Gourmet magazine may now be a thing of history, but the only Terre Haute restaurant ever featured in the legendary food bible is still going strong.
George’s Downtown Cafe, on the south side of Cherry Street near Sixth Street, is in its third decade of serving up comfort food to a broad array of people who grew up with very different ideas of just what comfort food means.
To Abdullah “Albert” Issa, who cooks and runs the restaurant for his brother, George Issa, the food he fondly remembers Grandma making is falafel, …

To the uninitiated, mushroom hunting is a scary proposition. We’ve all heard about people dying from ingesting poisonous mushrooms, right? Folks from other parts of the country, or even from a bigger city are sometimes afraid to eat wild morels. The doubters ask things like, “Well, how do you know it’s not poisonous?” We know, OK? Like our fathers before us, we have been raised to know the difference, we’ve done it all our lives, and lived to tell about it. Indeed, I have taken my own daughter mushroom hunting …

“Next to music there is nothing that lifts the spirits and strengthens the soul more than a good bowl of chili.” Harry James (1916-1983) band leader and trumpeter
There is something about chili that inspires a passion in people which few other foods can claim. It’s ironic that this common comfort food, made of simple ingredients, using basic methods, seems to provoke a certain culinary snobbishness. You never hear folks debating the proper method for making potato soup, or insisting that the beef stew found in their region is …

One of the best stories about the many incarnations of St. Mary’s Supper Club originates in the 1960s. The then-owner wanted to make the rustic roadside structure just west of St. Mary-of-the-Woods College into a full-fledged restaurant and bar. That, of course, required all manner of special permits and tweaked zoning. According to the current co-owner, Chuck Stevenson, the Sisters of Providence volunteered to publicly support their neighbors in the supper club effort — on one condition: “None of the girls from the college were ever to be allowed in,” …

After 13 years, passion for food, dedicated staff, and loyal patrons keep Bella Rossa a staple of diets and downtown.