Cask & Company Kitchen & Bar
3415 E. Saginaw StreetBack to back days in Lansing is not something that happens often anymore.
I was in Lansing on Thursday for work. Friday, I was bringing L over for a figure skating lesson. There’s a former Olympian that she does dance work with every summer at a camp in Wisconsin Rapids. He also coaches in Lansing but doesn’t have a lot of time for skaters that aren’t full time students. As most of his students are Michigan State University skaters, he had some openings over winter break and offered some slots to the Kalamazoo skaters he works with at that camp.
I don’t ever go to the camp in Wisconsin so I’ve never seen her skate with this coach. I needed to take some time off after my trip to Los Angeles so I made sure I was off this Friday to watch her skate.
J was off to so we decided to all go to Lansing. L skated Friday morning in Kalamazoo so we let her relax a little bit before her afternoon lesson in East Lansing. We figured if we were going as a family, we may as well stop somewhere for lunch once we got to town.
There’s not a ton of places I really want to get to Lansing and not a ton of places that I really remember fondly from our time living there. It’s always kind of struggle trying to find some place to eat.
I do have a short list though so I offered up a couple of places to J and let her pick.
She picked Cask & Company Kitchen & Bar on Saginaw Street at that weird intersection where it crosses with Grand River Avenue. The restaurant is in a small shopping plaza on the north side of the road. It’s kind of a partner restaurant to Front 43 Neighborhood Pub. Before it was an upscale pub, this space was XIAO which was marketed as a Chinese grill and lounge.
We walked in to the restaurant around 1:30. There were still quite a few people in the large dining room. A hostess showed us to a four top table kind of in the middle of the dimly lit space. The furniture is all solid, dark wood. The place has a kind of winery/distillery vibe to it which I assume is what they’re going for with the name.
There is a pretty large bar near the back of the space with a really good taplist. The beers are displayed on a monitor hanging above the U-Shaped bar.
I wasn’t committed to get a beer until I saw the taplist and realized I couldn’t pass up the Flying Buffalo Bourbon Barrel Aged Chocolate Drizzle Cannoli. This beer was amazing. You could smell the bourbon and vanilla as soon as it was set down. This is one of those beers that are dangerous for me. It’s so smooth and easy drinking I could have more than a couple…but it’s also high ABV so I know better than to have more than one.
We picked Cask & Company because they had a pretty large menu and we saw something on the menu that everyone would eat.
I ordered the Spartan Burger. This sandwich is an 8 oz beef patty topped with pastrami, bacon, a fried onion ring, a fried egg and pepper jack cheese. The sandwich was delicious. I pulled the onion ring…which the waiter made a snarky comment about when he took the plate away…just to leave the good stuff. I love pastrami so that’s really what sold me on this burger…not a fried ring of a garbage vegetable. The egg was a perfect medium so it was a little bit solid but still a little runny. The bacon was slightly undercooked which is fine for me but that’ll come up again in a little bit.
The fries that came with the sandwich were almost better than the delicious burger. They’re hand cut, fried golden brown, and topped with Parmesan, garlic, salt, and pepper. I picked up one of these before I picked up the burger and I had a hard time stopping. This is my favorite type of French fry.
J’s order was the Not Your Mamas Grill Cheese. This sandwich checked off a lot of boxes for her. The sandwich is made with challah bread. Between the bread is mozzarella, Parmesan, brie, smoked gouda, BFF apples (?), fig, and bacon. This is where the bacon comes back in to play. J likes really crispy bacon. This was not anywhere near crispy. It was really undercooked and that’s such a bummer on a sandwich that was pretty stellar other than damn near raw bacon.
L has finally come around on “fancy” mac & cheese which is so relieving. For a while, she’d only eat Kraft at restaurants, but she’s finally learned real cheese is delicious.
L’s order was the Gouda Mac & Cheese. This bowl of cavatapi noodles is covered with a thick, creamy cheese sauce made with gouda and Parmesan. It’s supposed to come with pulled pork but I haven’t gotten her to eat delicious BBQ yet, so she left that off. She destroyed this bowl. I think J and I were each able to reach over and get a single noodle before she finished the bowl. She really liked it and was a little bummed it was gone.
B had quite a few choices on the kids menu and J tried to steer him away from the cheese flatbread. It didn’t work though…that’s what he ordered…then ate one piece…because that’s what he does. The pizza was actually pretty tasty with a thick layer of mozzarella cheese on top of a slightly sweet sauce. I ate one piece and tried to bribe him in to eating another but we ended up taking most of it home.
The bill for our dinner was about $65 for tip which really isn’t all that bad for lunch for the four of us including my slightly expensive beer choice.
Cask & Company Kitchen & Bar is unexpected in a shopping center in this part of town. It’s kind of a fancier place with a solid upscale take on classic bar food. Three of the meals were pretty spot on. J left with a bad taste in her mouth only because of the floppy bacon. I think it would have been a winner if there was some crispiness to it.
SW Michigan Dining 