: Success.

Sure, there's no excuse for charging almost $40 for a steak that I requested "so rare it's almost raw". Heck, if they're not going to cook it, I could just pick one up at Meijer and eat it on the drive home. But that's not the point. This was a seriously good (so rare it's almost raw) steak. Good enough that I can safely say it's the best steak I've had in a restaurant outside of New York. We're talking super-tender Filet Mignon cooked just how I like it (which is difficult...most places overcook a RARE steak).

It gets better though, they have a pastry chef on staff. So dessert is second to none. We had a pear tart, but it took a good 10 minutes to even decide what we wanted the other choices looked so good.

The wine list is great if you're buying by the bottle, but my one complaint was the lack of by-the-glass choices. The one that looked best (a Rioja) was no longer carried and I had to settle for a garden-variety Cabernet. It was good, but I cannot remember the name of it, so I couldn't have been that good.

Side dishes are served family-style, so for the love of God only order one or two (not 2 each like we did...we had enough leftovers for an entire lunch the next day).

If you visit you might want to check out La Dolce Vita downstairs. They have a cigar, appertif, and dessert bar in the basement that sounds pretty cool (but we didn't try this time). We had Au Gratin potatoes which were outstanding, and sauteed wild mushrooms which were good enough to be a meal in themselves.

The restaurant has a very dark, urban feel to it. Walls are riveted black metal, majority of the lighting is very dim, and you definitely feel like you're in some big-city restaurant (until you walk outside and you're on Monroe in downtown GR). There's a large bar down one side, and I'd estimate seating at about 100 people for the entire main-floor restaurant.

Aside from the questionable wine suggestions (if I like ultra-dry Rioja, don't suggest fruity/spicy Shiraz as a stand-in) our waiter was outstanding. We never had to wait for anything we needed, and our orders were prepared perfectly.

In short (because I'm in a hurry) I'm not sure we've ever spent $250 on dinner for 2 before....but this was easily the best dinner we've had in a restaurant in Michigan, so we didn't even feel like it was a ripoff...just damned expensive. If you need an incredible steak, you want to be treated well and don't mind spending 250 frosties on dinner, this is your joint for sure.