Savvy Sliders (Grand Rapids)
1970 Division Avenue SouthI mention a lot in my blog that my daughter is a figure skater. We do a lot of traveling and spend a lot of time at Wings West for her.
She also started middle school this year and there was an opportunity for 6th graders to play volleyball on the 7th grade team. She had played volleyball in gym class so she decided to try out. And she made the team.
It’s great that she’s trying something new….although she doesn’t really like it….but those middle school volleyball games start at 3:45 PM. I get off work at 6:30. There’s no way I could make games.
I used some vacation days to get to a couple but I also had a couple of opportunities to work a weekend shift in exchange for a day off during the week. Most people try to take the previous Monday or following Friday so they get a three day weekend, but I try to take those days so I can go to my kids’ events.
Because of that, I was in Grand Rapids a couple of weeks ago working a Sunday evening shift. I actually just had to train a new employee in my department so I didn’t have to do much work. I was just kind of there to answer questions and help out if needed.
The last time I was in Grand Rapids was for work was Labor Day. I had tried to stop at a slider shop for dinner but they were closed on the holiday. I decided to see if they were open on Sunday.
Savvy Sliders is a Detroit based chain of slider restaurants with stores in Michigan, Florida, Ohio, and Texas. The shop on the corner of Division and Burton is one of about 30 stores in the state. Most of them are in the Detroit area.
This shop actually shares space with Happy’s Pizza although all of the exterior signage and even most of the interior has the Savvy Sliders branding. There is a co-branding deal between the two because they are owned by the same people so this is the case in a few of their locations.
The restaurant is a little hard to get in to. If you’ve been around Grand Rapids for a while, you’ll know this spot as an old Popeye’s Chicken. To get in to the parking lot from Division, you actually have to turn in to the current Popeye’s Chicken right next door.
There appears to be an online ordering option but once I got my whole order in, it wouldn’t take my credit card. It kept saying there was an error. So I did what I hate doing and just went to the shop to order.
The Popeyes used to have a full dining room that is long gone. That disappeared when this place became a Happy’s Pizza. Now, there is an order counter in front of the large kitchen with the menus on TV monitors hanging overhead.
I had to put in my order in person so once I took care of that, the only option to hang out and wait for it was to either go to my car or take a seat on the bench across from the order area.
I wanted to try pretty much everything and I didn’t eat lunch so I got two sliders, an order of fries, and a three piece chicken tender. I passed on the shake because I felt like I had more than enough food but shakes are options too.
It took about 15 minutes for my order to come up. Online ordering that worked would have really been helpful in this situation.
I headed back to the office to eat since there was no place to sit at the restaurant…but let’s be honest, I likely wouldn’t have sat anyway.
I started with the fries as soon as I got back since they were the thing that would go soggy first. These fries are simple crinkle cut fries with a seasoning on them. There were a lot more than expected and despite being boxed up, weren’t overly soggy by the time I got to them. There were a couple of ketchup packets thrown in to the box but these were seasoned well enough that I didn’t need anything to dip them in to.
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The first slider I got in to was the Famous Fried Chicken. This sandwich is fried chicken, pickles, lettuce, and mayo. You could order a Premium Slider and get Boom Sauce instead of mayo but the price upgrade didn’t seem worth it. The fried chicken on this sandwich is super tender and easy to bite through. Being a slider, you only get a couple of those bites so you have to savor it. I could have done without the mayo but that’s true of any sandwich.
The other slider I got was The Hangover. This one is a Premium slider so there’s an upcharge. It comes with an Angus beef burger, fried egg, Maple Pepper bacon, American cheese, and Boom Sauce. It’s a little messy but this is the kind of slider I could eat all day. There’s some grease from the egg and the bacon but you only have a couple of bites to deal with. It’s a great miniature version of a burger I order whenever I see it on a menu.
I also got a 3-Piece Spicy Chicken Finger basket. The chicken fingers are huge and it’s all meat. The spicy breading had a hard time sticking to the juicy chicken. There was a little bit of heat from the breading itself but I picked the Buffalo sauce as my dipping sauce so I just added on some more of that heat. I’m really glad I sprung for the chicken as well. It was a lot of food but the tenders were really good.
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The cost for my meal was just under $25, but as I’ve mentioned before, I got more food than I really needed just because I wanted to try everything.
Savvy Slider is a cool concept. It’s fast casual food so it’s not going to blow you away but it’s good fast casual food. The sliders were tasty and the chicken was really juicy. It’d be great if they’d add a Savvy Sliders to the Happy’s Pizza in Kalamazoo but until then, I’ll just have to make it a point to stop on my trips to Grand Rapids.
SW Michigan Dining 