You're listening to the back home network. Presented by home field apparel. Not a folks. Welcome back to Crimson Cascade and caviar joining me Here. Solo. We have plenty of podcasts either already on the network or coming up here. As soon as it is, pretty weak, I you taking on Purdue this Saturday and a lot to talk about.
Obviously, if you didn't catch it earlier this week, we had the women's basketball podcast with Amanda Foster little out of date now is the Hoosiers. We're able to go up to Minnesota last night and pretty much smoosh the Golden Gophers, but catch up with Amanda and her thoughts on the team from earlier on this week. We also had our first podcast in a while with her old friend. Chronic Hoosier. And we released that on Thursday, as chronic.
And I talked about a range of things with this team, this season, and just kind of where are you basketballs at? Right now, we also preview the Purdue game a little bit, not on our network, but on a friend's network, if you go check out mind your banners, which is, of course, the Indie Stars, IU, basketball, / football podcast, largely and primarily hosted by Zach. Osterman, I go on there.
And I think that just got released a couple hours ago and we talked specifically about this Purdue game and kind of where it fits into the larger Narrative of things and I think a lot of good stuff to talk about Scott and I'll be back, probably sometime Friday, we'll have our own preview podcast and then of course, our friends across the back home network with plenty of podcasting, be sure to check out assembly call.
I think I'm on assembly call actually after the game and it's, it's going to be, it's a long week of Testing, let's put it that way, but it's worth it. The first ranked match up between IU and Purdue and what feels like forever first time produce come in? Ranked number one and it should be quite an event quite an experience, all told so looking forward to it and hopefully you're enjoying all of the
content. Hopefully, you're coming down to Bloomington. That's why I'm doing this show and wanted to give you all some updates on restaurants and other places in town. I've gotten a few requests on this, and I'm just going to To kind of go through and give you some ideas about places to eat and drink that you may not be aware of. If all you do is come in, go to the same places, you've always gone to go to the IU game and then leave which is that's a lot of people.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but there's so much in Bloomington that I want you to try. I live here, I get a chance to go out all the time and I wanted to talk through all of those items. So that's what this podcast is all about. If you are an expert on everything in Bloomington, you can skip it. But if you Actually know, all the places in town and are interested in more be sure to
stick around. First of all, just a reminder were part of the back home network as I mentioned, and we're brought to you by home-field apparel, your place to go for the finest in college, Fashions, the softest of fabrics, the folks up at home, field are cooking some cool stuff up. They've got some quarter Zips coming out. Apparently, Duke has a quarter zip, I think I use getting 12, we'll have to wait and see what that looks like, but it's just one of many different Different
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Anyway let's talk restaurants so I'm not going to talk about the favorites. The places that everybody goes? So no Nick's talk? No Mother Bear's, talk knows a grubs talk. We're not going to even acknowledge those. I'm also not going to mention places that I'm assuming, you know, if you've been to Bloomington you know. So we're not going to talk about the Uptown Cafe. If you haven't been, I don't know what's wrong with you. That should be probably your
first stop. When you come into town gets Crowded quite a bit obviously no runcible spoon, talk no Village Deli Talk. No, Irish lion talk, no crazy, where's doc? You should be aware of all of those places already. And if you're not, let me know I'll go back and do you know, some, some remedial, you know, some some ketchup class with you on that, I guess.
But some of the other places and some of these you may already know but I'm going to kind of go in order of the places that I've noticed that I think are worth trying to look at. If you come in town, a Coming in for a game because, you know, that is generally a pretty narrow band of time. It was interesting. Last, it was last weekend or two weekends ago when Ohio State came into town and the game was at 8 p.m. and people were out and about all day at various places. It was fun.
Kind of watching people go to places, they hadn't been too. So a few places that I just wanted to mention that you should try if you haven't yet, you know, maybe take one trip or one time and don't go to the favorite places that you always go. Try to Branch out a little bit. So let's stick in the downtown area to start with and then I'll kind of go from there in no particular order. One is an old favorite, but it's got a new look, and if you haven't been, you really need to go.
And that's upstairs the upstairs Pub, you all know it. It's at the corner of done in Kirkwood, still in the Dunkirk building, most of you probably have memories of upstairs as this tiny kind of claustrophobic place that didn't have an outside and the After phobic part is still there. Although it's not as claustrophobic because they put glass doors. On the front of it, they've added a balcony patio, essentially, that overlooks Kirkwood, it's awesome in the summer and, you know, it's still
awesome in the winter. It's just cold out there. But what they've done with upstairs is really fascinating. So those of you from particular van advantages, you know, the Jungle Room was across the way up there, well, upstairs, finally bought all of that the Kirkwood Or the killer Roy's. People had it for a little while, but they've bought that they taken over that whole intermediate patio area. And that's actually a really, really cool place to watch
games. There's televisions out there, there's a separate bar that's just out in that area, there's heat lamps, which means it never really gets too cold. There's like roof coverage in some of those areas, so it's open air. But if it's raining, for instance, you're not necessarily going to get wet and then they take in The Jungle Room area and they As well. And there's a separate bar in there and it's a closed-off area that's got windows. So you can see out of it.
