Nagle’s Top Dog & Malt Shoppe

• 1210 S. Burdick Street
• Kalamazoo, MI 49001
• (269) 342-2031
• No Known Website
• Menu

Cheap lunch has become something that doesn’t mean what we want it to mean. Comparatively, there are still places around town get a cheap lunch but that is only cheap when you compare it to other places.

That’s a lot of words to say everything is expensive.

I usually wait to get lunch on Friday until I head out to my overtime shift. I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of time between my normal Friday shift and the overtime shift last week so I decided to just grab lunch at a normal time like a normal person.

Being that last week was the beginning of the month, I also knew we had a lot of bills coming out of that paycheck so I didn’t want to over do it on lunch. To do that, I usually just go to fast food but instead of the chain fast food places, I had another place that I haven’t been to in years not too far from downtown.

Nagle’s Top Dog & Malt Shoppe has been a staple in Kalamazoo on the corner of Crosstown Parkway and Burdick Street for over 50 years. The small shop looks very much like a fast food joint from the 1970’s with the addition of a dog house on top to carry on with the theme. While it looks very much like a 70’s fast food joint, it also looks like there has been much done to the place since the ’70’s. It’s a pretty basic building with a small parking lot off to the south right on a busy corner in the heart of the city.

The set up to the restaurant is pretty classic fast food. Right inside the door, there’s a cash register behind large panes of glass. The menu is taped to the counter or on rail and letter boards hung on the back wall. You also have to pay attention to the dry erase boards propped up in the windows for daily specials and other unique offerings.

There really isn’t a menu online anywhere so I had to take a second to look it over when I got in. I knew I wanted a burger and fries. They have a couple of burger options but I kept it simple with a plain bacon cheeseburger and a large order of fries. The cost was a little over $12.

While I’ve been calling Top Dog “fast food” it’s not the kind of fast food that sits under a warming lamp. It still had to be cooked so I took a seat in the dining room to wait. Like the exterior, the dining room has a very classic 1970’s/80’s feel to it. There are rows of laminate booths that are super uncomfortable but still slightly nostalgic. The unique part of the dining room is the wood burning stove on the far end. Apparently, this thing runs all winter long. There’s a little seating area around it which kind of gives off coffee shop vibes.

The thing you won’t find in any other fast food joint is the books. There are so many books stacked around the restaurant and they’re all for sale for $1. The books were something the owner’s grandmother introduced to the shop and it’s stuck around ever since. There is also a “free” shelf near the door that has random items that people have either brought in or left in one of the owner’s other properties.

It took about ten minutes for my order to come up and by then, I had stopped looking around this really unique dining room. I grabbed the bag of food and headed back to the car.

I pulled the fries out first. I was pretty hungry and I decided I couldn’t wait. The fries were very simple frozen crinkle cut fries but they were done just perfectly. They had a very crispy, salty exterior and a light, fluffy, interior. These fries didn’t last long. I had them gone by the time I got back to the office.

When I got back to the office and unwrapped the burger, I think my co-worker was a little mad I didn’t ask him to join me for lunch. This sandwich is the quintessential diner burger. It’s a quarter pound burger with two slices of bacon and American cheese. It’s had those crispy little bits around the edges and super crispy bacon. It’s not a smash burger but it has a lot of the same flavor profiles as a smash burger…just with a little more heft. This was a really delicious burger and one of those burgers that I was sad when the last bite transferred from my fingers to my mouth.

I started this blog talking about cheap meals and in the grand scheme of things, this is a delicious cheap meal. I could have added on a drink or a shake but I already had one back at the shop. For comparisons sake, this is not my first time at Nagle’s Top Dog. J and I ate there way back in 2011. On that trip, both of us ate for just a little over $11 and that include two drinks. That’s how much prices have gone up in the last fifteen years. Not a fault of the restaurant..just the way things are.

This was a really good burger from Nagle’s Top Dog & Malt Shoppe. It’s also a place that I drive by almost daily and haven’t given much thought to in a while. I really shouldn’t do that. This is way better than corporate fast food and it’s a meal that won’t put a huge dent in the wallet.