Dinner Club: Kona Bistro

Left: Grilled three cheese with tomato, red onion & chipotle puree on thick white bread
Right: Butternut squash & pear soup

How quickly a month has passed. Time to get with friends and celebrate each other without the challenge of gifts. Tonight we had fifteen folks convene at Kona Bistro‘s new location in Oakley.

The menu is eclectic with a good smattering of vegetarian fare. For this part of town, the casual atmosphere is a nice change of pace. I still prefer the paintings on the wall in their first restaurant up in Oxford. Prices are also a little more reasonable than other joints in the area.

I went with the “Chipotle barbecued tofu fillets grilled & served over white cheddar mashed potatoes paired with a cilantro, corn & red pepper saute.” Sounds fancy, it was just damn spicy though.

I enjoyed stealing chips from my neighbor Anne from her meal pictured above. (The tuna tofu wasn’t much to look at)

I think this place excels with sandwiches, though the pork entree to my right looked tasty. Had I known what “roulade” was, I might’ve had that instead. Overall though, thumbs up. The amount of growth in this neck of the woods is staggering, it’s good to see some independently owned places appearing.

On that note: At the end of dinner club, we try and come to a decision about where to meet next. A resounding round of nods for IHOP. We’re finally getting them (again) in Cincinnati. All chains aren’t bad.

Technote—Searching for “Kona Bistro” on Google yields way too many links to AOL guides and other reviews. I’m guessing this is because of: No meta data in the header, overuse of graphics for type, poor linking from other sites. It’s likely new so it needs some time to root, but I wish search engines would sniff out domains that matched the string and pushed them higher regardless.