Big O Burgers and Barbecue (Saginaw)
4072 Bay RoadWe go to a lot of competitions for figure skating. Most of those are multiple day events and we end up in a hotel somewhere.
Michigan also has a Basic Skills Series which is a series of one day events designed to give young skaters an opportunity to succeed.
B is right at the end of being able to compete in that series. This is probably the last year he’ll do any of those events.
We’ve never done a lot of them anyway. We usually do our own competition at Wings Event Center in July. This year we also did one in Ann Arbor and Holland.
The final competition every year is in Midland. We’ve done that the last four years. First with L and then with B.
Being honest, I don’t look forward to this competition. There’s nothing wrong with Midland. It’s a nice town and a really nice rink. I just hate the drive. It’s a lot of two lane and country roads once you get past Lansing. We don’t want to spend money on a hotel so we do the drive there and back plus compete all in the same day. It’s exhausting.
The Skate Midland competition was last weekend at the Midland Civic Arena on the east side of the city. There’s not a lot to eat around it so we always kind of struggle when it comes to lunch.
B’s first event was right around 1:00 PM then he had a three hour break. During that break, the plan was for me to run out and get us something to eat.
We asked B what he wanted and he said Chick-Fil-A. There’s no Chick-Fil-A in Midland but there is one in Saginaw about 20 minutes away. I told him I’d go get it but it was going to take me about an hour to get there and get back. He said he was fine with that because he wanted Chick-Fil-A.
It’s not unusual for me to go get my family fast food then I pick up something better for myself. I had found a BBQ place in Midland next to a Jimmy John’s that I was kind of looking forward to. I assumed B was going to ask for Jimmy John’s. When I realized I was going to Saginaw instead, I started looking at places around the Chick-Fil-A. As it would turn out, the BBQ place in Midland also has a location in Saginaw.
Big O Burges and Barbecue in Saginaw is on Bay Road near McCarty Road in a shopping plaza that looks like it could use a little TLC. The Town and Campus Plaza sits pretty far off Bay Road behind a row of out buildings along the busy five lane M-84. The restaurant opened in late 2019 after the owner left Dow Chemical once it merged with DuPont. The Midland location opened in 2023 and recently moved to the former Bone Daddy’s on South Saginaw.
There is an online ordering option but it’s BBQ so I just went to the shop to put the order in myself. I was really unsure if it was even open when I pulled up. It looked kind of dark and it was hard to see from the parking lot if there were lights on inside. I did finally spot an open sign in the window so I walked in.
The dining room is pretty large. The floor is concrete while the walls are chalkboards that people have written on over the years. The few accent colors in the space are red booths along a half wall that serves as a queue to the register and along the opposite wall plus a red chalkboard wall behind the counter. The furniture is all light colored wood with black accents. There is a mixture of furniture between more sturdy stuff and the kind of cheaper somewhat uncomfortable chairs that line tables opposite the booth wall.
The order counter is at the back of the space. The menu is written on a black chalkboard to differentiate itself from the red chalkboard wall. There are also menus on the counter. A guy came out of the kitchen and asked if I had been there before. I told him no so he told me to look over the menu then ring the bell on the counter when I was ready to order.
It took me a few minutes to finally settle on the two meat dinner which came with two sides. I picked pulled pork and brisket (which is only available on weekends and ups the price by $2). The sides I picked were Mac & Cheese and fries. The cost was a little over $20 and the to-go box came out to me in a little over five minutes.
I still had to run to Chick-Fil-A to pick up J and B’s lunch before heading back to the rink so it was about 40 minutes until I was able to dig in. The Chick-Fil-A line was ridiculous.
When I got back to the rink, I found B and J waiting for me at a picnic table. I got them set up with their food then I popped open the box and started with the fries that were piled on top of everything. The fries were simple, frozen restaurant fries but they had a good seasoning of salt and pepper on them. I also used some of the spicy BBQ sauce that was included with the meal to dip them in. They were a little soggy because of the long wait I had to eat them but they were really tasty. I like places that do a little extra work to make a simple, out of the bag fry taste just a little bit better with a good seasoning.
Once I got the fries out of the way, I started in on the meats. I went to the pulled pork first it was a super juicy and tender. There was some BBQ sauce included but the meat didn’t need it. It had a really good flavor on it’s own.
I went for the brisket next. This is only available on weekends so I got lucky and was there on a day that they had it. There were a couple of nice big, juicy pieces of meat included in the meal. They were tender and a little bit salty. Again, there was BBQ sauce included but there was no reason to actually use it on the meat.
The last thing in the dinner was the mac and cheese. This was a solid lump of cheese covered pasta that was a little over cooked. The noodles had no structure or no bite left in them. The flavor was fine but it was a little flat. I ended up pouring some of my leftover BBQ sauce in to the mac and cheese because cheese sauce mixed with a sweet bbq sauce is the best combination.
Big O Burgers and Barbecue was way better than Chick-Fil-A. It’s not unusual for me to do a lot of pre-planning on where I’m going to eat at these competitions only for that to be derailed when I get there. I didn’t think I was going to get BBQ when I ended up going to Saginaw for lunch instead of somewhere in Midland. I’m glad I started looking for restaurants around my destination. I was still able to get delicious BBQ which made an already pretty good day just a little bit better.
SW Michigan Dining 