Pizza Sam Restaurant
104 E. Superior StreetOne more week with a Saturday trip to Mt. Pleasant.
I’ve mentioned over the last couple of months that I’ve been doing some side work on Saturday’s. That work has seen me spend the better part of my Saturday in either Ypsilanti or Mt. Pleasant.
I had to go to Mt. Pleasant three of the last four weeks. They were super early mornings. I had to be on the road by a little after 4:30 AM after not getting home from my regular job until closer to 11 PM.
This past Saturday, my job was done around 5:30 PM and I headed home. I’ve been grabbing something to eat along the way because I don’t get to that part of Mid-Michigan very often.
I had been taking M-46 then cutting up to Mt. Pleasant on a country road but last week, the GPS took me home US-127 so I stayed on the highway the whole time.
I realize going this way didn’t add much, if any, time to the drive and there were a few more options for stops along the way.
I decided I was going to go home this way last weekend and once I made that decision, I started looking in Alma for a place to eat. I figured being a college town, I should be able to find something amazing.
My first instinct was to look for pizza….and I’m so glad I did.
My pick for dinner this week was Pizza Same Restaurant in downtown Alma. The restaurant has been a mainstay of the small college town since the early 1960’s. It sits on Superior Street just to the east of State Street. The original restaurant actually started a few blocks away in 1960 but moved to this location in 1962 and quickly expanded in to neighboring buildings due to it’s popularity. The restaurant has been owned by the family of a Sicilian immigrant from the beginning and they continue to use the same recipes that have made this place popular enough to win Mlive’s Michigan’s Best Pizza when they went around the state in 2013.
Read more…Los Amigos Mexican Restaurant (Gull Road)
5480 Gull RoadMy eating out is gotten pretty limited to weekends. No real reason. I just know I’m going to have an opportunity on Friday nights due to my overtime shift and I’ve been traveling for a second job on weekends so I’m getting to explore some new places.
This past Friday, my overtime shift kept me pretty close to Kalamazoo. I started the evening in Parchment. I wasn’t in a super big hurry to get there and had some time after my regular daytime shift.
There are a couple of really good places to eat in Parchment. Geno’s Pizza and Buen Provecho are always good stops but you should know me by now. I’m always looking for different places.
I decided to head out towards Gull Road to pick something to eat up there. My first thought was, of course, pizza. I knew I was going to be stopping on my way home from Mt. Pleasant the following night for pizza so I did something else instead. I picked tacos.
I stopped at Los Amigos Mexican Restaurant on the corner of Gull Road and Sprinkle Road in Comstock Township. This is was the third Los Amigos to open in the Kalamazoo area in 2015 following the original shop on Westnedge in Portage and the second location in the old Buffalo Wild Wings on Stadium Drive in Kalamazoo. There was also a fourth location that moved in to a building in front of the Lowes on Westnedge a little bit later. This particular building is an old Big Boy that closed in the early 2010s. A lot of former Big Boy’s still look like former Big Boy’s but the solarium, which is the main identifying architectural feature, was closed in so it’s not as obvious.
Read more…Samuel Mancino’s (Mt. Pleasant)
4153 E. Blue Grass RoadYup. Back in Mt. Pleasant.
I’ve spent several Saturday’s in Mt. Pleasant this fall and I’m not complaining about it. The work I do on these Saturday’s pays really well. I have one more weekend after this. I’m looking forward to having my Saturday’s back but I really can’t complain too much…especially when that check hits the bank account.
I wrapped up fairly early this past Saturday. It was just before 6:00 PM before I hopped in my car and started to make the drive back to Kalamazoo. I was hungry though and I still have a few ideas for quick places to grab food before I leave town.
I put in an order to one of my old standby’s. Samuel Mancino’s. I’ve blogged about Mancino’s several times over the years and explained how this was one of my favorite restaurants growing up near Kankakee, IL. I didn’t realize at the time they were somewhat of a chain but when I moved to Michigan, I was excited to see them again.
The Mt Pleasant, Mancino’s is part of the Samuel Mancino’s chain. Most of the Michigan locations are in Southwest Michigan except for this one and one in Carson City. This one is on Blue Grass Road to the east of BL-127 in the Indian Hills Plaza. It’s also just down the street from Kelly/Shorts Stadium and the rest of the Central Michigan University Campus. The small restaurant sits in the south end of the shopping center between TJ Maxx and Sally Beauty.
