Casey’s (Division Ave)
5437 Division Avenue SouthI volunteered to work a Friday night. Not something I do often outside of the overtime shifts I work in the fall but the boss asked for a volunteer to work Friday night the day after New Year’s. I had nothing else going on so I took the shift.
Truth be told, there was something in it for me too. L had spent the week in Florida with one of her friends and we had to pick her up at Detroit Metro Airport Friday morning. The family she went to hang out with was driving back to Michigan but they didn’t have room for her in the car and we didn’t want to make them put up with L on an 18 hour road trip.
We booked L on a 6:30 AM flight out of Orlando International Airport. She was scheduled to land in Detroit at about 8:30. J could have handled it herself if I had worked my usual day shift but it’s easier to do these things together. I dropped J off at the terminal so she could get in line to get a pass from Delta to pick L up while B and I parked the car.
Detroit has this cool thing where you can get a “Destination Pass.” You don’t need a boarding pass to get through TSA. You can get a Destination Pass from the kiosk in the terminal and get through security. B and I did that so we could join J at the gate L was coming in to.
I should have gotten a breakfast cheeseburger from Wahlburgers while we were in the terminal but I wasn’t hungry at the time. I regretted that decision as soon as we got on the road. I was hungry and now craving Wahlburgers.
We got back to Kalamazoo just before noon. I had some things to do around the house (mainly snow blowing the driveway) before I had to leave a little after 1:00 to head to Grand Rapids.
I left a early because I had to stop by my office in Kalamazoo to grab some things before heading to the Grand Rapids office. I also needed gas and food.
I got gas in Kalamazoo before leaving but food was going to wait until I got to Kent County. Friday night is pizza night. Right?
I stopped at the Casey’s on the corner of Division and 54th Street in Wyoming. This is one of the old Kum & Go stations that was bought out by Maverick and then Casey’s. The building is fairly new having been built just three years ago. It has a Division Avenue address but you can’t get in to it from Division Avenue unless you go down to the driveway for the Goodwill Store south of the intersection. Most people will come in to the business from the 54th Street side.
Read more…Sunny’s Coney Island
31290 Ecorse RoadWhat a morning.
L had been invited to spend a week in Florida with one of her friends. They went down last week to spend Christmas with family and L was going to join them this week for the second part of winter break.
We decided to put L on a plane out of Detroit because we could get a non-stop to Orlando where her friend’s mom would be waiting at the gate to pick her up.
We spent the night in Detroit Sunday night so we’d be close to the airport in the morning. We took the kids in to the city and had dinner at Mom’s Spaghetti before heading to a hotel in Southgate.
We got up Monday morning and we all headed to Detroit Metro Airport. I dropped J and L off at the McNamara Terminal then B and I went back to the hotel until L was on her flight.
J and L had to go to an “Agent Assist” desk to fill out the paperwork for the unaccompanied minor and to get J a pass to get in to the terminal. It. Took. Forever. We got to the airport over two hours early and it took almost an hour and forty minutes to get through the line. They now had about a half hour to get to the gate.
They rushed to TSA…where they got stopped again. Something in L’s backpack caused the agents to want to look more. They finally got through and had about fifteen minutes…but of course, the gate was the very last gate in the terminal….the farthest away from the security checkpoint.
J handed L the packet and told her to get to the gate. J would follow and get there as quickly as she could be get there and let the gate agents know that you were there. L got there, with J just a few steps behind with just enough time. There were five people in line waiting to get on. L was the last person on and they closed the door behind her. An absolutely stressful morning for J and L but they somehow succeeded in getting L on the plane and getting her off to Florida for the week.
Once I heard they got on the plane, B and I checked out of the hotel and we headed back to the airport. I found a park and ride lot to wait because J had to wait until L’s plane was in the air before she left the secured area. It took about another hour because it was so windy they couldn’t deice the plane. They finally got that done and L was on her way to Florida at about 9:30 AM.
I headed up to the terminal to pick J up. We were all hungry and didn’t really want to head home yet. There was a snow storm hitting West Michigan that morning and we wanted to give it a little time to clear up before we made the trek.
I did a search for breakfast places and came up with a few options in the area. We’ve really come to like finding Coney Islands when we travel and there was one not too far away.
Sunny’s Coney Island is near the corner of Ecorse Road and Merriman Road in Romulus. The small diner is in a small shopping plaza it shares with a liquor store. The restaurant is on the east side of the building. There’s a pretty good size parking lot between the building the restaurant is in and another building that make up the shopping plaza.
