Cook Out (West End)
1809 West End AvenueCompetition means the return of Dad Dash!
I’m cheap, alright? A lot of skaters and their families just DoorDash food to the rink but our kids have a hard time agreeing on anything and I don’t want to pay for three DoorDash meals every day.
I ran out to get L Chipotle for lunch on Friday. B had Dunkin’ for breakfast so he wasn’t super hungry. I told him mom had ordered him a quesadilla and he was going to eat because he needed something.
Sure, I could just make my life easier and order from wherever they order from but I’m not going to do that. If we’re in a new city, I’m going to look around just a little bit more.
It’s really hard to find enough time to go eat a sit down meal at a local favorite. We try to get at least one of those in at each competition but the truth of the matter is, we usually only have time for fast food or fast casual.
Even with that caveat, I’m going to try my darndest to find something we don’t have in Kalamazoo or, if we’re traveling outside of Michigan, something I can’t find anywhere in the state.
We passed signs for a lot of places on our drives that grabbed my attention but as I was looking at a map of what was around the Centennial Sportsplex where the competition was being held, there was a place that has been on my list for a very long time.
After I dropped off the kids’ Chipotle, I headed towards Cook Out on West End Avenue and near 18th Street near Vanderbilt University. The North Carolina based chain opened this location tucked in between skyskrapers in Nashville in 2011. Traditionally, the chain restaurants only did drive thru and walk up but newer style buildings have a dining room and indoor ordering. This is one of those newer ones that looks like a more traditional fast food restaurant.
Read more…Centennial Sportsplex
222 25th StreetWe had a fun night out in Nashville Thursday night listening to music at the Tin Roof then meeting up with friends for dinner at Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa.
That was Thursday.
Friday was competition day. That’s the reason we were in Nashville.
Skate Nashville is a competition that got on our radar last year. A few skaters from our team have been going for a while and we thought a trip to Nashville sounded fun. Turned out, scores were really good so t was really worth the trip.
Nashville has several community rinks but the competition is held at the Centennial Sportsplex on 25th Street near Patterson Avenue in the Midtown Neighborhood. The sprawling sports complex near Vanderbilt University has tennis courts, pickleball courts, pools,and ice rinks. It’s right across the street from Centennial Park and close to Tri-Star Centennial Medical Center. The complex is municipally owned by the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. The facility was built in 1990 It was renovated and expanded before the end of the millennium when the Nashville Predators came to town and needed a practice facility. There are two big parking lots which was enough to accommodate both a large figure skating competition and the users of the rest of the facility while we were there.
Read more…Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa
308 BroadwayI’m not a big group dinner person. It always makes me anxious.
They can be fun though. Especially with the kid’s friends.
We were in Nashville for a figure skating competition last weekend. J, L, and B went to Nashville without me last year because I was in St. Louis for work. They got in to town a night early and headed down to Broadway for dinner. J put her name in at a couple of places then just took the table for whoever opened up first. That happened to be Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa.
This year, there was a bigger group going from our team. They all wanted to get together for dinner on Thursday night somewhere on Broadway. We had a group of 12 so I started to see if anyone took reservations. The one I found that did was…Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa.
Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa is on Broadway/US-70 west of 3rd Avenue in The District part of Nashville. The three story brick building actually has three businesses in. Casa Rosa is on the far west side of the building next to Savannah’s Candy Kitchen. The four level restaurant opened on the Lower Broadway Strip in 2021 when it became the first female branded country music start restaurant on Broadway. There are a lot of big name country superstars who have branded spots. Some of those names would keep us away from the business, but not Miranda Lambert. J and I have seen her in concert a few times including at the Colosseum at Windsor inside the Caesars Windsor casino back in 2009 not long after we moved to Michigan. Prior to Casa Rosa, the space was Crazy Town.
Read more…Tin Roof Broadway
316 BroadwayIt took bout eight hours with a couple of stops but we made it to Nashville.
We were in town for the weekend for a figure skating competition. We had a pretty big group of teammates that also made the trip. The competition didn’t start for us until Friday but everyone drove in on Thursday. The majority just skipped school and work so we could get to town at a decent time and enjoy a little bit of the evening.
We made plans to meet a group downtown for dinner. For a lot of the group, it was the first time going to Nashville and everyone wanted the Nashville experience.