Read more…O’Neals Smokehouse
525 S. Broadway StreetFriday night and I’m getting out of Kalamazoo for a little overtime shift.
I actually headed pretty far south. My final destination was Edwardsburg which is in Cass County near the Michigan/Indiana state line.
I’ve gotten sent down that way before. It’s a pretty long trip that is two lane and country roads most of the way down there. I had the advantage that I had some time. I didn’t work my normal 9-5 shift. I worked a very early morning shift that saw me off the clock by about 11:00. I went home, took a nap, picked the kids up from school, dropped them off at Wings Event Center, then started making my way towards Edwardsburg a little before 5:00
I’ve done the pizza a few times when I’ve gone to Edwardsburg. One time I stopped at Papa’s Pizzeria. Another time I went in to Indiana and got dinner at Jimmy’s Pizza & Ribs in Granger.
I started looking for food options along my route as I always do and I found something that sounded better than pizza along the way.
O’Neals Smokehouse is on the corner of Broadway Street and Reed Street just across the road from Stone Lake in Cassopolis. The small building has been a restaurant for many years but just became a BBQ joint a coupe of years ago. For a long time, it was a pizza joint called Marcello’s Pizzeria. I actually made a trip down there one night (on my way home from Edwardsburg) because it was kind of a Chicago style pizza joint with a delicious thin crust Italian beef pizza. After that closed, it briefly became Ploughman’s Market before a BBQ company called The Hotbox Munchies bought it and the place became O’Neals Smokehouse
Read more…Sweetwater’s Donut Mill (Stadium Drive)
3333 Stadium DriveWhen we first moved to Kalamazoo seventeen years ago, one of the first places I wanted to try in the area was Sweetwater’s Donut Mill. It came to me as one of those legendary places and a defining institution of the Kalamazoo culinary scene.
I blogged about one of our first trips to Sweetwater’s back in 2010. I don’t think it was our first trip there because this particular trip was about paczki’s. I don’t know why I wouldn’t have blogged about it the first time we went but I did a lot of odd things back then.
We have stopped at the Stadium Drive location hundreds of times over the years to pick up donuts. There’s also the occasional stop at the Sprinkle Road location but not nearly as often. A little more rarely, I’ve stopped at the Battle Creek location and the Plainwell location which was meant to be a training kitchen for a franchise that never panned out.
This past Friday, I was working an early morning shift with some colleagues from Grand Rapids. They had to be down here really early in the morning and I was meeting them at the job site. I decided to be a nice guy and a good host and bring them donuts.
I stopped at the Sweetwater’s Donut Mill on Stadium Drive near Meadowview Drive in Kalamazoo’s Knollwood Neighborhood. The little donut shop has been there for decades. This is the original location that opened up in 1983. The building a small, standalone building that kind of looks out of place amongst the shopping centers that surround it. I had to stop in Friday night to get donuts because they stopped being a 24/7 operation during the pandemic and never went back to it. The shop is now open 5 AM to 8 PM. I had to meet my colleagues at a little after 4 AM so I couldn’t stop on my way there.
Read more…Shawarma Bros
4501 W. KL AvenueI haven’t been eating out at work much recently. Friday nights and Saturday’s after I get done working have been my regular night’s to hit up new restaurants lately.
I came in to work pretty hungry Monday night. After I dropped my son off at school, I went back to bed before I had to be in the office at 2:30 PM. I didn’t wake up until almost 1:00 so by the time I got moving, I didn’t have much time to grab something to eat.
We had a fairly simple night. We were done with what we needed to do outside of the office by about 4:00 PM. The rest of the night was going to be sitting in front of a computer which tends to make me more hungry because I just sit there and think about how hungry I am.
I finally gave in knowing it was going to be a long night if I didn’t find something to eat.
I went with a fairly new place that I’ve driven by a couple of times on my way to work.
Shawarma Bros opened up a few months ago inside The Bodega on KL Avenue just to the west of Michigan Avenue in Kalamazoo’s Arcadia Neighborhood. For a long time, this place was a different liquor store but when The Bodega signs started going up, I was hopeful that it would be a true NYC style bodega and have food. It didn’t for several years but back in August, that changed. It isn’t the deli style counter service spot I was kind of hoping for but it’s still a spot with a big menu of sandwiches.
Read more…Zae & Zeb’s Pizza
120 E. Main StreetOn the road again on a Friday night.
My overtime shift brought me to a very familiar area of St. Joseph County. As I’ve written about many times, my in-laws live on a lake between Centreville and Sturgis so I’m in that area occasionally when we go to their place.
