Rykse & Co. Market & Eatery
7141 West Q AvenueAlright, let’s get back to some Southwest Michigan blog posts, huh? Vacation was fun and I blog about the places we eat and places we go because this blog works like a journal for me. I’ve documented the last 9 1/2 years of our lives together from the move to Lansing, to getting married, to buying a house, the having kids with J through our food adventures.
My first night back at work after a week off saw me paired up with a co-worker I don’t normally work with anymore out of the Grand Rapids office. She had a task to do in Kalamazoo and the normal guy I work with was off, so the bosses paired us together on her task.
We headed out to Texas Corners just before dinner time. We were in separate cars because she met me there, so when we were done, she headed back to the Kalamazoo office to do some work while I took advantage of being in Texas Corners and stopped to get dinner.
Rykse & Co. Market and Eatery just opened in Texas Corners on Q Avenue just to the west of 8th Street in the Texas Square Shopping Center. The building is new construction on what used to be a big grassy lot between the road and the parking lot.
The entrance to the building is through the shopping center. The new building is connected to the old parking with the front door being on the south west side of the building.
The name Rykse may sound familiar. This restaurant is owned by the son of the owners of Rykse’s Restaurant on Stadium Drive in Oshtemo. Unlike that restaurant, Rykse & Co. is a fast casual place that puts an emphasis on grab-n-go sandwiches. Heck, they even have online ordering and a drive thru to pick up your order.
The inside of the restaurant is huge. For a place that wants to be a sort of grab-n-go, they have a lot of seating. There are two dining rooms inside as well as a large patio.
The inside is divided up into a lower level dining room….
…and an loft area with more seating looking back on to the main floor. Those two areas combined along with the patio has room for about 100 people.
When you walk in to Rykse & Co. you’re immediately met by display cases of all their bakery items. They have the desserts as well as breads and pies for sale to tempt you before you ever go to the order counter.
The order counter is between the open kitchen and the bakery cases. The menu is on an electronic sign board hanging on the back wall. They also have laminated menus on the counter alongside kids menus.
The cuisine tries to focus on healthier options. They have a limited number of sandwiches, salads, flatbread pizzas and bowls which are essential burrito bowls without the rice.
I was kind of in a hurry when I stopped in so I was happy with the option to pick something up and get on my way. I ordered the Brisket Sandwich with House Made Chips. The cost was just under $10 with no drink.
I took a seat at one of the tables and checked my e-mail. I barely got through three unread e-mails before a guy came out of the kitchen with my bag of food.
When I got back to the office, I started in with the chips first. I love a good home made chip and these are good. They’re thinly sliced potatoes that are nice and golden brown around the edges but still have a little softness in the middle. They have a little bit of salt on them, but not so much it distracts from the home made taste.
The sandwich is slow roasted beef brisket topped with coleslaw and a mozzrella and provolone cheese blend. It comes on a ciabatta roll. I asked for the slaw on the side and actually forgot about it once I started in on the sandwich. Roasted brisket has such a different flavor from smoked brisket. In this case, the brisket soaked up a lot of the juices that it was roasted with. It was a tender, juicy beef that had an extra beefy flavor and a pile of gooey cheese on top. Ciabatta is so good at soaking up all of those extra flavors and trapping them inside all the nooks and crannies.
Rykse & Company really accomplishes what they set out to do. You can get in and get out quickly with a delicious healthy meal. They’re in a location where you will see a lot of parents running around between practices and events so hopefully that helps them out. I’m not in this area of the county often, but finding something quick and delicious can be a challenge. Rykse & Co. makes doing that pretty easy.
SW Michigan Dining 