Harvey’s (Kingston – Division St.)
1141 Division StreetOur time in Lake Placid had ended and we needed to head back to Michigan.
On the way to Upstate New York, we went through Niagara Falls so we could stop at the falls and check that out. It’s not actually the quickest way to where we were going. It was still faster than going through Ohio and Pennsylvania, but the quickest route from Kalamazoo, MI to Lake Placid, NY is to take Highway 401 all the way up to Edwardsburg/Cardinal, ON and enter the US at Ogdensburg, NY using the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge.
On the way home, we took that route. We left Lake Placid around 5 PM and headed north to Canada.
We had planned all along to only make it about three hours Thursday night then finish the drive Friday morning. We started looking at hotels near Kingston, ON and J found a very cheap Motel 6 with great reviews. I keep telling people there is no way I would stay in a Motel 6 in the States but this one in Kingston was really nice and not typically what I think of when I think of a Motel 6.
We didn’t eat before leaving Lake Placid and we only stopped for snacks as soon as we got through the border crossing so by the time we were pulling in to Kingston a little after 8:00, everyone was hungry.
J had found a couple of sit down places that sounded good but actually sitting down for a meal didn’t sound like a good idea.
The last time I drove through Canada, I made it a point to stop at a very Canadian fast food place based on a joke from How I Met Your Mother. J used to watch that show with me and wanted to stop for the same reason. They’re all over Ontario and there was one not too far from our hotel. So we stopped.
That chain is Harvey’s. It’s a Canadian hamburger fast food chain with almost 300 locations….most of them are in Ontario. We stopped at the one in Kingston on Division Street south of First Canada Avenue in a highly commercialized area of town just south of the interchange with Highway 401. This Harvey’s looks like any other fast food place with a pretty generic box shape on a narrow lot. Since J and the kids had never been to a Harvey’s before, we skipped the drive thru and went inside.
No surprises when you walk in. There’s an order counter at the back of the space with a menu board hanging on TV screens. The ordering is slightly different from most fast food places in that you have a little bit more control over toppings on sandwiches but you don’t order those right away. You just order the kind of sandwich you want. I explained that to everyone before we got to the front of the line in hopes to make the menu a little easier to understand
Once you order your sandwich, it’s made like a typical fast food sandwich but then it’s brought up to a front line where you pick your toppings. It’s kind of like a Subway model but with burgers.
We decided to just eat in because we hadn’t checked in to the hotel yet and it wouldn’t take too long to eat fast food. Half of the dining room was closed off for the night but we grabbed a table on the other side and waited for all of our food to come up.
I ordered the Angus Burger with Cheese and bacon. The sandwich is a 1/4 lb. angus burger with bacon and “processed cheddar style cheese” or American cheese as we call it. I added on lettuce, pickles, and buffalo sauce. Why buffalo sauce? I have no idea but it was actually really good. I liked the spiciness of the sauce with the grilledness of the burger. It’s obviously a fast food burger but it’s pretty tasty and it’s something we don’t have in Michigan.
I upgraded my side to poutine because…Canada. I stuck with the Classic Poutine which is just fries made with 100% Canadian potatoes, vegetable gravy and cheese curds. You get a pretty decent size box and it’s covered by not drenched in gravy. There’s a good amount of cheese curds too so you can get some in every bite. The box comes with a fork which is definitely needed.
J ordered the Crispy Chicken Sandwich then topped it with pickles and Harv Sauce. The chicken is a crispy fried chicken breast on a bun. She thought the Harv Sauce looked like Fry Sauce (a mayo-ketchup mixture popular in the American west) but she said it was really spicy. The company calls it a blend of smokey, sweet, and tangy to pair with their burger. She wasn’t able to finish the sandwich because of the spice.
She got fries as a side to her sandwich. These are pretty good fast food fries. I had the same ones in the poutine but it was covered in gravy. They remind me a lot of Wendy’s fries or Arby’s old homestyle fries. They’re skin on fries that crisp up pretty well.
We got the kids each an eight piece chicken nugget. L is pretty particular when it comes to nuggets. She likes Wendy’s but that’s about it. She said there was too much breading and these were too crunchy. She ate a couple of them but not a whole lot. B took a few bites and didn’t really like them either but he didn’t tell me why. I wasn’t going to toss good nuggets in to the trash so I took them to the hotel with us and ate them for breakfast the next day. They are way crispier than typical fast food nuggets and that seemed to throw the kids off.
B talked us in to a Frozen Sour Patch Kids Blue Raspberry Frozen Drink. We let him get a small and it was really tart. He really liked it but it turned his entire mouth blue. Not sure how he and J got all that blue off before he went to bed.
The cost for our meal was a little over $50 CAD.
This is my second trip to a Harvey’s and both times, I was the only one who liked the meal. I was also the only one who got a burger. B wasn’t paying attention and got mad when he saw I had a burger. He said he didn’t realize it was a burger place…..despite all the advertisements showing burgers and me asking if he wanted a burger or chicken. The chicken has been a miss for both my colleague who I ate with last time and with my whole family who joined me on this trip. That’s a bummer. I was hoping they’d like it just because it is something different.
Harvey’s is fast food and if we had them on every corner in Michigan like we do other fast food, they would blend in to the scenery. The uniqueness is in the assembly line dressing of the burger after it comes out of the kitchen. The food is fast food though, but, like I said, I enjoyed it and I would absolutely stop at a Harvey’s again if I was driving through Canada.
SW Michigan Dining 