That place will get a bit crowded when it gets busy, but there's a lot of room to move around and you know, the drink specials are still very cheap and they still have all the old favorites like the AMF. But they've also got food now, which is kind of crazy to think about. Like nobody really thought about upstairs is a place that would ever have a kitchen, but they actually serve some pretty good bar food there. Are the wings are good.
The chicken nuggets are good. There's been a few other things there that I've had that I've enjoyed. And so it's a really good stop. If you want a snack and a drink on the way to the game or a good place to go afterwards. There are a lot of students there, but it's not like the kok crowd and it's not really even like the Knicks crowd, it's kind of the, it's the, it's the people's crowd to some degree. It's kind of a mix of everybody in Bloomington, and if you're
above, College age. I don't think you're going to feel completely out of place. If you go, you're going to find a spot in there that you can fit in. So that would be a place that I would recommend. If you haven't checked it out, since they did all the renovations and that's really only been about what nine months maybe a year. It's worth checking out. Moving on. Let's go down.
Kirkwood Avenue a little bit. Obviously, we're skipping, you know, some of the the stalwarts that we already mentioned that we weren't going to talk about but one place At you, if you pay attention to the podcast or pain kitchen to Twitter, you know that I talked about and really love is fat Dan's and everybody's like where is fat dance? Well it's it essentially it's at Lincoln and Kirkwood if you know where The Graduate hotel is now it's directly across the street
on the North side. I think E sont. I used to be in that building but when that closed to think was either right before, or during the pandemic fat Dan's moved in, we thought they were going to Close. Because they literally opened like three months before the pandemic but they've kept going and there's a reason why they're still around. It's because it's a really, really cool kind of almost quasi hidden. Almost dive bars sort of place but with awesome food.
There isn't a nice open bar area in there and that's a great place to sit and watch games. There's several tables inside. There's tables outside. There's no TVs outside, but there's plenty of tables inside with televisions. And they have, I think right now the best bar style food in Bloomington. Their hamburgers are awesome. They do an awesome job with their dirty tots which is you kind of have to just try it. They're hard to describe.
It's a mishmash of hot sauce and tater tots and cheese and pork and then they got a bunch of other awesome things as well. And they always have a really nice beer selection, it's not so expansive that it's hard to keep track of It's also not so narrow that you feel like you've got to pick from like three or four things, and they do a nice job of rotating the Taps. You might know, fat Dan's. I think for my the Chicago, or from the north side of Indy, they've been down here for three
years. I highly recommend it. It's normally a place where you can get a seat. Because people still don't seem to know about it. Because they, as, as I said at the beginning, they tend to skip the places. They haven't already been to. It also doesn't have great signage, but I swear, it's in that building. Go in. Check it out. I think you'll have an awesome time with it. A couple other newer places that I think are definitely worthy of mention.
We did a whole podcast about almost three years ago now about like places in Bloomington that host restaurants that continue to have trouble and there's one place that we dubbed the cursed Corner which is the essentially, the southeast corner of 7th and walnut. So like right across from blacks and right across from the the videos.
Moon, and obviously across from the right next to the bluebird, essentially, but there's a restaurant in there that it's been in there now for a couple of years, and it's really good, and it's called La Luna Cantina. It's a Mexican place. You know, I think, and I have some some pretty expert opinions. Who agree with me right now? It's probably the best quality Mexican food in town, great, tequila selection, great mix of different types of food.
I'm not going to say it's like, you know, authentic in the traditional sense, but It tastes really good and it do you know a lot of times with Mexican food, you'll have that situation where you order the food and it comes out three minutes later and you're like, I don't know about that. This is not like that. This is, this is really high quality, the ingredients are good. They taste really good, really good. Margarita selection as well. And nice bar area in addition to
regular seating. So that's definitely a spot. I would highly recommend checking out as it's got a lot of And I think really good options and it's a nice change of pace. Sometimes, it's very crowded and a lot of times it's crowded with students which I know for some of you non-students can be a turn-off but there's also plenty of seating in there where you're not going to deal with students and it's not like a traditional bar, it's really just like a
restaurant. That happens to have a bar in it and so it's a good to see something go in that spot and make a go of it and actually do well with their business, but it's also nice. Nice to see a place. That's serving. A different type of food from what you would normally expect in those circumstances. Another one that I think a lot of people are familiar with now, but maybe haven't been to is Big Woods in Bloomington.
