A few posts ago, you'll remember that I tried out PAVIA, the new cafe in Herring Cove. To be fair, I decided the other week that I ought to try the Blooming Cafe as well. The Blooming Cafe is the other Spryfield local coffee shop, and it's located in a white building just at the intersection of Dentith and Herring Cove Road, across the street from the Tim Hortons and Subway, in the same building as the Cuts of Class hair shop. When my lunch companion and I walked in, we could see that it was not the same kind of chi chi establishment as PAVIA. Not the place to order a latte. But it did have a sort of down home feel to it, which was what I was expecting anyhow. The room holds about seven or eight small tables, and was decorated with fall colours, sheafs of dried grass, and bunches of yellow and orange leaf bouquets on each table. It was pretty busy when we got there, with about half of the tables occupied. It was raining cats and dogs outside, and on quite a few tables I saw sweet little ceramic teapots and cups of steaming coffee. There's an open kitchen in the back, and two ladies run in and out taking orders and plates. There's a couple of chalk boards up on the wall with the menu on it. Home cooking was the order of the day: Western omelette with toast, beef casserole, hot chicken sandwiches, pumpkin pie, trifle. I ordered the beef casserole (the most popular choice of the day, almost everyone else in the place ordered it too), and my friend ordered an omelette. The casserole came with an optional tea biscuit on the side, but I declined. The casserole was a generous sized slice of baked macaroni mixed with ground beef in a kind of tomato and bell pepper sauce, topped with melted chedder cheese. On the side was a large serving of tossed salad, with a pretty good sweet curry dressing. Cantaloupe and blueberries were tossed in with my salad, which was a nice touch. I have to say, although I started off enjoying my casserole, by the time I was halfway through I had to to stop. I found it heavy and greasy, and I stopped enjoying it. My friend's Western omelette treated him in much the same way. I notice that a chalk board announced the Blooming Cafe now serves red wine, white wine, and beer, but we didn't try any, as it was only lunch time. One thing we disliked was that we both ordered water and were served water in plastic bottles. I really prefer it when restaurants serve tap water - it's cheap, plentiful, and better for the environment. Bottom line: it's home cooking, all right. Reasonably simple and healthy, but personally I won't be ordering anything cheese-topped there again. ...