Bell’s Tap and Table
5500 44th Street SE, Terminal BI’m sure you’ve followed along all year as we’ve traveled all over the Midwest for figure skating.
We travel….a lot.
The season is wrapping up now and L qualified for the National Solo Dance Finals in Salt Lake City, UT. She would compete on Thursday morning and Sunday morning.
J and L flew out of Kalamazoo Tuesday morning and will come home Sunday night. I don’t have that many days off plus we still have B at home. He didn’t qualify this year and we weren’t going to pull him out of school for four days since he wasn’t competing.
I really wanted to get out to Utah because she had a really, really good shot at finishing on the podium at Nationals for the first time (spoiler alert, she finished 2nd!!).
The way I could make that work was by flying out of Grand Rapids Wednesday afternoon, watch her skate Thursday morning, then get back on plane Thursday evening so I could get back to work.
I opted not to take the 6 AM flight because, again, B was at home. I needed to get him to school. My parents were coming to stay with him but they couldn’t get there until later in the day on Wednesday.
I took a 2:30 PM flight out of Grand Rapids and as anyone who has traveled with me will tell you, I’m one of those airport dads. The thought of showing up at the last minute fills me with anxiety.
I knew I didn’t have to be there super early, but I was sitting at home falling asleep on the couch watching TV. I decided just to head to Grand Rapids and get through security then find something to eat.
Gerald R. Ford International Airport actually has some really good food options. I was heading to Terminal A which has a Uccello’s, a Freddy’s Frozen Custard, and a bar called Aletitude. They also have a Founder’s Brewing restaurant right past TSA.
All of those would have been fine but I went with something a little more familiar to me.
I headed over to Terminal B, again, just because I had enough time to do so to find Bell’s Tap and Table.
Bell’s Tap and Table is located in Terminal B near Gate B inside the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids. The restaurant is managed by HMSHost, which is normal at airports, and serves up Bell’s beer alongside a small menu of fairly quick bites. It opened back in January of this year.
The space was designed to have some similarities to Bell’s Eccentric Cafe in Kalamazoo. You still know you’re in the airport but there is a pretty big mixture of pub tables, two tops, rail seating, and of course, a decent sized bar near the back of the space with windows looking out on to the tarmac.
One of the design features that harkens back to the cafe is the pub tables. They have a checkerboard on top of them. Didn’t see any checkers but the board was there.
Airport restaurants tend to not put menus online so I didn’t know what I was walking in to. I knew it would be more expensive just because of the location but it wasn’t easy to find a menu online. There was one, however, near the entrance to space so I could see it before I sat down.
I grabbed a seat at one of the lower two tops and the bartender came over to get the order. I would have just sat at the bar but there were quite a few people there when I sat down. If I had been five minutes later, I would have had the bar to myself.
I started with a beer. They had Hazy Hearted on tap so I got that. I went with the short because beer makes me sleepy lately and I still had two flights to get on before getting to Utah. The cost of the short Hazy Hearted was a little voer $9.
I was super early for my flight so I got something to eat too. My layover was in Dallas and I would have enough time to eat but I wasn’t going to be in the terminals that had Whataburger and I wasn’t super excited about anything else there.
The menu at Bell’s Tap and Table isn’t very big. They just have a few sandwiches, some appetizers, and salads. They also have a breakfast menu as they open at 4:00 AM for those early morning flights out.
I kept it simple and ordered the Bell’s Burger. The sandwich is two smash patties topped with American cheese, caramelized onions, pickles, and 1,000 Island dressing on a brioche bun. I asked to keep the onions off and add back for an extra $3. When I did that, the waitress asked if I wanted the 1,000 Island Dressing. As I thought about it, no, I didn’t. That seems like a weird thing to put on a burger.
The sandwich is about what I expected. The smash patties were nice and thin with that caramelization around the edges. The American cheese was melted in to all the cracks and crevices. The bacon was hiding underneath the soft but firm brioche bun. It wasn’t a super crispy bacon and it was kind of hidden in the background but it was there. It was a solid burger, but like most airport food, was not a $23 burger. I knew that going in though.
The sandwich came with skin on salt and pepper fries. These were good but there weren’t man of them on the plate. When it comes to fries, these are probably my favorite.
The cost of my meal was around $35 before tip.
Was it a $35 meal? No. Of course not. It’s an airport. It was a tasty meal though. I left the table full knowing I still had about five hours of flying ahead of me. It did what airport meals are supposed to do. It was quick and tasty. I didn’t have to worry about missing my flight because I was there super early but even if you are in somewhat of a hurry, Bell’s Tap and Table is a good option in Terminal B.
SW Michigan Dining 