Sprinkle Road Tap House
5001 Park Circle DriveI typically get pretty excited when another new Millennium Restaurant opens in the Kalamazoo area. Sure, they’re all similar, but each one is just enough different.
Millennium seems to be expanding the Tap House brand to the four corners of Kalamazoo. It started in 2010 with Central City Tap House. They expanded in 2013 to Portage with Centre Street Tap House. Now, they’ve opened in Comstock with Sprinkle Road Tap House. (Also, not to ruin the surprise, but they’re also working on approvals for Drake Road Tap House in Oshtemo….this one excites me the most)
Sprinkle Road Tap House is part of the much larger Zeigler Motorsports complex that just opened on the corner of Park Circle Drive and Sprinkle Road just south of I-94. The Tap House takes up the south end of the large building.
The entrance to the complex is off Park Circle Drive despite the building facing Sprinkle Road. When entering the driveway, there is a lower parking lot and an upper lot in front of the building. There are signs pointing Tap House customers to the lower lot which then accesses the building by a staircase built in to the hill. If you can’t handle the stairs, go to the upper lot where there is parking directly in front of the building.
Sprinkle Road Tap House has the same feel as man of Millennium’s other properties. The look is different as this one is done in shades of grey to carry the theme of metal from the motorsports show room into the restaurant. There’s a large bar and a couple rows of pub tables in an area that opens up into the showroom. TV’s are hung above the bar to give this the upscale sports bar feeling.
The hostess us took us to a table in the small dining area on the other side of the space. The area is filled with the same grey metal chairs as the pub area. The pictures on the wall carry on the motorsports motif The first thing I noticed is the restaurant really isn’t that big. At most, there’s a couple of dozen tables. When the K-Wings get back on the ice this fall, this is going to be a great spot to pre-game and there really isn’t a lot of room.
There’s also a small patio area out front overlooking…..Sprinkle Road and the Speedway. We actually thought about sitting out there but stayed inside. Could be a great spot at night as the sun’s going down to unwind with a couple of drinks.
The beer menu at the Tap House’s is always what gets me excited. They have a good mix of local craft beer and imports on tap. I found a couple that I really like, but ordered Dark Horse Brewery’s Smells Like a Double Safety Meeting. Smells like a Safety Meeting is one of my favorite IPA’s and the Double IPA version of this beer is just as delicious. It’s served in a 12 oz tulip glass and I had a hard time not drinking it all before our meals came out of the kitchen.
J got the Tap House Lemonade. This oh so delicious grown up lemonade features Big House Blackberry Bourbon, fresh lime and fresh lemon, simple syrup and lime zest. Despite the cheap bourbon, this drink really tasted like a lemonade with a refreshing kick. J actually ordered two of them because they were so darn good.
We actually started our meal with an appetizer. J had been told many times, “Get the tater tots.” I’m not really a tater tot guy and J is no Napoleon Dynamite herself, but she decided to try it. These are not your typical store bought tater tots. They look and taste more like fried mashed potatoes. The outside of the tots are smooth, dark, and crispy while the inside is steamy and soft. They came to the table right out of the fryer and we had a hard time waiting for them to cool down. Poor B burned his mouth because he was impatient,but he, like the rest of us, kept going back for more. This is a really interesting take on the tater tot and like nothing I’ve seen or had anywhere else.
I kept my meal pretty simple. In fact, J called it before I even set my menu down. I ordered the All-Day Breakfast Burger. This sandwich is a half pound burger topped with a fried egg, thick cut pork belly, cheddar cheese, spring-mix lettuce, lettuce, tomato, and onion. The burger came out perfectly pink in the middle with a lot of flavor and juice flowing out of the meat. The fried egg was soft so it made a delicious mess the first time I picked up the sandwich. The Renzema Bakery brioche bun didn’t stand a chance. It was soggy and disintegrating very early on, but it soaked up so much of the flavor as it slowly conceded defeat. I upgraded my side to Truffle Fries because that was the thing, early on, that got us hooked on the Tap House. The fries are fresh cut and seasoned with truffle oil before being tossed with shreds of Parmesan cheese. There are other contenders now, but when the Tap House introduced these in 2010, nothing even came close to these fries.
J did the Blueberry Broccoli Salad. This large bowl started with spinach then was topped with roasted almonds, blueberries, feta cheese, craisins, avocado, a lot of broccoli, and a lemon yogurt dressing. The broccoli florets dominated the presentation of this salad. J ate about half of them, but picked around to get to the stuff underneath. She ate about 3/4 of the salad just saying that it was good.
B is getting to the point where he he starting to respond to our questions with “yes” and “no,” so we’ve started letting him pick his own meals. We set the kids menu down in front of him……
…and he just yelled out, “Cheese!” We assumed that meant he wanted the Mac & Cheese, so that’s what he got.
The kids Mac & Cheese is a small bowl of corkscrew pasta coated in a thick cheese sauce. B ate about half and I helped him out a little bit. The cheese sauce wasn’t overly cheesy, but it had that subtle cheesiness to it. For his side, we got him french fries knowing he’d only eat a couple of those. J and I both ate a some but we were too stuffed from our own meals.
Our bill for dinner was a little over $50 before tip. It’s no surprise that Sprinkle Road Tap House was delicious. We’ve always enjoyed our Tap House meals, and like I mentioned earlier, we’re both super excited about the prospects of one of these being near us. Sprinkle Road Tap House is going to be a great place to stop before events at Wings Event Center and it’s location, just off I-94 makes is easy to get to when you just wanted a delicious meal alongside a great beer.
SW Michigan Dining 