Column: Fill holiday downtime by taking Bloom Magazine’s food and restaurant survey

Never bury the lede: Here’s a link to Bloom Magazine’s food and restaurant survey.

I imagine many of you will be looking for ways to kill some time or escape whatever awkward situation you’re in over the next few days. Sure, you could organize a debate on the best Christmas color, but at this point it is pretty much a matter of settled law. (It’s red.)

Or another way to spend time would be to entertain yourself with some of the Civic Solver puzzles from the B Square, which is a feature that has been launched recently.

But the way I am suggesting you spend a few minutes this holiday season is to give Bloom Magazine some feedback on the Bloomington area’s local food and restaurants.

Listen, I know you might have survey fatigue, but Bloom Magazine’s survey on food and restaurants has been revamped and improved: It’s short and crisp, and does not require a response for every single item! But best of all, each section offers a chance to comment. In a message from Bloom asking for help in promoting the survey, here’s what associate publisher Sydney Zulich wrote: “You can add comments—they may be published in the magazine!”

The comment option is a way to tell Bloom Magazine exactly why you love a place or the food they serve. You don’t have to know anything about food—just tell Bloom Magazine how it makes you feel.

For example, how does the lead art for this column make you feel? For many actual serious-minded foodie type folks, I imagine it might provoke disgust—it’s convenience store biscuits and gravy on a styrofoam plate. But here’s an excerpt from a column I wrote for the Pierre Capital Journal, published on May 7, 2017 with the headline Best breakfast, a Hoosier’s lutefisk:

A place where the biscuits and gravy is served on a styrofoam plate is a bit closer, right around the corner from my place in Fort Pierre—Cowboy Country Store. It’s a convenience store connected to a gas station. Plasticware is the only option for shoveling the sausage-gravy-laden biscuit into your mouth.

But I like eating biscuits and gravy at the Cowboy Country Store. Because the food itself tastes exactly like biscuits and gravy is supposed to taste.

How is biscuits and gravy supposed to taste? Like love, that’s what.

Here, I’ll explain. Back in the late 1980s I was busy falling in love with a young woman in Bloomington, Indiana, and part of our courtship ritual was to eat breakfast on Sunday morning at the Village Deli on Kirkwood Avenue and do the crossword puzzle in the local newspaper.

I would order biscuits and gravy.

Surely you have a thought or two about food and restaurants in this town that you would like to take time to share with Bloom Magazine, and possibly its whole readership. Take the survey!