76th Street Truck Stop Diner
460 76th Street SWJ has been at her new job only a few weeks and she’s already traveling for conferences. She had a trip to Las Vegas for four days which leaves me alone with the kids. That’s not an issue but daycare does become one. I don’t get off work until (at least) 6:30 and our daycare closes at 6:00.
I was going to take a couple days off work and see if I could get our old nanny to watch the kids after school the other two days but J’s mom offered to fly in from Florida for the week to help out. She hadn’t seen the kids in a while and found a cheap flight on Allegiant to get here.
She could have booked a flight in to Kalamazoo but it would have been a lot more expensive. We told her to just book the Allegiant flight and I’d drive to Grand Rapids to pick her up.
Her flight was coming in to GRR at about 10:30. I dropped the kids off at school at 8:30 then just started driving towards the airport. I was hungry and had planned on getting breakfast along the way.
Mlive.com did their Michigan’s Best series with diners last month. There were a few that made the initial list in the Kalamazoo area that I had never been to but none made the Top Ten. There was a Grand Rapids entry that managed to place and it was along my way to the airport.
76th Street Truck Stop Diner is on 76th Street SW just west of US-131 inside the Mobile station. They placed 10th on the list and now claim to be Michigan’s best Truck Stop Diner as none of the ones above them are truck stops.
The diner is separated from the gas station by a set of glass doors. You still need to go in to the gas station to get to the diner as there is no outside entrance that will get you straight in to the restaurant.
The restaurant is huge. There were a lot of cars in the parking lot…and a lot of people in the diner…but there were still plenty of open tables. The space is a mix of booths, four tops, and even a lunch counter that was pretty full from all the truckers who had stopped for breakfast.
The place has a truck stop feel to it but it’s also much cleaner and much nicer than what I usually picture as truck stop diner. The tile floors and muted tones on the upper part of the walls brighten the place up quite a bit. There are large windows that wrap around two sides of the building letting in a lot of natural light. The furniture is all pretty standard restaurant stuff but it’s clean and looks fairly new. When J & H took over the truck stop about five years, they called in someone else to run the place and a remodel was done at that point.
It was a seat yourself day and I found a table away from the door. A waitress came over with a menu and brought me a Pepsi…they have both Coke and Pepsi as an option. The menu is standard diner fare. They have a large breakfast menu to go along with their lunch options. They’re a 24 hour diner so everything is available all the time. I was there for breakfast though so I ordered breakfast.
My pick was the Sirloin Steak & Eggs. It came with choice of potatoes, two eggs, and toast.
The plate was pretty full so I started in on the hash browns to clear some room. There was a layer of really good, crunchy, salty potatoes on top but once I got past that, it was soft, slightly undercooked hash browns. I know some people like them like that but I like more crunchy. It didn’t stop me from eating them all though. I spread out the crunchy parts so I’d get a little in each bite.
Once a little room was cleared, I started in on the steak. The hunk of meat was a thick, juicy, pink piece of sirloin that had a salty crunch on the outside. The waitress asked me if I needed steak sauce but I definitely did not. I asked for this steak medium rare and that’s how it came out…with a perfectly pink, cool center.
The rest of the plate was pretty typical breakfast food. The eggs were soft and gooey. I chose white toast and it a liquidy layer of butter and golden brown edges.
The whole meal was a little over ten bucks. I paid cash because I had a $50 my gave me and I figured this was a place that would break a $50. I left the waitress a good tip for having to deal with that.
The 76th Street Truck Stop Diner is a classically delicious truck stop diner. I have driven by this place and even ignored it the many times I’ve stopped at the Mobil station as just another greasy spoon but it’s better than that. There’s a reason truck drivers keep coming back to Byron Center.
SW Michigan Dining 