Mother Bear's, a Bloomington Classic.

Several years ago my sister started a food blog, Pechin's Pizza of the week. She came to visit me in Bloomington and we ate at, and she reviewed, the original Mother Bear's Pizza, near the Indiana University campus. One of her first reviews was the original Mother Bear's Pizza.  See her review here,

Well, just like every town, Bloomington changes and grows and new restaurants pop up, mostly chains. A new old restaurant popped up on the swiftly growing west side of town, a side that some students hardly know exists! Mother Bear's recently opened a new location in a building that had housed a chain rib joint that didn't make it. Just off the west side of Indiana State Road 37, which is now under construction to be part of Hwy 69, a straight shot between Indy and Evansville; adjoining the parking lot of a Kohl's store is where Mama Bear made a new home.

We went on a chilly Friday night, when LOTS pf people decided pizza sounded good. It had been a day when around 4:00 I sent a message to my roommate asking about dinner plans...REALLY hoping she wanted to eat out, no matter how many leftovers were festering in our fridge! I had a peanut butter flavored cardboard, um, I mean fiber bar to make it through the rest of my workday and yay! When she responded she said she was still craving that deep dish pizza she'd mentioned last week, so Mother Bear's it was. We had a couple of "life" tasks to do first, so headed to the Pizza den about 6:30, to find ourselves signing up for an hour long wait. There were LOTS of people waiting, if I recall correctly, probably fifty or sixty people. We were given a little buzzer thingy and sat down in an entry way on a wooden bench to wait. Lots of people chose to come in and get carry out, and I had noted two parking spaces near the door for carry out customers, so that might be a good option if you can't handle the wait and don't care about missing the dining-in experience.

As we walked through to our seats I realized there was no hope that my usual request to not be seated near children was possible. 80% of the tables were families or large groups with children. Once seated it took several minutes before our server appeared. She took a drink order and because we had waited so long for her we were ready to order it all. We were really hungry and excited about our dinner so we ordered our drinks, fried mushrooms, garlic bread with sauce, and our deep-dish pizza!

It took quite awhile for the drinks to arrive.... but when they did, YAY! 32 oz glasses of Pepsi products (note, the menu limits refills to one because of the size), a nice glass of Stella Artois, (from a tap beer list of at least ten brands!), and the cutest little 6 oz carafe of a red wine ever!

Not too long after the drinks arrived, the mushrooms came out. We hadn't looked too carefully at the description and didn't realize we were going to get big slices of fried Portobello. We even called the server back, thinking we had received the wrong dish, but realized before we made really big fools of ourselves! The pizza arrived and our server promised they were checking on the garlic bread. Another staff member arrived and apologized and stated, "Garlic bread shouldn't take twenty minutes!" and promised to give a discount on our check ! Very nice service there! we probably wouldn't have made a fuss, but it is nice that the wait was recognized and compensated a little bit!

The food... oh the food was delicious! The pizza was perfectly baked with browned and crispy edges and generous cheese. I might have preferred a double layer of pepperoni, because I like the fattening stuff the best, of course. The sauce was deep and rich and the perfect complement to the crust. Yum. The garlic bread was also delicious but I was able to limit myself to one piece so I could justify another piece of pizza. We had ordered a parmesan peppercorn dressing as a dip for the mushrooms and it was also great with the garlic bread. I am not usually a fan of deep dish pizza, but I am glad the roommate introduced me to Mother Bear's deep dish.

I have some mild OCD tendencies and one of my "things" is that I have to wash my hands after I touch the menu, I had to weave my way back through the dining area to the restroom near the front door. I noticed there was a lot of paper towels on the floor near the overflowing trash cans.... as noted, the place was super busy, but a front of house staff member could have taken a five minute check and taken care of that. There was ample parking, with overflow to the Kohl's lot, The seating in the dining area was comfortable, with choices of padded booths and tables, the atmosphere was noisy, because of the crowds, but fun, with the genesis of the graffiti walls echoing the original store, and nice art all around, I hope it is by local artists.

I noticed a sign for an outside seating area and I noticed table ads for a weekday lunch special for $5.95. I'm definitely willing to go back when it is warmer and NOT so busy and try those out.

Photos by Meg Prince.