The Colonel’s Kitchen
330 N. Drake RoadIt’s been a while since we’ve gone out to breakfast as a family.
This past weekend was definitely a recharge weekend for everyone. Our figure skating season ended at the National Solo Dance Finals held here in Kalamazoo at Wings Event Center last week.
J is on the board of the Greater Kalamazoo Skating Association so she had a lot to do all week. She was at the rink from early in the morning to pretty late at night pretty much all week.
By the time Sunday rolled around, everyone was content to just lay around and do nothing.
I slept in pretty late Sunday morning and when I walked out to lay on the couch, I told J I was hungry. She said she was too and we should go to breakfast. That was kind of my intention when I said I was hungry. I was really glad she validate that.
We got everyone up and dressed and headed out the door. Like I said, it had been a while since we all went to breakfast together.
We headed up Drake Road to The Colonel’s Kitchen. This is a new restaurant in a space that had been a breakfast joint for years. Colonial Kitchen closed earlier this year after 53 years in business at various locations around the Kalamazoo area. A few months later, the restaurant was reopened as The Colonel’s Kitchen by a longtime patron of the previous business.
The Colonel’s Kitchen is on Drake Road just south of the West Main intersection. The restaurant is part of a small shopping center on the east side of the road. The restaurant is on the back end of the building furthest to the north. It sits right next to a mattress shop and an AT&T store.
It has been a few years since I’ve been in the building and when I blogged about Colonial Kitchen, I wasn’t taking pictures inside yet. I know the space has been update because there are two large murals on the back wall and the wall of the kitchen. The back wall is West Point Academy. The new owner is an alum. The other mural is a Colonial Kitchen original. It has been framed out to add emphasis. The main dining room space is a large, wide open room with a green, gold, and black color scheme…the colors of the US Army.
The hostess asked if we’d like a booth or a table. We said it didn’t matter and she took us to a booth in a small dining room in the front of the restaurant. A waitress followed us over and got drink orders right away as we were looking over the menu.
We had left the house to go get breakfast but it turns out, I was the only one who actually ordered breakfast.
My pick was the Eggs Benedict. I got the classic option with an English Muffin, grilled ham, poached eggs and hollandaise. The first thing I noticed was the hollandaise looked like it had broken. It was a bit lumpy but it tasted fine. Everything underneath was pretty classic. The eggs were perfectly poached while the ham had just the slightest char. The plate came with a fruit cup. Hashbrowns were a couple of bucks extra which is kind of a bummer. I went ahead and paid the extra because it’s just not breakfast at a diner without potatoes.
Everyone else went for lunch.
J always says loves a good diner grilled cheese so that’s what she ordered. It’s a super simple grilled cheese on white bread with a couple of slices of American cheese between the slices. The sandwich had that perfect diner-esque golden toast to it. Her sandwich came with battered seasoned fries which were pretty tasty for a kind of fry I don’t really like.
L ordered her new favorite sandwich, the BLT. She asked for it with no tomatoes and light mayo. The first thing she said when she got it was she’d had to see what full mayo was if this was light. The rest of the sandwich was classic. Crispy bacon and crisp lettuce. She ordered tater tots as her side and even with a little more mayo than she wanted, she ate the whole thing and was happy with her lunch.
B kind of regressed to his toddler days and trying to argue with us about not being hungry. We made him get something and he picked the cheeseburger off the Little Troops menu. The cheeseburger is a simple frozen patty topped with American cheese and served with fries. He took two bites and said it “tasted funny” which was total BS. I grabbed the sandwich and it was a totally find cheeseburger. We weren’t going to argue with him at the restaurant so we asked for a box and took it home where I ate it…..and enjoyed it…for dinner later that night.
Our bill for breakfast/lunch was right around $55. One of the things that may or may not have led to the eventual downfall of Colonial Kitchen was that they still, in 2026, only took cash. That was one of the changes The Colonel’s Kitchen made. In fact, I didn’t even have to go anywhere to pay the bill. The check came with a QR code on it to pay so I paid it right at the table on my phone.
The Colonel’s Kitchen is about what you’d expect from a successor to Colonial Kitchen. It’s a simple, delicious family diner. The kind of place where you could easily become a regular.
