O’Neals Smokehouse
525 S. Broadway StreetFriday night and I’m getting out of Kalamazoo for a little overtime shift.
I actually headed pretty far south. My final destination was Edwardsburg which is in Cass County near the Michigan/Indiana state line.
I’ve gotten sent down that way before. It’s a pretty long trip that is two lane and country roads most of the way down there. I had the advantage that I had some time. I didn’t work my normal 9-5 shift. I worked a very early morning shift that saw me off the clock by about 11:00. I went home, took a nap, picked the kids up from school, dropped them off at Wings Event Center, then started making my way towards Edwardsburg a little before 5:00
I’ve done the pizza a few times when I’ve gone to Edwardsburg. One time I stopped at Papa’s Pizzeria. Another time I went in to Indiana and got dinner at Jimmy’s Pizza & Ribs in Granger.
I started looking for food options along my route as I always do and I found something that sounded better than pizza along the way.
O’Neals Smokehouse is on the corner of Broadway Street and Reed Street just across the road from Stone Lake in Cassopolis. The small building has been a restaurant for many years but just became a BBQ joint a coupe of years ago. For a long time, it was a pizza joint called Marcello’s Pizzeria. I actually made a trip down there one night (on my way home from Edwardsburg) because it was kind of a Chicago style pizza joint with a delicious thin crust Italian beef pizza. After that closed, it briefly became Ploughman’s Market before a BBQ company called The Hotbox Munchies bought it and the place became O’Neals Smokehouse
The restaurant does have online ordering but it felt like a lot was missing from the ordering website. I decided to take a chance and see if there were more options if I just ordered in store so I waited until I got there to put in my order.
The set up of the restaurant feels a little bit different than I remember it when it was Marcello’s Pizzeria but it still felt kind of familiar. The space isn’t very big. The order counter runs perpendicular to the door and there is a menu written on a chalkboard on the back wall. As I suspected, there were options on the chalkboard that weren’t on the online ordering menu. There were also items online that weren’t on the chalkboard menu but were on a paper menu on the counter.
There is no seating inside the restaurant which is a slight change from Marcello’s. There used to be a few tables and chairs but those are gone and there is no just a padded bench to sit on while waiting for your order to come up.
You don’t normally have to wait too long for BBQ to come up but if you’re the type of person that bores easily, there’s a Mortal Combat machine along the wall next to the bathrooms so you could knock out a couple of fights while waiting for your food.
Outside of the restaurant, they have built a decent little outdoor dining area with views of Stone Lake. There are a couple of picnic tables under a pergola for those looking to sit and eat their meal before leaving.
The reason I waited until I got to the store to order was because I wanted a brisket sandwich and that wasn’t an option online. It is an option in store so I ordered that and an order of fries. Turns out, fries come with the sandwich so I was charged any extra. The cost of the meal was right around $15 and it took less than ten minutes for my bag of food to be handed over to me.
I popped open the box with the fries first. I still had to make my way to Edwardsburg so I knew I could eat those on the way. The fries were simple frozen crinkle cut fries that were very crispy on the outside. I kind of wished I had a bit of BBQ sauce to dip them in. They were fine without it but they were just frozen fries with a little salt. It was a good amount to keep me happy until I got to the job site and could get in to the sandwich.
I could smell the smokiness of the meat the whole way to my next stop. The brisket sandwich was smokey, tender, thick slices of brisket piled pretty high on a white bread bun with a drizzle of sauce. The meat was so tender it just melted in my mouth. It was the kind of brisket where you savor every single bite. There was a slight peppery taste to the meat with a blast of smoke in each bite. It’s one of those sandwiches that your just sad to get to the end of. It was so good and exactly the way brisket should be.
I don’t get to Cassopolis very often and that’s a shame. O’Neals Smokehouse is a reason to go to Cassopolis. I had never heard of the place until I started looking for someplace to stop for dinner but I was sold as soon as I saw it.