You was quaff on in Bloomington and then it was and then it turned into Big Woods. And that's the essentially kind of The Branding that they went to Big Woods. If you've been to the hard truth Hills, the the big kind of Lodge Style, Forested spot that Big Woods has out Nashville, Indiana. First of all, if you haven't been to that, you should go. That's a remarkable setting both inside and outside for a restaurant.
This is very different. If you are of a certain vintage and Bloomington lure, you remember Cafe, Django on Grant Street, just north of Kirkwood. This is in that spot during basketball season, your kind of restricted to a couple of different areas where you can sit because it's normally not
warming up outside to sit. On in their beer garden but they have a main building which isn't particularly big, it tends to fill up very quickly and then you've got a smaller out building, that's got a bar that's 21 and over only out there. But and either spot, they have a really good kitchen. I think their food is really good and they have a great beer selection. I really think Big Woods. Does an awesome job with the
beers that they brew. They obviously have their own Distillery and they've been able to put a lot of good stuff. Gather there that you can purchase, you can buy bottles of it, and take it home with you. It's a reliable spot. It's one of my favorite lunch spots in Bloomington that I like to hit and it certainly works for a pregame meal or even a
post-game drink. If the game ends early enough, a lot of its just, can you get in there because it is relatively small and when it's not warm outside, you just got limited seating options. But I would recommend that and again, that is just North of Kirkwood Avenue on Grant Street. So it's right Around the corner from a favorite of mine. And if you've never eaten a cafe Pizzeria, you should go to Cafe Pizzeria. It is it's one that everybody always walks by as students and forgets about.
But right there at the corner, Kirk wouldn't Grant? One of the nice things about Cafe Pizzeria right now is that it's finally got a beer license. And, for many years, you could not get an alcoholic beverage at Cafe Pizzeria, which for many people, kind of decreased the attractiveness of that restaurant, which is a shame Because I think the pizza, there is awesome. It's very Indiana style pizza.
If you know that our knees or Pizza King style of pizza, the very thin crust with the crumble sausage that's what you get a cafe Pizzeria with with its own independent twists. It's got some little, you know, the little crust wing on it, on around the outside, whereas like, you know, Arnie style, pizza tends to be just flat but it's a reliably good eating experience. I think they're strombolis. Our awesome actually think the Strom at Cafe Pizzeria is better
than the Strom down the street. Which I know that kind of talk can get you, like excommunicated in some circles, but try it. Do the Pepsi challenge with it. Let me know what you think, but, Cafe, Pizzeria, no televisions in there. But in the era of YouTube TV, maybe not as big of a deal. But definitely a place to check out normally seating available in there and those folks, definitely deserve your business, some other place. In the downtown area that I
think are worth mentioning. You know, there's two Italian places downtown that are awesome. That people need to go to more. One of them is actually owned by the folks at Nick's it's called Austria Rago. It is in the alley behind Nick's. So if you know where runcible spoon is and you know where nixes, you know, there's an alley that goes between the two and that is where Australia Rago is located.
It's if you again If you're from a certain vintage of time and Bloomington that is where one of the blooming Foods used to be before, I think that closed like 10, 12 years ago and that building set idle for a while and rags and Susan had purchased it and Susan run. I believe Susan is running that restaurant still and that's got some really awesome Italian dishes across the board. It's got pizza. It's got pasta. It's got salads.
That are awesome. It's a really great lunch spot, some of the, Just deli sandwiches in Bloomington. Some really awesome awesome sandwiches across the board, and it's worth checking out again. It's not a huge place. It fills up a lot in the evenings, but for a game, a lot of times people just skip over it because they don't think I'm gonna go eat an Italian place before basketball game worth trying out. Seriously, give it a shot. I don't think I've ever had anything on the menu there.
That isn't really really good. And again, really easy to get to and It's in a spot that's surrounded by a bunch of other things. The other spot is DaVinci which is at 3rd and Washington. So you know a little bit south of where we've been talking about but still very easy to get to and DaVinci has a tremendous amount. Actually think their pizza. At this point, is probably slightly superior to the pizza at Osteria, both of them are
really good. They're both kind of their individually sized pizzas, but there are decently sized you deaf. Only, I think for most people, you wouldn't be able to finish a whole one in a sitting they have great pasta. They have some excellent desserts including a frozen lemon gelato where they actually take the gelato, put it in a lemon peel with the cap and then put it in the freezer. And you eat it out of the frozen lemon peel. A lot of different pasta options
there as well. That place again, it's not huge. And you know, some of the seating is outside and that It's cut down obviously, in the winter time, but it's definitely worth checking out as again, a place that I don't think I've had a bad meal experience in any of the times that I've gone. So, so check that spot out again, 3rd and Washington for DaVinci and you know, if you're in the mood for Italian again, not a place where you would go and watch televisions.
But certainly a place to catch a meal either before or after a game. If you can get in a couple other places in the downtown area, I would say that our Worth checking out. One of them is more of a morning spot but I think they're open around lunch time as well.
