Conestoga’s Bloom restaurant, a full-service licensed dining room that offers 3- and 4-course meals prepared by aspiring chefs and restaurant managers in the college's Hospitality programs, has been named one of Canada’s top 150 "neighbourhood gems.”
Bloom, located at the Waterloo campus, has been named one of Canada's best neigbhourhood restaurants.
The list of restaurants was compiled in celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary by OpenTable, a provider of online restaurant reservations that seats more than 21 million diners a month through online bookings across more than 40,000 restaurants. The 150 restaurants selected reflect the combined opinions of more than 480,000 restaurant reviews submitted by verified OpenTable diners for more than 2,000 restaurants in Canada.
"The restaurants highlighted on this list illustrate the variety of local tastes across the country as neighbourhoods in Canada become more diverse," said Ziv Schierau, head of national accounts for OpenTable Canada. "From the best-kept-secret eateries to more established restaurants, this list encourages Canadians to explore their own neighbourhood, as well as others, for their next dining out experience."
Bloom is located at Conestoga’s Waterloo campus -- the site of a $43.5 million revitalization and expansion project that includes development of the new Institute for Culinary and Hospitality Management.
The Institute will deliver a number of key benefits for students and the community, including:
- increased capacity for education and training programs to serve the tourism sector’s urgent human resource needs
- new opportunities for product development and testing as well as experiential learning opportunities for students to support their skills development and help them prepare for successful careers
- development of our local food culture through demonstration kitchens, part-time and short courses for the broader community and an expanded, high visibility, student-run restaurant open to the public
- enhanced innovation through a new Research Kitchen that builds on Conestoga’s existing strengths in food processing, supply chain management, nutrition management and seniors care, to create unique capacity for applied research across the entire food production and management spectrum.
Bloom’s Winter semester menu is available until April 21. Visit the restaurant’s website for reservations and more information. Culinary students will also host the final evening of the Rising Stars Canapé Series on April 19 at the Kitchener Market. Tickets are available online