bloom. - Waterloo

I have dined twice at Bloom, a restaurant that is part of the culinary programme at Conestoga College. The meals were delicious and delightfully presented. I loved the desserts. The students provided excellent and thoughtful service.

This was our 4th time at BLOOM, and the menu selections and prices were great. We must have run into a batch of new students, as the service was very slow and inattentive, and the students seemed hesitant to serve us. However the food was wonderful as always, and the wine selection was more than adequate. We found the one dessert item Apple Truffles very hard and seemed overcooked, by they were easily replaced with another dessert item. All in all, still a good experience for us and we will be back shortly.

Four of us went for dinner and had the 3 courses. We all ordered a drink. The maitre d was happy that the bartending students would get to practice their mixology. The appetizers were all excellent. We ordered the charcuterie, the soup and the salad. For mains we had the steak (beautifully grilled and sliced with oyster mushrooms), the duck confit with broccolini (perfectly cooked) and a delicious wild rice and barley mixture, and the rice bowl with grilled tofu, pickled shiitakes, fried brussels, 63° egg, scallions, togarashi. All the mains were delicious and presentation looked great. For dessert we opted for the apple fritters with ice cream, the chocolate hazelnut tart with caramel praline and chocolate ice cream and they had sorbet as well. The tart was an amazing combination of flavours and textures. As this is a culinary school and our students had been through several terms we were thrilled with the end results of their efforts. I imagine it could be a different result with more junior students but we expect to return and try it out again.

This was our first visit, so didn’t really know what to expect. The food was delicious, beautifully presented but a little on the cool side. Our server was attentive, knowledgeable but less polished than expected. The atmosphere was disappointing, the restaurant appears very much like a classroom and 2 sides are floor to ceiling windows with hallways and plenty of people walking by. We found the service a little rushed. Overall, Bloom offers exceptional food at great value with the added bonus of supporting our local students.

My friends and I have dined at some high-end restaurants in the area, and the food quality and presentation at this restaurant were exceptional. Surprisingly, the bill was about 40% lower than our previous experiences. The atmosphere was modern and the staff was attentive. The only downside was the limited selection of wines, with only 2 reds and 2 whites available. Although we are not wine connoisseurs (usually opting for a $14 bottle from the liquor store), the wines did not seem to meet our expectations. I tried the Reisling/Zinfandel blend, which tasted more like a dessert wine. I stuck with my pre-dinner beer instead. Despite this, we will definitely return and recommend this restaurant to others.