I had to make two stops on Friday night. One was in Centreville and the other wasn’t too far away in Three Rivers.
I had gotten called up to the Grand Rapids office on Friday to pick up a project for a colleague who was on vacation. It was fairly simple just a little time consuming. I got it done by about 2:00 then headed back to the Kalamazoo office to wrap some things up.
Around 4:30, I decided to start heading towards Centreville. I needed to stop for gas and of course, I had a plan for dinner.
I stopped in Schoolcraft at the Speedway on my way down US-131. When I got there, I called a pizza place in I have been wanting to get to for quite some time in Centreville to get an order started.
Zae & Zebs is on Main Street just off of downtown Centreville at the intersection with Nottawa Street. This little building has been a pizza place as long as my in-laws have lived in the area. It was Li’l Louie’s for a while which I got pizza from once. Then it was Pizza Depot which I never got to. In October of 2024, new owners took over that restaurant and changed the name to Zae & Zebs. Before all of that, this building was an old Standard Oil gas station. You can still tell by looking at the building where the pumps used to be and the garage door for the service bay was.
Read more…Vin Trofeo’s Pizzeria & Pub
120 S. University AvenueI haven’t spent a lot of time in Mt. Pleasant this fall. Sure, I’ve made random trips up there over the years but this fall, I’ve picked up a lot of work outside of my regular job on weekends.
I was back in Mt. Pleasant last Saturday and it won’t be my last trip up there before the end of the month.
I worked most of the day near Kelly/Shorts Stadium on the campus of Central Michigan University. The company I worked for always brings in lunch and if we in a city with a Cottage Inn, it’s always Cottage Inn.
So yes, I had pizza for lunch but when I got done with the job around 7:00, I was hungry. And when I travel, my brain always defaults to pizza.
I found another pizza place in Mt. Pleasant that I haven’t been to yet.
Vin Trofeo’s Pizzeria & Pub is in downtown Mt. Pleasant on University Avenue near Michigan Street. The restaurant opened up in late 2019 in The Basin Building which is the old Mt. Pleasant City Hall. The space on the end that is now Vin Trofeo’s was previously One Twenty South Craft Cocktail Lounge. Because the building is downtown, all of the parking is street parking. Even on a Saturday night after a football game, I was able to find a spot somewhat close to the restaurant.
Read more…Nagle’s Top Dog & Malt Shoppe
1210 S. Burdick Street- Kalamazoo, MI 49001
- (269) 342-2031
- No Known Website
- Menu
Cheap lunch has become something that doesn’t mean what we want it to mean. Comparatively, there are still places around town get a cheap lunch but that is only cheap when you compare it to other places.
That’s a lot of words to say everything is expensive.
I usually wait to get lunch on Friday until I head out to my overtime shift. I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of time between my normal Friday shift and the overtime shift last week so I decided to just grab lunch at a normal time like a normal person.
Being that last week was the beginning of the month, I also knew we had a lot of bills coming out of that paycheck so I didn’t want to over do it on lunch. To do that, I usually just go to fast food but instead of the chain fast food places, I had another place that I haven’t been to in years not too far from downtown.
Nagle’s Top Dog & Malt Shoppe has been a staple in Kalamazoo on the corner of Crosstown Parkway and Burdick Street for over 50 years. The small shop looks very much like a fast food joint from the 1970’s with the addition of a dog house on top to carry on with the theme. While it looks very much like a 70’s fast food joint, it also looks like there has been much done to the place since the ’70’s. It’s a pretty basic building with a small parking lot off to the south right on a busy corner in the heart of the city.
Read more…Krispy Krunchy Chicken (South Haven)
520 Broadway StreetIt’s been a while since I’ve had gas station chicken. To be honest, I kind of missed it.
This saga actually started two weeks ago when my colleague and I got sent to South Haven. I thought, great, there are a couple of newish gas station chicken places there I could pick up dinner. One of them was closed. The other only had full chicken pieces left. It was only 6:00 so I was surprised everyone was closed for dinner already.
Last week, we got sent to South Haven again on Monday night. We did what we needed to do then I headed back towards one of the gas stations for chicken. This time, they were open.
Krispy Krunchy Chicken in South Haven is on Broadway Street at the intersection with Chambers Street inside the Marathon gas station. I have been going to South Haven for many, many years for work and I have never once stopped at this gas station. I saw the Krispy Krunchy Chicken sign pop up over the summer and knew I’d get there eventually.
Read more…
