Bloomington Restaurants

Here's my list of Bloomington, Indiana area restaurant recommendations. You can google these or check out Bloomingpedia for directions.

Expensive
1. Restaurant Tallent: Probably the best restaurant in town. I give them bonus points for making unique meals using lots of local produce, meat, fish, and poultry. This distinguishes them from Scholars and Truffles, which are excellent but don't really serve dishes that you couldn't get elsewhere. The current location (an old house on Kirkwood) is a bit funky for Tallent's pretensions (formerly it was Flora's, which served hippie Italian), but the new location downtown should provide a more appropriate "urban" decor.
2. Scholar's Inn: New American-style cuisine. The restaurant is located in a Victorian mansion, so they win the decor award.
3. Truffles: Not as creative as the others, but better portions. Very nice interior but located in a strip mall.
4. Janko's Little Zagreb: best steaks on the planet. Ribs and spicy meatballs are good, too. Salads and decor are humorously bad.

Medium Priced
1. Michael's Uptown: classic American and Cajun dishes. Dinner specials Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday put them in my "moderately priced" category; otherwise, they skew towards the expensive. They have an excellent selection of wines by the glass.
2. Le Petit Cafe: lunch buffet on Thursdays and prix fixe brunch on Sundays. The French owners (Patrick and Marina) have lived in Bloomington for nearly 30 years, and the menu is more "Indiana home cooking by French natives" than classic Parisian cuisine.
3. Casablanca: forget their standard menu and order the fish or lamb special of the day. Lunch specials are usually the same as the dinner specials, but cheaper.
4. Esan Thai: Fresh Thai dishes, not as oily as most US Thai restaurants that I've tried. Has many vegetarian options.
5. Lenny's: this is a combination brew house and restaurant. They have very good gourmet pizzas.
6. Upland: another brew house and restaurant. They usually have interesting weekly dinner specials and better variety than Lenny's.
7. Samira: this is an Afghan restaurant with a menu that has a combination of Indian, Southwest Asian, and Mediterranean dishes. They have a very nice lunch buffet.

Cheap
1. Mother Bear's: This is an old school Midwest pizza place and a Bloomington landmark that regularly gets national recognition. I did get food poisoning here once (the Divine Swine was the culprit).
2. Runcible Spoon: cheap meals for college students in an appropriately shabby old house. They also are an OK place for breakfast.
3. Aver's Pizza: Take out or delivery only. Great pizza if you like chewy, thick crusts. They have several interesting gourmet-style pizzas.
4. Nick's English Hut: this is one of Bloomington's landmark bars, with 75+ years worth of atmosphere that you couldn't remove with a chisel and their own drinking game ("Sink the Bismark" with hall-0f-fame buckets above the bar. But I drop by for the food. The chef/kitchen manager ("Rags") serves exemplary bar food: burgers, onion rings, pizza, Italian beef, and strombolis. If you want something healthy, they have fine fresh fish available over a salad of nice greens or as a dinner. Elk and buffalo burgers are also available. They use local meat and produce extensively.