Mom’s Spaghetti
2131 Woodward Avenue“His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.”
Let’s just acknowledge for a minute that the guy who wrote that lyric, about half digested vomit on someone’s shirt, thought, yeah, that’s a good name for a restaurant.
Obviously, I’m talking about Eminem and his spaghetti restaurant appropriately (I guess?) named Mom’s Spaghetti.
Eminem was starting to get big when I was in college so Lose Yourself was a song I had on repeat for months. I was also in the theater the night 8 Mile opened in November of 2002.
My ten year old son found Eminem a few years ago and has come to love his music. He was kind of shocked when he found there is actually a restaurant in Detroit owned by Eminem called Mom’s Spaghetti. He’s been asking to go ever since he found out.
We haven’t had a reason to go to Detroit and we weren’t going to drive over there just to get spaghetti.
This past weekend, we were putting L on a flight to Orlando to spend the week with one of her friends. We typically do Grand Rapids or Kalamazoo for flights but since she was traveling alone, we wanted a direct flight and booked her out of Detroit.
She had a pretty early flight and I had a really good deal on a nearby hotel so we decided to go over Sunday night after the kids got done skating.
B was kind of bummed he didn’t get to go to Florida so we thought this was the time to bring him to Mom’s Spaghetti.
Mom’s Spaghetti is on Woodward Avenue near West Columbia Street in downtown Detroit. It’s right across from Comerica Park and right next door to The Fillmore. Don’t look for a building with the restaurant’s name on it though. It’s actually just a walk up in window in an alley between the Fillmore and the Little Caesar’s Global Resource Center and Corporate Office…the building with pizza slice shaped windows.
Read more…Jimmy John’s (Stadium Drive)
I literally don’t know what to do with myself when I actually have time off.
I complain all the time about not having day’s off. I’m essentially working two jobs during the fall/winter plus I pick up freelance opportunities so it’s very rare for me to have two days off in a row for about half the year.
I always try to save some vacation days for the end of the year. I hate being at work between Christmas and New Year’s so I do my best to at least keep a couple of days off.
I didn’t quite have enough to get the whole week off this year but I had four days that at least gave me Christmas Eve through Dec. 30th off….so seven full days in a row. Unheard of.
Obviously, I kept busy enough Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The kids were back at the rink bright and early on Friday morning then we had a few days off until we had to make a quick trip to Detroit Sunday night in to Monday.
I haven’t done any grocery shopping nor have I felt like cooking dinner. Friday night, B comes in to the living room where I’m sitting on the couch mindlessly staring at the TV and said he’s hungry. I asked what he wanted and he asked what we had.
The answer was not much.
And come to think of it, I was kind of hungry too. I asked if he just wanted to order Jimmy John’s.
Of course he said yes, so I put in an order to the Jimmy John’s on Stadium Drive near Seneca Lane in Kalamazoo’s Knollwood Neighborhood. The building is the old Moe’s Southwest Grill (which before that was a Red Crown Pharmacy). The building has actually been split in two with Jimmy John’s in the front half of the building and a Smoothie King in the back half. This Jimmy John moved down the road from where the Potbelly Sandwich Works is now because they wanted a drive through and this location offered that.
Burdick’s Bar & Grill
100 W. Michigan AvenueWe’ve kind of had a tradition the last few years. Christmas Eve open skate and lunch from Old Burdick’s.
That wasn’t possible this year now that Wings West is closed and along with it Old Burdick’s at Wings West.
The kids still had skating on Christmas Eve but it was club ice and not public skate like we’ve done the last few years. And it was at Wings Event Center. We got up around 7:00 AM because L was on the 8:00 session. She skated until 10 AM but B was on two sessions from 9 AM to 11 AM.
There is no Burdick’s at Wings Event Center so we couldn’t keep that tradition alive….or could we?
After the kids got done skating and got their things packed up, we actually headed downtown to eat lunch.
The plan was to check out the new Burdick’s Bar & Grill inside the Radisson Plaza Hotel on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Rose Street. It’s still Burdick’s but it has been completely remodeled. Our Christmas Eve tradition was saved.
Ayasofya Turkish Restaurant
1528 W. Michigan AvenueIt seems like it’s been a while since I’ve blogged about Kalamazoo restaurants. Honestly, I just haven’t eaten out much. There hasn’t been a lot of new places that have opened up that have caught my attention to where I’ve felt that I’ve had to spend what little extra money I have on lunch.
We’re out of figure skating season for the moment so that leaves me with a little extra money each week to catch up on some of the newer restaurants that have opened in Kalamazoo.
Monday night was a work night for me and it was kind of slow. I actually had time for a proper dinner break but I really didn’t know what I wanted. I started searching a little bit to see if there was something I could grab quickly but also leave me full when I was done.
