Frankie’s
56951 N. Main StreetIt feels like fall again. I’m picking up some overtime during the week doing similar work to what I do Friday nights in the fall. It’ll only last a couple of weeks but I’ll take the OT while I can get it.
I’ve been pretty much staying in the Kalamazoo area for this overtime but earlier this week, I got sent to Three Rivers for an assignment that was going to last about three hours.
I left Kalamazoo just before 5:00 and I was hungry. All I had to eat so far that day was a bag of microwave popcorn.
I was kind of in the mood for a pizza and I knew I’d be passing a great pizza place on my way.
As I was leaving Kalamazoo, I put in an order for a pizza at Frankie’s on the northside of Three Rivers.
Frankie’s is on North Main Street just inside the city limits. If you’re coming from Kalamazoo, you have to do the whole Michigan left thing on US-131 to get to Main Street. Frankie’s is just past that intersection and just north of Lovers Lane. The building is kind of a hodgepodge that looks like it’s been added on to over the years. There’s a parking lot to the northside and a few spots sort of the area between Main Street and the building.
I’ve been to Frankie’s a few times in the past. The last time I blogged about it was in 2012. Celebrity Chef Robert Irvine had just filmed a Restaurant: Impossible episode where they did a pretty extensive makeover of the place. The episode hadn’t aired yet when we ate there that time so I had no idea how the place had changed. I had heard that people in town weren’t very happy with the menu changes and after a while, they went back to the “old Frankie’s.” We also stopped there about a year or so ago to pick up pizzas on the way to my in-laws but I forgot to take pictures to blog. The restaurant just changed hands recently as well so I figured this was a good time to do an updated blog post.
The last time we ordered pizzas, I used online ordering. When I got there to pick it up, the bartender admitted no one checked the printer and they didn’t see I had ordered so I had to wait. There is still an online ordering option on Google (but not on their website). I decided it was just better to call in the order.
I put in an order for a 14″ pepperoni and sausage pizza. The cost was just under $20 and I was told it would be about 25 minutes. I was just leaving my office in downtown Kalamazoo when I called so it took me closer to forty.
The restaurant is divided in to two spaces. There’s a door leading to both when you walk in. One space is the bar which has a few pub tables. The other is the main dining room. A lot of the Restaurant: Impossible redesigns have been torn out. They painted the black walls that made the restaurant feel a little to dark back to a lighter color and got rid of the barn door designs. They kept the rustic light fixtures but appear to have brought back the stained glass windows. The tables and chairs returned to more of a “kitchen table” type set that they put white butcher paper on as a table cloth. The interior is so much brighter and so much homier than I remember from the time we actually dined in after the Restaurant: Impossible make over.
I went in to the bar to pick up my pizza because that’s what I did last time. The bartender told me I needed to go to the dining room side where there is a counter right outside of the kitchen and one of the waitresses would be able to help me.
I gave the waitress my name and she ran to the kitchen to grab the box. I paid the tab then headed to the car to have a few slices before heading to my work assignment.
The pizza at Frankie’s is almost amazing. It’s made in the style of a Chicago tavern style with a thin crust, a sweet sauce, a lot of cheese, and almost just as much meat. Plus, it’s cut in to squares instead of slices making the pizza feel like pizzas I love from Chicago.
I say the pizza is “almost amazing” only because of the crust. It’s too soft. It doesn’t hold up to the toppings at all. The middle pieces were incredibly limp and just didn’t hold their shape at all. The flavor the pizza is soooo good. I just need a crispier crust all the way through and this would be a craveable pizza for me. That didn’t stop me from eating the whole pizza in about 15 minutes though. Even though it was a little messy, it’s a pizza I just couldn’t stop eating.
My in-laws lost their go-to pizza place in Centreville when The Local closed. They’ve been in Florida so we don’t have a “new” pizza place yet. A few tweaks to Frankie’s and it could be the kind of pizza we used to order all the time when they lived in the Chicago suburbs.
SW Michigan Dining 