We had made reservations at Casa Rosa for 6 PM for a group of twelve. We wanted to get downtown a little early and walk around though. J and the kids were there last year but I haven’t been to Nashville since our honeymoon almost 17 years ago.
We got downtown around 5:00. We found a parking ramp then walked around for a bit. There was a Nashville Predators game that night so there were a lot of people walking around.
We went in to a couple of shops but by 5:30, we were kind of ready to just sit. Broadway is known for it’s honkey tonks and you can walk down the streets and hear any number of bands playing.
We decided to pop in to one of those honky tonks and grab a couple of drinks while we were waiting on the rest of our group for dinner.
We stopped in to Tin Roof Broadway. The live music joint is on Broadway/US-70 between 3rd and 4th Avenues in the neighborhood known as The District in Nashville. The last time I was in Nashville, this two story brick building was Hatch Show Print (according to Google Maps). It looks like it was converted into a two story boor with the “Smallest Rooftop in Nashville” in 2014. There are other Tin Roof venues around the country including one in Detroit.
Read more…Buc-ee’s (Smiths Grove)
4001 Smiths Grove-Scottsville RoadBuckle up. This is going to be a long one.
There was no way we were going to make an eight hour drive from Kalamazoo to Nashville without a couple of stops.
We actually had a pretty good plan. We knew the first stop was going to be in Kokomo, IN at a 7 Brew. We actually skipped our usual Dunkin’ stop on the way out of town and made it the whole two and a half hours to Kokomo before we stopped for gas, bathrooms and to get drinks.
The second stop would come at a rest stop in southern Indiana. You can only make it so far without a bathroom after getting those big drinks from 7 Brew.
The third stop was another planned one. It was another we had all been looking forward to. It was also my first time stopping at a Buc-ee’s.
The Buc-ee’s in Smiths Grove, KY is right off I-65 at Smiths Grove-Scottsville Road. The massive 53,000 square foot, 120 pump mega gas station opened about two years ago in the small town near the Kentucky border with Tennessee. It is the 2nd location in Kentucky (the other is in Richmond south of Lexington). The store feel intimidating from the moment you pull off the highway. It’s a gas station but on a scale that’s hard to wrap your head around. There is a roundabout leading in to the parking lot and it helps to pick the right lane. The right lane takes you in to the pump area while the left lane lets you bypass that and head in to the parking area for the convenience store part of the property.
Read more…7 Brew (Kokomo)
807 S. Reed RoadRoad trip time!
As our kids get more involved in skating, the road trips start to get longer and longer.
We’re in the middle of a stretch right now that sees us going to Detroit (Canton), Nashville, and Chicago (Orland Park) on back-to-back-to-back weekends.
This is the second year in a row the kids have competed in Nashville. Last year, I was on a work trip in St. Louis and unable to go with them so I was really looking forward to this year’s trip.
Competition days were Friday and Saturday so we got up early on Thursday and started the eight hour drive to Nashville. Last year when J drove it alone, she split up the drive there and got a start a night earlier after practices in Kalamazoo. They got as far as Kokomo, IN before stopping for the night.
The next morning, they found 7 Brew for the first time. When we got loaded up in the car, the goal was to get to Kokomo and stop at the same 7 Brew as our first stop on the trip.
The Kokomo 7 Brew location is on Reed Road/IN-931 near Marland Avenue/IN-22 on the east side of Kokomo. The small drive thru chain is in a very heavily commercialized area of Kokomo that used to be along US-31 before the bypass was built east of town. The Arkansas based chain opened this location just after Christmas in 2023 in a spot that had sat vacant after a commercial building had been torn down a few years prior.
Read more…Artic Edge Ice Arena of Canton
46615 Michigan AvenueApril is a very busy month of figure skating.
Our schedule for the month is Detroit, Nashville, Chicago back-to-back-to-back weekends. The Nashville and Chicago portions of the trip are long, weekends where we will be at the rink for several days.
The Detroit portion of the month was the easy one. It was just one kid in one event. We’d be at the rink for maybe four hours.
B is more of a freestyle skater than dancer. He still does dance because those the weekends we travel with friends and spend all weekend watching skating. He wants to be part of that world.
But he really wants to jump.
In addition to National Solo Dance, he’s competing in the Excel freestyle series this year. The goal is to make it to qualify for the National Excel Festival in July at the Skating Club of Boston. He can compete in three events and they take his two best scores for qualification.
