Big Bowl
$$$ - expensive
Chinese, Thai
Chain Asian Restaurant
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- Kid-Friendly
Added by v.e.g.a.n. on Nov 7 04 (updated Jul 10 06)
Reviews
average and overpriced. also paper napkins? your local Asian takeout is a better bet for affordable food with bigger portions, and probably better service.
Food is good. Service is decent. The curries and the pad thai is good but make sure you get the tofu fried not steamed. The steamed is always cold when you get it and mushy.
I went to the Big Bowl in Roseville and was quite disappointed. Our server told us that there was oyster sauce in the szechwan sauce, the kung pao tofu and spinach dish also had fish sauce in it which could not be taken out.
My fiance and I wound up having the green curry tofu dish and veggie potstickers for appetizers. I personally didn't think the potstickers were that good, and the entree was bland. I don't plan on going to Big Bowl ever again.
According to our server, they have a limited number of vegan dishes. The appetizers that can be made vegan are the spicy peanut noodles made with rice noodles instead of egg noodles, and the spicy green beans. The peanut noodles were pretty good, served with cucumber slices and cilantro. You can get a veggie stir fry with tofu from their stir fry bar, with the vegetarian mushroom sauce - but its $10 dollars and extremely bland. I was very disappointed. The other dishes we were told could be made vegan were a spicy green curry, an eggplant dish, and kung pao tofu made with pad thai noodles instead of the spinach noodles it usually comes with. The service was great, our server went to check on everything before letting us order and the manager even came out to double check to make sure we got the answers we were looking for. I'm mostly rating for service - and I highly recommend ordering something other than the stir fry bar!
Very, very vegan friendly chain. Big Bowl makes a point of making many of its items to order, which makes accessible many dishes that aren't usually vegan. Their appetizers include vegetable dumplings and vegetable potstickers (with lovely dark bitter greens inside). There are a couple of vegetable-only salads, which I haven't tried. I've found their Thai green vegetable curry and Kung Pao tofu quite nice -- perhaps not the best items of these types I've tasted, but the produce is noticeably fresh and it is great to have a choice of menu items. Their "fiery hot" menu has three vegan items -- spicy green beans, sesame peanut noodles, and Sichuan eggplant. These are not complex dishes, but are done simply and well. If none of these please you, they do have a lot of stir-fry choices -- you can pick the vegetables, sauce, protein, and rice or noodles. There are lots of nice drink options, too, such as lemonade flavored with fruit syrups (pomegranate, I think?). I'm thrilled to see that Big Bowl is expanding beyond the Edina Galleria -- they recently opened at Rosedale in Roseville as well.
A good place to go when dining with non-vegans/vegetarians. I always end up bringing home leftovers. Good flavor and fast service, but plan on a wait to get in. It seems as if they fill the plates with a lot of rice so they can skimp on the actual dish--the yellow vegetable curry had very little tofu but a lot of rice. A fun place to try, but not a place to frequent.