The Heist Grille
200 N. Clinton AvenueSkate Midland is our last individual skating competition of the year. It’s always the first weekend in November and it wraps up our year as we start to transition in to Synchronized Skating and the Holiday Ice Revue.
We only had B in Midland this year. L has leveled out of the dance portion of that competition and a knee injury prevented her from working on her free skate after Solo Dance Finals in September.
Our original plan was to stay in Midland Friday and Saturday night but then we got the schedule. We didn’t have to be there at 7 AM and we weren’t going to be done after 4 PM. All three of the times B was on the ice were between 11:00 AM and 2 PM.
I was looking forward to relaxing at the bar at the hotel while the kids swam but J suggested we just cancel the hotel, save the money, and make the trip all in one day. I was a little annoyed because I was looking to forward to sitting at the bar and having a drink, but she was right. There was no reason for us to stay.
I was hopeful we could still have a good meal along the way that wasn’t fast food.
We left the Midland Civic Arena right around 3:00. J wanted to get on the road for a little bit before eating. That way we could take a break, find a bathroom, and have a little more time to relax on the way home.
She suggested St. Johns. I just happened to have a restaurant I had heard about recently in St Johns.
The Heist Grille is in downtown St. Johns on the corner of Clinton Avenue and Walker Street. It was a little hard to spot at first because the building actually looks like a bank….because it’s an old bank. The restaurant recently opened in the 130 year old bank building after St. Johns Brewing Company sold the property and closed in September. The Heist opened just a few days later with new ownership, a new name but retained a lot of the old menu, staff, and design of the building stayed the same.
The restaurant has a cool vibe to it because it is a 130 year old building and it is a former bank. The space is one large dining room with cement floors and TV’s all around the space. The old bank vault doors are visible to remind you of the history of the building.
We were taken to a booth/table along the outside wall of the building. It was still pretty early on a Saturday evening so we were ahead of the dinner rush. The hostess set down menus and we looked over them as we took turns heading to the restroom. We all knew a stop was going to be needed and this was a better idea that stopping at another gas station.
We still had a couple hours of driving ahead of us. We still had to go to Sturgis to pick L up who stayed with J’s parents instead of coming with us. For that reason, we passed on beer and stuck with Cokes.
The reason I was excited about this place was the BBQ options on the menu. It’s been a while since I’ve had good BBQ and I was craving it.
I chose the Two Meat Plate and got brisket and pulled pork as my meats.
I started in on the brisket as soon as it was set down in front of me. It was a delicious, salty, peppery, tender slice of meat. I got two really thick cuts from the flat and that was really more than I needed to eat. The meat was the kind of melt in your mouth brisket I dream about every time I throw a brisket on the smoker but am rarely able to achieve.
The pulled pork was an equally large portion of tender, juicy, tangy pork. The meat comes with a pretty heavy vinegary sauce already on it. This is the kind of pulled pork I really like. I typically prefer pulled pork on a sandwich as opposed to just eating it off the plate. It was still tasty and I ate all of it with very little additional sauce.
On that note, I’m not a really big sauce person on meat. I love to use the BBQ sauce at restaurants for the fries but there were no fries at The Heist. I did try out each of the sauces just to try them. I always go for the spicier sauces so the Cajun one was my favorite.
The plate came with choice of two sides. I was already pretty stuffed after eating the meat but I couldn’t pass up on the Mac ‘n Cheese. It wasn’t a very big portion, which was good because I was stuffed, but it was definitely filling. The cavatappi noodles are covered in a thick, golden cheese sauce. Simple but delicious.
The menu says there are Waffle Fries but the waitress said they don’t do fries, they do tots. So I ordered the tots. I’m not a big tot guy. I thought maybe if I dipped them in sauce I would like them. Honestly, I was so stuffed by the time I got to them I didn’t really give them much of a chance. I ate a couple but just didn’t feel like eating anymore. They were fine as far as tots go. Just not my favorite.
J ordered the Pulled Pork Sandwich. She said before she ordered she wished she could taste the pulled pork before ordering it at restaurants. She likes a very specific kind of pulled pork and this one, with the heavy vinegar sauce, isn’t really the kind she likes. She would much prefer a dryer pulled pork so she could add a thicker sweeter sauce to it. The sandwich is a huge pile of meat with cole slaw on top as well as applewood smoked bacon and served on a potato bun. She pulled some of the meat off to make it a leaner sandwich and added some BBQ sauce. She ate about half of the sandwich before boxing it up and taking the rest home. Her sandwich came with tots on the side. We took most of those home as well.
B ordered a cheeseburger off the kids menu and it was absolutely perfect for him. It was more of a slider sized burger and we kept it simple. He looked at it and said, “this is perfect for me.” He likes burgers but he isn’t going to finish a full size one so the smaller size was awesome. His plate also came with tots. He may have eaten a few, but yeah, we took most of them home hoping L would eat them.
Our bill for dinner was just under $50 before tip.
The BBQ at The Heist Grille was fantastic. I loved both the brisket and the pulled pork. J was a little more iffy on the pulled pork but she didn’t complain too much. The sandwich was a lot of food and I think that had just as much to do with her only eating half of it as the flavor with the vinegary sauce did. The only complaint for me was the tots. I’m really not a fan of places that try to push the tots over fries. I get that it’s hip and Napoleon Dynamite made everyone think tots were cool but I guarantee if we had been given fries over tots, we wouldn’t have taken any of them home. As it is, there’s still a container of tots in our fridge over a week later that probably aren’t going to get eaten. But if that’s the only complaint, it’s a minor one.
SW Michigan Dining 