Restaurant Tallent

This is a great place to have good, fresh food in Bloomington! I'll be back.

My first dining experience at Restaurant Tallent did not leave me with any desire to return. My boyfriend and I made a reservation through OpenTable for our sixth anniversary because we knew of its reputation and we've tried most of the other upscale restaurants in town, including FARM, Scholars Inn, and Finch's.  

My boyfriend ordered a beer and I ordered a glass of wine, our server seemed somewhat pushy about getting our orders, asking for them almost immediately after we were seated. This isn't terribly surprising given that we were seated by the hostess, brought menus by another server, then greeted by the woman who would be our server in a flurry that didn't indicate much coordination. We ordered the pesto arancini to start which was incredible, we asked for plates to make it easier to share but we didn't receive them and decided to just go ahead and eat them. We also ordered a half portion of the butternut squash risotto to share, which was, in my opinion, the highlight of the meal. We did receive plates to share for the risotto after asking two more times. My boyfriend ordered the lasagna and I ordered the pork for our entrees. When we were brought our entrees, more than forty minutes after we received our second course, two separate individuals came to ask if we needed extra plates. Apparently they got the memo that we wanted plates to share a couple courses too late.  While both entrees were good, neither was memorable and they did not compare to the two prior dishes.

As much as I wanted to love everything, we were both really disappointed in the service we received. Everything seemed to be moving very slowly and our food was brought to us and cleared by several different people, none of whom were our server. Our server didn't check in to see how we were enjoying our meal either, which seems unusual. We heard countless apologies given to tables surrounding ours because of how backed up the kitchen was, but we didn't receive an apology despite the delay we also faced. We chose not to have dessert not because we weren't tempted, but simply because we didn't want to wait thirty minutes for a panna cotta.

Overall I'm glad I tried Restaurant Tallent because it's often revered as an exceptional dining destination, but I do not have any intention of returning. The service did not make us feel welcome. No mention was made of our anniversary and we seemed both rushed at the start of the meal and ignored during the course of the meal.

i'm going to be tough on this one given the price point on the food. It ain't cheap.

We came here in a large group to celebrate my friend's milestone birthday. All of us had been looking forward to coming as we had heard great things about Tallent.

Service: The table was ready so we were seated right away. We all arrived within five minutes of our reservation time. They put water on the table pretty quickly. But then we waited for a while. The birthday boy ordered some wine but it took 30 minutes to place our orders. Our waitress was nice but given the size of our table, they should've put two servers on us. She had to walk around and explain things on the menu over and over again. Some of us got appetizers. It took 20 minutes to get these. Then we waited close to 30 minutes to get our entrees. So we ate our main courses over an hour after we were seated. I understand having a large group you have to wait a bit more but I think it could have been speeded up with having another waiter. I took a peek into the main dining room and it was only about half full and got less and less full as the night went by. We had other waiters helping our waitress out but mostly in putting out the food.

Food: I started with the crudo of the day. Finding fresh, tasty sashimi in this area is impossible so I really enjoyed it. It was light and fresh. For my entree I had the bison osso bucco. This definitely needed salt but overall the meat was cooked really well. I enjoyed the little crouton type things in the sauce as well as the bone marrow - I may have stolen my friend's  bone and eaten every bit of marrow. Yum. My other friends got the pork and a pasta dish. Their dishes were good but not outstanding. There was definitely room for improvement on them.

I removed a star for the amount of time it took to take orders and get our food and another star for the other dishes at the table that weren't as good as mine. Given the prices the service and food should be perfect. It's a nice space and I love that I could see into the kitchen from our table. Also, the bathroom is nice. I would go back and try other dishes and also go in a smaller group to get a feel for the main dining room and service for a smaller table.