Winner Winner
3216 Bay City RoadWhen I got our kids’ schedules for Skate Midland, I was pretty excited we were going to be done fairly early. B’s last event was just before 2:00 which means we should have been able to get out of there around 2:30 and make it home before it got dark.
But, NOPE.
L wanted to stay and watch her friends skate and their events ran almost until 5:00 PM.
We did have a little bit of a gap though between when B finished his last event and when the other girls from our club were going to skate so J suggested we go get something to eat. No one had really eaten since breakfast and the concession stand at the Midland Civic Arena didn’t have a lot of “real food.”
There’s really not a lot around the Midland Civic Arena. The one place that is close I noticed last year but didn’t have time to stop. It looked like a counter service restaurant and it looked like it would have something we’d all eat.
Winner Winner is on the corner of Bay City Road and Waldo Avenue on the southeast side of Midland. The small restaurant opened a couple of years ago and also has a coffee food truck that operates out of the parking lot. The name should give away what’s you’re going to get inside….right? “Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner.” As for the building’s history…I’ve actually been there before. I’ve only been to Midland three times since we moved to Michigan 15 years ago. Twice for figure skating, but one time, we actually drove from Lansing to Midland just to eat at the BBQ place that was in this spot before….well that and see the butterflies at Dow Gardens…but mostly because I wanted to eat at Bone Daddy’s BBQ.
The restaurant is counter service and you come to that counter as soon as you walk in the door. There’s a menu hanging on the wall next to the cash register. I had somewhat scouted this place out beforehand but J was looking at the menu for the first time. There was no one behind us except a DoorDash order so we told the cashier to deal with them while we figured out what we wanted to eat.
The menu theme is Bird. Bacon. Bun. You can get fried chicken, you can get sandwiches, or you can get fried pork belly. I got a sandwich, J and B got chicken strips, and L got mac ‘n cheese with bacon. We got a couple of those as meals which came with a side and we got a couple drinks. The total for our food was right around $50.
We opted to eat in so we took a seat at a table in the corner of the dining room The place isn’t very big but it’s bright and a little funky.
There are kind of two seating areas with a bench that runs along the outside wall creating more space. The kids were kind of wound up from their competition so we headed to a corner of the restaurant hoping not to bother anyone else but the sound travels well in this small space so we were a little louder than we wanted to be. There was only one other couple in there at the time and they didn’t seem too bothered by it so hopefully we weren’t obnoxious.
It didn’t take long for our food to start coming out. The lady that took our order brought plates out of the kitchen less than 10 minutes after we sat down. Another thing about this place is they pride themselves on using real plates and silverware. None of that plastic stuff here.
My order was The Hot Chick. This is fried boneless chicken with Nashville Hot Sauce and lettuce on a bun. The sauce doesn’t cover the whole piece of chicken. It’s kind of poured over the top. The chicken is so crispy and juicy and the sauce gave it a little bit of a kick. It wasn’t super hot but it did have the slightly sweet yet still peppery hot sauce flavor. The lettuce seemed a bit pointless. I would have rather had a few pickles, but I suppose it’s there to add a fresh crunch to the sandwich.
J and B the Chicken Finger lunch special. The plate came with 3 big, juicy, crunchy chicken tenders, a homemade sauce, and a side. They both got fries and B actually gave most of his fries to me. We realized we probably could have had them share a plate. Neither of them were super hungry but we asked for a to-go box and took the rest home…where they didn’t go to waste. Even cold these tenders were delicious. The fries were fresh cut, skin on fries. B hasn’t been much of a fry eater the past couple years but he’s slowly coming back around. These are my favorite kind of fries and he ate more than we thought he would. They’re the kind of fry that is somehow crunchy and floppy at the same time. It’s the kind of fries I make home when I fry up some potatoes.
L ordered the Bacon Mac. She was just going to get the smaller size but I suggested we just do the bigger. It’s another thing that wouldn’t go to waste if she didn’t eat it all. I’m not sure she realized that you could put bacon in mac ‘n cheese. She seemed surprised by the concept and loved this mac. The bowl is spiral pasta in a thick cheese sauce with crumbled piece of bacon mixed in. She ate about half in the restaurant but on the three hour drive home, she asked for the rest of it because she was hungry and didn’t want to take the chance of me pulling this out of the fridge before she got to it.
Winner Winner is a fantastic chicken joint. We got a tasty meal and got back to the rink within about a half hour. I had pretty low expectations for the place. I just wanted to get something to eat and get back….and I didn’t want it to be fast food. So many other families just go for the easy stuff when we travel for competitions but I really like to find the local places. Sometimes I think my family gets annoyed by it but this time I was definitely right for finding the local joint.
SW Michigan Dining 