The Filling Station Microbrewery
642 Railroad PlaceThe best thing about figure skating competitions isn’t always the skating. Yes, I love watching my kids compete and seeing their successes but a lot of memories that will stick with them forever aren’t made on the ice. They’re made with friends off the ice.
The Traverse City Cherry Classic is a pretty short competition. It’s only Friday, Saturday, Sunday instead of the usual Thursday-Sunday that is common at a lot of the competitions.
We got to town Thursday evening and both kids skated on both Friday and Saturday. We realized right away that a lof of the kids’ friends also came to this competition. Some were staying in the hotel next door to ours and they ended up playing in the lake and making those memories that will last forever.
Before that happened, we met some of the other families for dinner. Our original plan had been to go out to Hoplot but a couple of the families didn’t want to make the 30 minute drive after being at the rink all day.
So we came up with another idea.
The decision was made to hang out at The Filling Station Microbrewery instead.
The Filling Station Microbrewery is on Railroad Place near Station Street in an old railroad depot that dates back to the 1920’s. The depot only operated for about 40 years closing in 1966. It then became home to a number of businesses with The Filling Station eventually opening up in 2012.
We pulled in to the property at the Railroad Place entrance and found a parking spot so we just parked there. Little did we know we’d have to walk the entire length of the building to find the entrance on the Railroad Avenue side of the building.
We were the last ones there from our group. B had the latest skate at 5:00. Everyone else got to the restaurant around 5:30 and we joined them about 45 minutes later.
We told the hostess we were meeting a group and walked in to a dining area that is the old platform area. It’s been enclosed to what feels like a four seasons porch. There are walls built up and plastic that can come down but it was a gorgeous night out so the “windows” were open and it felt more like sitting on a patio than sitting in a restaurant.
Ordering is done at the bar. There’s a queue using planters to keep things organized. We looked at the beer selection before we went up but we needed to grab a menu at the bar. The rest of our group had ordered pizzas and they were pretty much gone so J and I decided to order one for the four of us.
We both started with drinks while we waited for the pizza to come. I ordered Watch Hill Hazy IPA. Solid hazy IPA made with Citra and Mosaic hops. It went down really smoothly and my plan to just drink one beer was foiled early on.
J’s drink of choice was the Empathy Cherry Hard Seltzer. I’ve never been a seltzer person but I gave it a try. Not my thing. It wasn’t bad but seltzer just taste weird to me.
About the time we were finishing up our first drinks, the pizza came out. We kept it simple and just ordered a pepperoni. I would have liked to try one of their specialty pizzas but I didn’t think we needed two pizzas and we needed to get something the kids might eat.
The pizzas are wood-fired thin crust pizzas that come out super crispy and delicious. The slices are cut in to long strips instead of squares so J and I each grabbed a couple. I reached for the red pepper flakes because I wanted a little more heat. The pizza was delicious. I probably could have polished one of these off by myself but I think J was embarrassed by me doing that one time last year so I decided not to do that to her again in front of skate friends.
This was more of a social thing than a dinner thing so once we got the pizza, I went back for a couple more drinks.
My second drink was also an IPA but this time it was the Walla Walla IPA. This one was a little bit dryer but still pretty tasty. It tasted really good after a long day at the ice rink.
J’s second drink was a cider. She picked the King’s Line Cider. It’s a semi-sweet cider made from mostly Macintosh apples from King’s Orchard in Central Lake, MI. Again, I’m not a huge cider guy but I do like the sweet ones. This one was pretty tasty and J seemed to really like it.
The bill for drinks and pizza was right around $50.
I was really looking forward to going to Hop Lot that night but this turned out to be a great idea. It was such a laid back, casual atmosphere with delicious drinks and pizza. The kids didn’t really stick around at the table very long. There’s some green space right across the tracks and we let them go run around and do kid stuff. We could see them from our table to make sure they weren’t getting in to trouble. Like I said earlier, some of the best memories made on these competition weekends aren’t at the rink. It’s the fun the kids have with friends off the ice. This competition really turned in to a great weekend.
SW Michigan Dining 