I picked something that that I don’t think most people would think I would pick. A Turkish restaurant…but, there’s a twist.
Ayasofya Turkish Restaurant is on West Michigan Avenue near Burrows Road near Western Michigan University’s campus. The building was Bruno’s Pizza for a really long time until they closed in 2023. Ayasofya just about a year ago in December of 2024 after doing some renovations to the inside of the building. From the street, the restaurant looks pretty much the same but without the iconic neon sign that hung outside Bruno’s for so long.
King Subs
2602 N. Grand River Avenue- Lansing, MI 48906
- (517) 321-1441
- No Known Website
- Menu
Remember last week when I wrote a blog about a Raising Cane’s in Ann Arbor?
I wrote in that blog that I didn’t plan on being in Ann Arbor that day and I actually had a place in Lansing, where I was planning on being, in mind for lunch that day.
A few days later, I headed back to Lansing. I did my usual thing where I met a co-worker at the carpool lot on Grand River Avenue and I-96 in Grand Ledge.
We went to Novi for a couple of hours for a job then back to Lansing to go our separate ways.
After I dropped her off, I decided to go get the lunch I missed out on the previous week.
King Subs is a a kind of under the radar sub shop not too far from the Capitol Region International Airport on the corner of Grand River Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard on the north side of Lansing. The building is a really unassuming standalone restaurant with a yellow awning and red roof. There’s a big parking lot in front of it which makes it easy to get in and out of at a fairly busy intersection.
Enza’s Pizza
1817 142nd AvenueWe spent a long day working in Ann Arbor on Thursday night. It wasn’t planned that way but things happen. My colleague and I did an almost 13 hour shift and got home around 8:00.
My hope was that Friday would be a little easier and I wouldn’t have to stay late.
I was wrong. I got pulled up to Grand Rapids and didn’t leave Grand Rapids until my scheduled end time. Then I still had the hour drive home.
I was in a pretty sour mood. I don’t think I’m alone in not wanting to work late and I know I’m not alone in not wanting to work late on a Friday night.
J and the kids were at Wings Event Center for a dress rehearsal for the holiday show. They ended up getting pizza from Little Caesars after I made the mistake of not asking if they wanted me to bring something home.
That something I didn’t bring home for them was a pizza from Enza’s Pizza in Dorr. The small pizza shop is on 142nd Avenue in what you can consider downtown Dorr. It’s an old, small brick building that has been a pizzeria since the early 1970’s.
Read more…Raising Cane’s (Ann Arbor)
1116 South University Avenue, Unit BI wasn’t planning on going to Ann Arbor last week but I ended up there anyway.
My colleague and I had a job assignment in Lansing. We figured it was going to be a pretty easy day. We would spend a couple of hours in Lansing then be back in Kalamazoo early afternoon. I had a lunch stop planned along the way.
On our way to Lansing, the home office called and added on an assignment in Ann Arbor. We didn’t have a lot of time between when the Lansing assignment ended and when we needed to get to Ann Arbor so my lunch plans in Lansing were out the window.
We got to Ann Arbor around 1:30 PM and went to work right away. Our hope of getting back to Kalamazoo early were dashed and now we had the problem of we were unlikely to get a lunch a break.
Fortunately, we ended up in the South Uni area and there are plenty of food options that we could grab quickly and eat in the car while we were working.
We both decided to just make things easy and grab lunch from the Raising Cane’s on the corner of South University Avenue and East University Avenue near the University of Michigan’s Diag. The restaurant is on the bottom floor of a ten story mixed used building that was built in the last couple of years replacing a one story PNC Bank that had been on that corner for several years.
Read more…Home Slice Pizzeria
115 S. Grand StreetStop me if you’ve heard this one before. I met a Grand Rapids colleague in Lansing for a trip to Detroit.
It was much earlier than I typically meet co-workers in Detroit which also means I got home much, much earlier than usual. It was a Saturday and should have been my day off so I was happy I at least got home before the kids went to bed.
We got back to Lansing around 6:30 PM. We typically meet at the carpool lot right off I-96 and Grand River Avenue. I thought about just grabbing dinner at the Hardees at the nearby Loves Travel Center but I kind of wanted pizza.
I chose to head back to Southwest Michigan and grab a pizza on my way home.
Home Slice Pizzeria has been on Grand Street Green Street in downtown Marshall for a little over two years. The pizza joint is in kind of an odd building. It’s a multi-tenant building that you would think had three offices and not a restaurant but at one point in this space’s history, it was a Hungry Howie’s. The other part of the building was home to an after school center but it doesn’t appear there is anything else in the remaining space now.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 