Dairy Queen (Gull Road)
330 Gull RoadEvery so often, a commercial for a national restaurant brand will catch my attention.
That happened recently with Dairy Queen. The nostalgia really kicks in for Dairy Queen because that was the only fast food restaurant in my small town of less than 800 people when I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s. It was on the edge of town near the highway interchange. Because it was the 80’s, we’d ride our bikes the mile from our house to Dairy Queen to get both lunch and, usually, a Blizzard.
I keep seeing ads for Dairy Queen’s new “Swicy Menu.” Fast food spicy isn’t usually hot enough for me but I still thought it sounded interesting and really wanted to try the Flame Thrower Chicken Strip basket. It comes with spicy chicken tenders and vanilla soft serve to dip them in. Yeah, it’s a gimmick but it caught my attention.
I’m just gonna give you a spoiler alert. Something I should have already known. The Kalamazoo Dairy Queen’s don’t serve the Dairy Queen food menu They have food but it’s not what you see in the ads. I’ll get to that.
I knew the Portage, Milwood, and Michigan Avenue locations didn’t do the full Grill and Chill menu but I thought the one of Gull Road did. It looks more like the newer Dairy Queen’s and not the older, ice cream focused locations. So I headed there on my dinner break Monday night.
The Dairy Queen on Gull Road is west of Nazareth Road across the street from the old Nazareth campus. It’s a standalone building that looks like a fast food joint. There’s a pretty good reason for that.
This Dairy Queen location used to be a Popeyes chicken. It closed in 2008 and was converted to a Dairy Queen. It’s funny now because there have been two new Popeye’s opened in Kalamazoo, to much fanfare, including one just down the road. You can still see some of the old Popeyes signage near the road at the entrance and exit to the property.
I skipped the drive thru and headed in to the building to order. The space is a typical fast food joint. There’s a large order counter right as you walk in the door with the menu hanging from back light sign boards.
This was when I realized my mistake and honestly, almost left. Like the other Kalamazoo Dairy Queen locations, they don’t have the Dairy Queen food menu. The food menu is very small and it’s labeled as “Local Menu.” It’s pretty much hot dogs and sandwiches. They don’t even have chicken tenders on the menu.
I was already there so I said screw it. It wasn’t what I wanted but I decided to just order dinner anyway. I got myself a cheeseburger and fries plus a Blizzard. The cost was right over $15 but most of that cost was the medium Blizzard.
There was only one employee working at the time and there was a big group right in front of me that ordered ice cream. She was finishing that up as she took my order so I knew it was going to be a few minutes. I just grabbed a seat in the dining room, which looks like a 90’s fast food dining room, and waited for my order to come up.
The ice cream came up first. I ordered the Reese’s Pieces Cookie Dough Blizzard which is one of their new special ones. I love the cookie dough Blizzards and I like Reese’s Pieces so I thought what the heck. It’s actually a pretty solid combination. I went a little slow eating it while I waited for the food to come up but who doesn’t like dessert before the meal?
The cheeseburger is the same as the cheeseburger at the Michigan Avenue location. It appears they just throw it in to a Merrychef instead of grilling it. It’s a fine cheeseburger. Nothing special. You can pick the toppings but I wasn’t really feeling it so I kept it simple with just cheese.
The fries were, again, nothing remarkable. They might have just been thrown into the Merrychef as well. I didn’t hear then get dropped in to a fryer and they came out a little limp like they were baked instead of fried. They were fine and there was a lot of them. Definitely not my favorite type of fries but I was hungry and these did the job.
Obviously, this was a bit of a disappointment because I was really looking forward to something that wasn’t on the menu. Once you get past that, it was a fine meal. The Kalamazoo Dairy Queen’s are much more “Treats” focused than “Eats.” I will always love a Blizzard so there was a bright spot to the meal.
SW Michigan Dining 