It’s not surprising that Bloom Plant Based Kitchen would find its roots in Chicago in the lively, youthful, and fiercely independent Wicker Park neighborhood. With bars, thrift shops, boutiques, bookshops, cafés, and restaurants—most not of the chain variety—packed shoulder-to-shoulder for blocks on end, Bloom’s location is smack-dab right in the mix of attention-grabbing storefronts, an anomaly with its clean, classic design. It’s an aesthetic that extends into how relaxing the restaurant feels immediately after walking in from the busy, cacophonous street. You are immediately transported.
It is not as if you’ve walked into a Zen monastery, though. Most of the tables on a weekday evening are occupied with happily bantering friends and couples, music playing at just the right volume to notice it but still have a conversation without shouting,…