And this is actually a buffalo. He's owned joint, it's called Gables bagels, and Ed short, sermon and the folks over there, it really had made a decision that, you know, we need new york-style, Bagels in Bloomington, and he's delivered on his promise, like the bagels. They have their excellent. They have an amazing pastrami In which, which they smoke themselves. And I was, I mean, I'm a, I'm a bit of a pastrami snob. I was not sure about this.
I've had that sandwich multiple times since they opened. Its really, really good. It's very different. It's not nearly as salty as some of the pastrami's that you'll get at other spots, but it's so well cooked. The whole thing is really, I think well, put together and the bagels are there. Fresh tasting, the schmears are all excellent. It is in a Place to find. And this is, I think the one drawback to Gables Bagels it's actually really close to Nix and and upstairs and all of that.
It is located. We're done and Third Street come together. There's that shopping center and in the shopping center there's like the Little Italy Market which I also recommend going to. I'm talking about that place on a second and there's like a, there's a, there's a head shop. There's a couple of other things in that shopping center.
There's a travel agency. There's There's a place that my wife always get soup from, that's really good which I can't remember the name of what's the name of that place? What rush hour station good soup at rush hour station but anyway that that shopping center is only two blocks south of Kirkwood on done. I would check it out especially if you're coming down for like a noon game or a to p.m. game and you want to get something that isn't like a traditional
breakfast. Check out Gables Bagels. Also if you're around lunchtime and you want to get something very different Little Italy Market, It, which is in that shopping center, some tremendous sandwiches for purchase there. And those folks are really friendly they will give you an oversized sandwich that is delicious and worth trying.
And you can also if you need to buy other Food Supplies, they've got plenty of those things because the place is actually just a market that happens to have a deli in the back. And so again I would recommend checking that out. Couple of this places that I want and if I skip any place, I apologize. It's not, I'm not trying to exclude anybody. I wanted to keep this podcast at about 25 minutes and I'm almost out of time. So I didn't want to go overboard with trying to advertise
everybody. I'm sure we'll do this type of podcast again, as we move forward, but a couple of other honorable mentions that are worth checking out. Certainly, if you're in the general vicinity of town and you want to try something a little Bit different.
A place that not many people know about outside of Bloomington but that has reliably consistently good food and an awesome bar and a kind of a almost kind of Jazzy hipster sort of vibe is a place called c 3. C 3 is actually located south of the mall downstair Road. It is in a neighborhood called Renwick Village and C3 and it's actually the letter c and the number three, great. Date spot. Great young professionals. Go having drinks after whatever young professionals do spot they
have live music. A lot of times and they were really nice reliable menu. They have a really good drink menu and it's a really good like just kind of chill ambience in there. And during the summer, they have an open patio outside. It's a really nice spot where you can essentially just kind of chill for a little while have some good food and it doesn't really We feel like it's in Bloomington, it kind of feels like it's of its own spot and again, it's worth trying. So give that a shot.
If you're in town, as I think that that is one of the better eating experiences and Bloomington the other spot that I'll mention. That's a little bit outside of downtown is Southern Stone, which is located, not really close to anything. It feels like it's over, essentially off of Roger. Jurors Street south of downtown, it's right off the B-Line Trail and it is. It's that spot has been kind of a bunch of different things over
the course of time. But the restaurant right now has a really nice mix of. What's you know, what I think is pretty good food on its menu. You can go in there and have a good brunch, you can go in there, I have a good lunch or dinner and it's a combination of a little bit of everything. There's there's really good sandwiches there's you know, a full plate meals. Eels, it does have a southern tinge to the cooking not like Uptown, which has a kind of a
Cajun bent. This is more kind of Southern Soul Food, comfort food, sort of dishes and I find the quality to be really good. It's got a again, another place that's got a really nice bar. It's very open floor plan and again it's like it's off the beaten path. So you got to get down there and takes a little bit of time but I have always been really pleased every time I've gone there whether it's for Run sure. Whether it's for a dinner,
that's another spot. I would highly recommend those are kind of the highlights right now that I wanted to hit on certainly. There's others that I didn't mention that that are also really good that I'd recommend checking out, but if you've never checked any of those out, check at least one out next time. You're in town and let me know what you think you can. You can you know, DMS or you can tweet at us a crimson cast.
I'd love to hear your experiences and what you liked and what you didn't like, that'll wrap this up. Hopefully this helped Doubt as you were driving to Bloomington for the Purdue game or flying in or whatever you're going to do, look forward to seeing you all down here, whether it's for this game or whether it's a game in the future, our thanks to our friends at home field, apparel and throughout the back home network on Galen clavius, this has been Crimson Castle.
Catch you, folks on the flip side, bring back the bicycle so long, everybody.