Andy’s Drive-In
2929 Roosevelt RoadFriday at the Southport Summer Classic was a long day.
L’s events were really spread out. She skated at 8 AM and then not again until 4 PM. She also had a 7 AM practice and we had to be out of our hotel at Great Wolf Lodge so it’s not like we could go back and hang out for a while. We also couldn’t get in to our new hotel until 3:00 so we had a long day to kill.
This is one of the closer competitions for my parents who still live where I grew up near Kankakee, IL. They decided to come up Friday morning and stay through Saturday so they could watch both kids.
My parents, B, and I left the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex not long after L’s first event ended around 9:00 AM. I had an idea for lunch but they didn’t open until 11. We killed some time by going to the Mars Cheese Castle and Tenuta’s Deli to do a little shopping.
We finished up at Tenuta’s around 10:30. Still a little early but we were close the diner I wanted to eat at so we just drove over there and sat in the parking lot until it opened.
Andy’s Drive-In is one of several 60’s era drive-ins still operational in Kenosha. Andy’s is on the corner of Roosevelt Road and 30th Avenue in the middle of the city. The vintage red and white building has been on this corner since the mid-1960’s.
The restaurant is still a working drive in with car hop service at the spots right in front of the building but I chose this particular restaurant because they also have a dining room. Drive-ins are cool but it’s hard to eat in the car with an 8 year old who already makes a mess of everything anyway. Plus, we had my parents van so I didn’t really want to make a huge mess for them to clean up later. There’s a entrance on the east side of the building.
The dining room area is bigger than I thought it would be. There are two rooms. One of them has a couple of booths and a classic lunch counter.
The back room has some tables if booths aren’t doing it for ya. The décor is interesting. It’s actually pretty plain with a few vintage ads on the walls and Christmas decorations still up in the middle of June.
The menu is classic diner fare. No surprises really.
We started with an order of Cheese Curds for the table. I mean, you can’t be in Wisconsin and not get cheese curds…right? The basket was fill with delicious battered pieces of of white cheddar cheese curds. It cam with either marinara or ranch for dipping. We took the marinara because I don’t really like ranch but neither my mom or I (the only two that ate them) really used it. Cheese curds are fabulous on their own.
I ordered the 1/4 Bacon Cheeseburger as my meal. The sandwich comes with ketchup, mustar, pickles, and onions. When the waitress asked how I wanted the onions (raw or grilled) I told her I didn’t want onions at all. She gave me a little side eye look like “really?” I left everything else on though which is odd for me. The sandwich was a simple, classic diner burger. It was a little on the salty side and had a great crunch from the super crispy bacon. I could have added on a second patty for a couple of extra bucks but this sandwich was enough with all the extra fried stuff we had ordered.
Fries didn’t come with the sandwich and I made the mistake of ordering a side. The fries were simple frozen crinkle cut fries. They were good and there were plenty of them. My mistake was that fries came with B’s meal but he wasn’t going to eat them. I should have just saved the extra few bucks and ate his….plus we had the cheese curds. Sometimes I order fries just out of habit. This was one of those times.
B, of course, was fighting me on eating but I told him he had to get something as we still had a long day at the rink ahead of us. He picked the kid’s grilled cheese which came in a little cardboard convertible.
The grilled cheese was super simple. Bread and cheese…grilled. He ate the first half of the sandwich, minus the crust then started complaining about eating the second half. Grandma got him to eat the rest of it. He didn’t touch the fries, which I expected, so I took them with me and tried to offer them to J and L when we got back to the rink but they both thought I was dumb. I ended up eating half of them later.
My dad got the Chopped Cheeseburger, which is apparently what they’re known for. He actually tried to order the pizza burger but the waitress said the truck came in late and they weren’t thawed out yet. That threw a wrench in his plans and he kinda grumbled through the rest of the meal.
The Chopped Cheeseburger is an interesting sandwich. It’s served on a hoagie roll and it comes more like a loose Maid-Rite type of sandwich. The sandwich comes topped like a regular burger with ketchup, mustard, pickles, an onion. I thought the idea looked interesting and wished I would have gotten it myself. He said it reminded him of what we used to call BBQ sandwiches (what most people call Sloppy Joe’s) but he seemed to like it after the initial disappointment of not getting the pizza burger.
Our bill for lunch was close to $50 before the tip.
I love these classic drive-in’s and Andy’s is a quintessential classic drive in. We eat a lot of chain food when we go to these figure skating competitions because it’s easy. L has taken to calling me “Dad-Dash” because I spend a good chunk of the day running around getting food so no one has to leave the rink. My plan was always to get away and hit a drive-in at some point on this trip. My parents being with me made it a little bit easier and it worked out well. Andy’s Drive-In was a great spot for lunch and we got back to the rink so B could watch some of the older skaters that he wanted to watch.
SW Michigan Dining 