Big Bowl

Last year, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, Richard Melman’s highly creative and successful Chicago–based restaurant company, bought back Big Bowl from Brinker International, the global restaurant goliath they had sold it to a few years earlier. The brand was in a funk. Founded on the principles of fun, fresh, and authentic, Big Bowl’s Asian menu had gone stale. Brinker had no desire to make the food any better than passable—the mid-market is their game. Since LEYE’s reacquisition, the eight Big Bowl locations around the country have received a culinary facelift executed by Bruce Cost, one of the most knowledgeable and skilled Chinese and Thai food experts in the country. The results are substantial.

In an industry where Asian chain restaurants are synonymous with inauthentic dumbed-down fare, Big Bowl offers a safe entry point into the fabulous world of Asian cuisine. And for committed chicken-feet nibblers and sambal slurpers, there are plenty of real flavors to keep you coming back as well.

Aside from the clichéd menu, slightly higher prices than at typical ethnic eateries, and an overabundance of white meat chicken (most Asian restaurants favor the more flavorful, cheaper, and resilient legs and thighs), every dish I tried at Big Bowl was remarkably tasty and authentically seasoned. Teriyaki-basted pork ribs were melting and sweet-salty to the max. Pad Thai was as good as any in town: chewy noodles and a spot-on sweet-salt-sour triad. Crunchy Sichuan cashew shrimp was another standout, and like the rest of the Red Hot Dishes, it was nice and spicy, with an abundance of fresh chili flavor. Some of the best dishes were the green, red, and yellow curries that Cost has all his kitchens making from scratch, right down to the kaffir lime leaves and fish sauce—the results were amazing. Kung pao chicken was perfectly seasoned, intensely flavored with fermented black beans. Peanut noodles were great. The only dud I tried were the pot stickers, a flavorless pan-seared and steamed two-biter that needed a fattier meat for the bursting richness that I look for in a good dumpling.

If cruising back alleys of big cities hunting down the quintessential jellyfish salad with pickled root vegetables is your thing, then keep hunting. But for reliably fresh and well-prepared Thai and Chinese fare, Big Bowl is an easy place to say “yes” to.

Ridgedale, Rosedale, and Southdale