His first competition was back in March at the Howard E. Van Camp Invitational at the Biggby Coffee Ice Cube – East Lansing. His second was at Tri-States Memorial Figure Skating Championships this past weekend in Detroit….er, Canton.
The competition was held at Artic Edge of Canton. This standalone 2-sheet ice rink in on Michigan Avenue east of South Beck Road in Canton. It’s in front of the Canton Sports Center where I’ve actually gone a couple of times to watch my nieces from Illinois play softball. The rink has 2 NHL sized sheets of ice and over the 25 years of it’s existence, has been home base for numerous Olymic ice dancers and pairs teams. Currently, it’s the home base of Michigan Ice Dance Academy and US Worlds Team Members Caroline Green and Michael Parsons. While the building sits on the very busy Michigan Avenue, the entrance is actually on the backside of the building facing the softball diamonds.
Read more…Big Apple Bagels (Kalamazoo)
4408 W. Main StreetA few weeks ago I was writing a blog post for a Big Apple Bagels location in Portage. While I was writing that, I went to tag the other location in Kalamazoo and realized, I’ve never written a blog post about that location.
The more I thought about it, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually been to that location to write a post about it. That was going to have to change.
I was driving around on the west side of town last Friday and was trying to figure out what I was hungry for. Jersey Mike’s sounded really good but as I was getting close, the whole Big Apple Bagel thing jumped in to my brain again. I figured what the heck. I was in the area and I was hungry.
The Kalamazoo location for Big Apple Bagels is on West Main Street and Piccadilly Road in Kalamazoo’s Westwood Neighborhood. The bagel shop shares a building with other restaurants. There’s a Subway location and Lake Burger. Kalamazoo used to have a second Big Apple Bagels location. First, it was on the corner of Whites and Westnedge in a building that became J. Gumbo’s and is right now transforming in to a Savvy Sliders. The store moved down the street to Westnedge and Parker in a building built for them but that location closed to and is now Apoptosis Brewing. That leaves this West Main location and the Portage location as the two left in the Kalamazoo metro.
Read more…Zazzano’s Pizza
FOOD TRUCKMy days of going to Richland on Thursday night might be coming to an end soon. The classes L is taking are supposed to be moving back to Kalamazoo which will make getting her there and picking her up so much easier.
We still have a few more weeks going to Richland though.
I got off work earlier than I needed to on Thursday and started driving up Gull Road towards Richland. I’ve eaten at pretty much every restaurant there so I figured I was going to have to stop in Comstock Township to get something to eat before I got too far down the road.
I didn’t really have any plans but I saw earlier in the week that a food truck had been parking out that way. If I saw them there when I drove by, that’s where I was going to stop.
Zazzano’s Pizza has been around a couple of seasons now. They got their start last summer with a pop up tent but upgraded to a big red food truck this year. They have been parked at Wax Wings Brewing recently and that’s where I found them last Thursday night.
Read more…Casey’s (Syracuse)
737 S. Hungtington StreetIt’s note very often that we get a work in assignment in Northern Indiana but that happened the middle of last week.
My colleague and I took off from Kalamazoo around 9:00, competed our assignment near Syracuse, IN around 12:00 then started to head back towards Kalamazoo to finish up the paperwork.
I was kind of looking for places to stop for lunch on our way down. All I was really seeing that would be quick was a number of Krispy Krunchy Chicken locations at various gas stations. I knew I was going to need gas and probably a bathroom on the ride home so I figured I’d just stop at a gas station that had chicken.
The GPS took us a slightly different way home. Instead of two lane country roads, it took us back in to Syracuse. As we were driving through town, I found something a little better. It’s still gas station food but it wasn’t chicken.
Like I said, I needed gas so when I saw the Casey’s General Store sign, I pulled in.
Casey’s in Syracuse, Indiana is on South Huntington Street/IN-13 at Syracuse Drive. You know this gas station has been here for a while because it still uses the Casey’s General Store branding on the sign. The newer Casey’s just use the name. The building is kind of an outlier for an older Casey’s though because it doesn’t have the red barn slats on the face the building where the logo is. And according to Google maps, it never has. It’s just a solid concrete color panel with the word “Casey’s” in white. There’s no color anywhere on the building.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 