It's a jungle out there

Three-year-old Uncle Fester's House of Blooze is typical of most bars: it's generally dark, loud, crowded, and rank with cigarette smoke, abandoned beer bottles and sweaty bartenders. However, a new door up the stairs, past the bathrooms at the rear of the room leads into an entirely new atmosphere -- a world filled with lush plants, brightly colored tropical and freshwater fish and a cool breeze that moves through the room. \nWelcome to the jungle.\nAptly named, Fester's newest acquisition "Jungle Room," 1430 E. Kirkwood Ave, pushes the limits of both the typical bar and restaurant. The pool tables and arcade games in the side room definitely provide appeal for the average bar-hopper, as does the 48-foot bar in the center of the main room, backed by a full array of gleaming bar taps, beer buckets and clean glasses. However, the green philodendrons draping across the ceiling above the bar, the wide, north-facing windows letting in squares of sunlight, the four fish tanks and soft colors on the walls resemble a trendy, Southern-style restaurant. Indeed, the Jungle Room is a rare combination of some of the best aspects of both a bar and a restaurant. And after nearly three months of operation, owner Aaron Steele's assessment for 2004 is that the Jungle Room is here to stay. In fact, he and his partner Keenan Gill believe that the best is yet to come.\n"One of the coolest things about putting together the Jungle Room is seeing the evolution," Gill says. "It's kind of like raising a child."\nIn the process of turning the space that was the Panda Palace restaurant into the spacious bar and grill it is today, a full-scale evolution has occurred. Last summer, Steele, Gill and several of their bartenders spent many long, sweaty hours hauling out nearly 25 tons of garbage and drywall, pulling up the old red carpeting to reveal hardwood floors, putting in new windows and killing cockroaches. \n"I feel like we pulled out 15 years worth of trash -- it was really pretty dirty and nasty in some places in here," remembers Steele. "But then we had a whole new room, and all these ideas we could put immediately into play. Then we were just like, 'let's do this, and let's do this!'"\nAs a result, the old Panda Palace has been gutted and reworked to an almost unrecognizable extreme. Several interior walls have been completely removed, new wide windows provide a panoramic view of Kirkwood Avenue and white French doors connect the outer patio to the inner seating area. Survivors of the scouring of the Asian restaurant do still exist though -- as most of the Asian motif décor is stuffed into two storage trailers on the south side of Bloomington.\nIn contrast, the new area that forms the Jungle Room is open with light colors on the walls.\n"It's kind of anti-bar in design," says Gill, referring to the huge windows and pastel paint job. "But at the same time, it's really a super-bar."\nThis "super-bar" currently includes the largest selection of draft beer in Bloomington (and stores nearly 10 tons of beer in the back at all times) as well as the largest selection of Bell's beer in Indiana, all brewed in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Gill's wife, a Kalamazoo College alumna, provided part of the inspiration for the large selection of Bell's.\n"When I met her, her fridge didn't have a single condiment in it -- just a huge selection of Bell's beer," Gill says. "It was easy to fall in love."\nAs a vegetarian, Gill's wife also helped to inspire Gill and Steele to include a large selection of vegan and vegetarian choices on their Jungle Room dining menu -- that and the fact that the two have met many other people who have trouble dining out with friends or significant others who are vegetarian. As Steele explains it, "We just wanted to accommodate everyone."\nFrom carnivores to herbivores, the Jungle Room menu does. Put together by head chef Doug Talley, the former sous chef of Truffles (1131 S. College Mall Rd.), the menu includes an equal number of vegetarian and meateater entrees - a rarity in a business where typically a "vegetarian option" just means one available item on the menu. \n"We have a really solid kitchen here, and I haven't heard any bad responses at all to the food," Talley says.\nAccording to Steele, a more usual response to the food is one of awe, as the food is served gourmet style, right down to an orchid placed on the plate alongside the entree. Food portions are also generally enormous.\n"I've had a Boca burger and plate of fries from the Jungle Room," senior Nora Flaherty says. "The burger was great, and the plate of fries was just huge."\nLike the concept of the Jungle Room itself, the menu is a combination of "pub grub" and gourmet cooking -- two seemingly opposite concepts pulling together into one cohesive package. And with that, an undercurrent of humor still pervades the menu -- such as through the jauntily named "Four Skins" potato skins appetizer.\nWith their humor, continuous ideas for improvement, and work ethic (Steele admits to keeping a foam mattress in his office to sleep on sometimes) the Jungle Room is sure to grow throughout 2004. And as Gill notes, "Running a bar is always a circus. It just depends on how well you can ringlead"