The story below is from our January/February 2020 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
One of Roanoke’s newest restaurants, Bloom, highlights locally sourced, seasonal ingredients and a place for friends to gather.
Nathanial Sloan grew up with his career quite literally “right under his nose.” Like many folks, however, he had to leave home in order to discover it.
Sloan grew up on an organic farm in Franklin County. He took for granted the abundance and unique perspective afforded him by being raised on a farm. Upon graduating high school, Sloan set out on a couple different paths: snow skiing out west, then studying music in Boston.
In both cases, Sloan worked in restaurants on the side. While he loved music, Sloan found himself drawn to the restaurant life. He enjoyed the exhilaration of pre-dinner service rush. He loved the creativity of plating food and the freedom to express that creativity more often as he climbed the chef ladder.
After several years working in Boston, Sloan went home to his childhood farm. He began to recognize how being a chef would make sense for him as a profession. “Food has always been a part of my culture,” says Sloan. “[Being a chef] offers me a sense of creativity, but it also does something for the better good.”
With this new understanding, Sloan decided to work on his family’s farm and see what opportunities might arise. He staged (an unpaid, short-term chef apprenticeship, pronounced “staahj”) at high-end culinary events. He spent several years as a chef at Local Roots. Then, he spent two years in Asheville, North Carolina, working at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, a generational family farm open to the public for daily visits, catering and special events.
In 2017, after moving back to Roanoke, Sloan began searching for a place of his own. In early 2019, he found the perfect spot in the Wasena neighborhood. Sloan went to work with the building’s owners. Together, they brought Sloan’s vision into existence: a small plates restaurant inspired by locally sourced, seasonally inspired ingredients, and offering a unique wine menu for pairing.
“Our goal is to take an ingredient and try to present it at its best,” explains Sloan.
For example, if sunchokes (a root vegetable) are in season, Sloan and his team will first look to see what other vegetables are related to the sunchoke—in the aster family. Then they build a dish that features several ingredients from the same family, creating layers of flavor and hitting all five senses in the process. In this way, the “lowly vegetable,” as Sloan calls it, can rise to the status traditionally reserved for proteins.
“We don’t just think in terms of, ‘What sides do I want around my beef?’” says Sloan. “We’re more into, ‘How can we take a carrot and make it great? How can we take some root vegetable like a sunchoke that most people have never even had and make it the crescendo of the meal?’”
Because of the importance of seasonality, Bloom’s menu changes often. Equally important when building a Bloom menu is the aesthetics and balance of any given dish. While Bloom’s menu isn’t a “tasting” menu, where items are meant to build upon one another, Sloan and his chefs do seek to create balance within offerings.
Sloan also works closely with his wine purveyors to offer excellent wine pairings. Since the menu changes often, so does the wine selection.
Eating at Bloom is an experience in fullness. By this, I don’t just mean gastronomically, though there is that. It begins with Bloom’s seasonal, locally sourced food concept. It’s proven throughout every menu item: layers of flavor and texture, structural soundness and playfulness. It’s given expression in Bloom’s “modern American” cuisine style, hearkening to the melting pot nature of our country’s immigrant heritage.
Most importantly, there is the fullness of Bloom’s community. It’s evident in everything from the local foods to guests’ interactions with the menu and wait staff.
Even the kitchen’s open and central location in the restaurant expresses the power of community. Like a home gathering where everyone ends up in the kitchen, at Bloom the social space and kitchen space are one in the same.
When my husband and I dined at Bloom we enjoyed all the fullness mentioned above. We ate Mediterranean dishes reimagined Bloom-style: baba goodness, a play on a traditional baba ganoush dish; and a dolmas dish using grilled, then steamed cabbage (instead of grape leaves) stuffed with quinoa.
We feasted on the most beautiful and delicious cheese and charcuterie tray, made more special because we selected the meats and cheeses ourselves. I took great delight in selecting wines from Bloom’s splendid wine list.
Sloan says he wants the dining experience at Bloom to give people a sense of time and place. This is an idea born out of farm life. And under Sloan’s nurturing care, it is finding full expression in the heart of a Roanoke city neighborhood.
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