Country Table Restaurant
714 W. Chicago RoadTuesday was a wild day. I’m without a colleague in the Kalamazoo office for a while so I’m running around Southwest Michigan by myself at the moment. Some days, that’s great. They’re easy days. Some days, it’s a lot of driving and a lot of work by myself.
I started my day on Tuesday in White Pigeon at about 9:00. By the time I clocked out at 9 PM, I had been to White Pigeon, Coldwater, Kalamazoo, Otsego, Emmett Township and Oshtemo Township. It was a long but productive day.
I didn’t realize I was going to be so much driving as I was wrapping up my assignment in White Pigeon. It was also lunch time and I wasn’t in the mood for gas station food so I decided to put an order in at one of the restaurants in town.
I picked Country Table Restaurant on West Chicago Road (US-12) to the east of US-131 on the west side of White Pigeon. The restaurant, which is designed to look like a barn has been a staple in White Pigeon for years.
You’ll never guess why I picked to order from this restaurant. I mean, if you know me you will….but you’ll be just as surprised as I was to find out….they have online ordering.
I put my order in then finished up what I was doing. I also hit the gas station across the street for a Pepsi and a bottle of water. By the time I got to the restaurant, my order was ready.
The restaurant is a lot smaller than I was expecting. There’s a sign as soon as you walk in the door to wait to be seated.
The restaurant is divided in to two spaces…probably from the pre-smoking ban days. The decor is pretty modern. I was expecting a farm/barn theme but it’s much more subdued that that. It has the feel of a cozy breakfast joint but it doesn’t have a lot of the kitsch or outdatedness you usually find in such places. The wood floors, newer furniture, and neutral wall colors lit mostly from natural light coming in through the window give the space a cozy feel.
There’s a counter right inside the door to pay the bill on the way out. The hostess came out ready to seat me when I told her I had a carry-out order. She ran to the kitchen to grab it.
My order was the bacon cheeseburger with the addition of giardiniera and an order of fries. About the time I was getting back to the car is when I got the phone call that I needed to head to Coldwater. I started eating the fries as I started driving east. The fries were really good thin, flat steak fry kind of fries. They were clearly frozen food service fries but they aren’t one of the usual suspects. They were crispy on the outside but fluffy in the middle. This is a good choice and something different if a place is going to use frozen fries.
I decided to just pull of the road and eat the burger. I wasn’t in a super big hurry and I didn’t want to mess with this sandwich while driving.
I like online ordering like this because it gives you way more options than you would otherwise know you had. The burgers at Country Table are 1/2 lb beef patties that come with mayo, lettuce, onion, and tomato. I left all of that an added giardiniera. My order was actually the Bacon Cheeseburger so, obviously, it also came with bacon and cheese. There’s also a lot of options for bread but I kept it simple and picked the hamburger bun. This burger was a lot better than I expected it to be. It has that classic diner burger profile. It’s not fancy. It’s not some perfectly mixed combination of some kind of expensive meat, but it’s really good. Diner flat tops just have a way of making burgers fantastic. This burger is a combination of simple burger staples, topped with the giardiniera that I can never pass up, that just, as my kids would say, slaps.
The cost for the meal was right around $18 before tip.
I love small family restaurants like Country Table. Places like this are so important to the community they’re in and if they have really good food, that’s an added bonus. Without online order, I may have just gotten chicken from the gas station across the street, but since I took the time to look, and they did have online ordering, I got one of the best simple burgers I’ve had in quite a while
SW Michigan Dining 