Flat Rock Grill – The Breakfast Spot
Mother’s Day. And we’re not brunch people.
J’s mom had asked about meeting for Mother’s Day and wanted to go to City Centre Taphouse for their Bloody Mary Bar. We didn’t have reservations and they only had the brunch menu so we weren’t going to chance it.
Most of the other places we would have picked also needed reservations and were doing brunch buffets or special Mother’s Day Brunches. We just wanted a place that was doing a normal breakfast at a normal price so we could get together.
J’s mom suggested they just come to us and go to breakfast at LaRue’s. That’s everyone’s favorite breakfast joint and they didn’t really have anything special going on.
J’s parents are in Kalamazoo a lot. They do a lot of school pickups and drop offs at Wings West for J and I because we can’t get out of work early enough. I didn’t want to make them drive all the way up here again on the weekend so I suggested we meet in Three Rivers instead.
We ended up meeting at Flat Rock Grill – The Breakfast Spot on US-131. The restaurant is on the west side of town just north of Broadway Road in front of the Meijer. This spot was Oasis Family Restaurant for along time and appears to have been a Big Boy (just judging from the layout) before that. The restaurant is a sister location to Flat Rock Grill in Edwardsburg which is more of a bar/restaurant while this one is a breakfast/lunch spot.
Saturday was a rough day for everyone in my household. I had to be at work at 3:30 AM then had a bunch of chores to do when I got home. J and B also had to be up early for J to go in to work to help with an event. L was in Chicago for the weekend on a school choir field trip and got home late Saturday night.
We all slept in a bit on Sunday and decided to meet J’s parents around noon.
The restaurant was pretty full when we got there but there were still some tables open. I went in and told the hostess we had six. She looked at me kind of funny then asked if pub tables would be ok because their lower tables they could push together were all full. The pub table was fine with us so she went to push two together while I went outside and rounded up everyone to let them know we could get a table right away.
It would have been before my time but I say this place looks like an old Big Boy to me and from the layout, it looks pretty obvious. There are a couple rows of booths right as you walk in the door. The restaurant makes use of the space and gets three rows in using a half wall to make a divider in the middle of the space to put booths on either side.
When you get past that, the dining room opens up in to a space with tables, a lunch counter, and a sunroom with four tops that can be pushed together to make space for larger parties.
The layout of the restaurant but there was a massive remodel of this place before Flat Rock moved in. If you look at the pictures from my blog post of Oasis Family Restaurant and these pictures, the place is almost unrecognizable outside of the way the restaurant is laid out. It’s a much more modern design and kind of feels like a pub setting while Oasis had a very dated but somewhat comforting family diner feel to it.
We were there at lunch time but we all chose breakfast food. I was leaning towards a burger but made a last second decision to order the Classic Benedict instead. This traditional breakfast plate comes with toasted English muffins, grilled ham, poached eggs all topped with a hollandaise sauce. It was, as I say, standard. It was good and tasted like a Benedict. Nothing outrageous but still everything I love about Benedicts. The plate comes with choice of potatoes. I chose the breakfast potatoes which are cubed, fried pieces of potatoes. They were very uniform and kind of generic. Again, not a bad thing. They were plentiful on the plate and I didn’t have to worry about leaving hungry.
J ordered a Belgian Waffle with a mixed berry compote on it. This is a fairly large waffle that comes with a large scoop of the compote on top. She got bacon as her protein to go with it. She asked for it crispy and she got very crispy bacon. Just the way she likes it.
The waffle didn’t come with potatoes so she ordered the Hashbrown Casserole on the side. This plate was pretty much just hash browns with cheese. The potatoes have no crispiness to them at all. She didn’t complain but only ate a few bites off the plate. They looked undercooked to me as both of us like hashbrowns with a golden brown, crispy exterior.
The kids both got pancakes. We weren’t offered a kids menu so they both ordered off the adult menu. L got Buttermilk pancakes and bacon. She ate one of the pancakes and we brought the second one home for a later meal.
B got the Chocolate Chip pancakes and when the plate was first set down, I was like, “that’s all the chocolate chips?” Turns out, those few chips on the top were more of a marker for the waitress. When I picked one of the pancakes up to butter underneath, I saw chocolate baked in to the underside of the pancakes. Even those few chips on top made a huge difference. They melted when I started spreading the butter and turned in to a delicious buttery, chocolate paste on top of each pancake. L finished her pancake then reached over to try his. I did the same and it almost tasted like a chocolate cake. B didn’t use any syrup so it was really just the chocolate chips that were driving the flavor.
The waitress came over and asked how we wanted the check. I told her to put it together and give it to me. J’s parents do a lot for us during the week. It’s not a short drive from their place in Sturgis to our place in Oshtemo yet they’re here a couple of days a week picking the kids up and helping us get to where they need to go. Breakfast is literally the least we could do.
The bill was right around $90 before tip. I’ve seen people in local Facebook groups complain about the price and how it’s more expensive than Oasis (and doesn’t have the buffet…which, why do people still think buffet’s are things restaurants should do?) but I didn’t really think that was too bad for the six of us. It’s under $20 a person which seems to be the good deal anymore.
We were all pretty happy with our breakfast from Flat Rock Grill. This is a place that has been on my radar for a while but I’m not sure if J’s parents knew that it was open. We ate at Oasis once a few years back and enjoyed it but this, in my opinion, is a step up from what used to be in that space.
SW Michigan Dining 