Dance Food Dance!

With its high unfinished ceilings, earthy paint job, and minimalist modern furniture, Food Dance is as hipster it comes. The menu is stocked with locally grown fruits and vegetables, and most of the meat and cheese comes from Michigan as well. This restaurant is as contemporary as anything out on the market, and if half of the accolades are true, this is not a meal that can be missed.
Housed in a large red brick building, Food Dance is located towards the more industrial end of downtown Kalamazoo: don't worry though, there is plenty of parking within the immediate area. The inside is well lit, and boasts a small waiting area, a sleek and well stocked bar, and a small store where eaters and non eaters alike can shop for cheese, wine, olive oil, sweetmeats, and Kalamazoo paraphernalia. Shopping on an empty stomach is not advisable: it is much more intelligent, and hence much safer to survey a large block of artisan cheese after a well proportioned meal. Their usage of space is excellent: plenty of seating, but enough space to have some degree of separation between tables. Maneuvering around the tables and and chairs is simple, and there is never too much traffic.

Food Dance is not a quiet place. The bright paint and the well lit interior facilitate energetic and animated conversation for the duration of the meal, but quite frankly, the noise from the store necessitates raised voices well before sitting down. The atmosphere has a classy sort of vibe to it: immaculately clean and professional, yet far from the stuffy, quiet, overly formal settings of traditional upscale restaurants.

Thankfully, for all their emphasis on local ingredients, organic THIS and free range THAT, Food Dance makes one hell of a Fruited Chicken Salad($13.95). The dish is huge, with mountains of crunchy, watery spinach that support well sliced chicken strips that have a tiny hint of lemon in them that works well with a topping of red wine vinaigrette. The various fruits-oranges, apples, strawberries, etc- were both vibrantly colored and incredibly juicy; the dish looked more like a paint palette than an entree salad, making the presentation accurate as well as artful. Score one for the local farmers, this salad is everything people love about organic food.

As great as the fruited chicken salad is, the Ultimate Macaroni ($16) falls short of Food Dance's stellar reputation. Every spoonful was saturated with grease, and did not sit well in the stomach. A well placed red-raspberry lemonade beverage makes the dish a little more palatable, if not enjoyable. This is truly a pity because the dinner sells itself well enough on paper: pasta with caramelized onions, bacon, fresh spinach in a rich aged cheddar sauce, topped with toasted bread crumbs. Served with a salad. To be fair, each individual ingredient was fairly tasty. The bacon was perfectly sweetened by the onions, and it had a nice, solid texture that went well with the soft macaroni. Although the sharp cheddar provided all the necessary flavor for the dish, it was too oily and left a sticky feeling in the mouth. The most telling failure of this dish is that when left in a refrigerator, the grease from the dish solidified into pure fat. Imagine a soup cup full of noodles suspended in grease. When reheated, the top half of the container looked like cancerous chicken noodle soup, and managed to clog the drain of a certain dormitory when poured down the sink. Don't try and reheat this dish, please.

Thankfully, a well cooked Alaskan Salmon ($17), textured with spinach and accented with a citrus based dressing can do wonders for clearing the Macaroni out of the mouth. The Fruited Salad left more of an impression, but the Alaskan Salmon is a fine choice for fish lovers or those looking for a less than heavy dining experience.

Having surveyed the stores, eaten the amazing food, and (perhaps) finished a bottle of wine, the only thing left to do is pay the bill. Verdict?
1 Alaskan Salmon $17
1 Ultimate Macaroni $16
1 Fruited Chicken Salad $14
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Dinner                        $47
Tip                             $15 (cheapskates, please take note)
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Total                          $62

While the prices aren't unfathomably steep, a casual eating habit at Food Dance could prove fatal for the average bank account. Two people can eat very well and keep the damage to around $60 bucks, but a breakdown of cocktails, desserts, and appetizers can complicate the situation.

With so many good things going for it, and such a solid reputation (often referred to as one of Kalamazoo's finest restaurants) Food Dance should be held to the highest of standards. The building, the service, and the meals are all indicative of Food Dance's potential for being a truly special place to eat, but it falls short of being excellent simply by having such a bad dish featured so prominently on the menu ( listed under Great Plates on their menu). While this stance may seem harsh, this restaurant deserves to be taken so seriously by merit of its amazing food. This, coupled with a commitment to local economy in a market swamped with faceless corporations propels Food Dance to standard of which it just falls short.   B+