Presidential Brewing Company
8302 Portage RoadCan we get back to (Kalamazoo)? If you’ve seen Hamilton, sing that as Thomas Jefferson at the beginning of The Election of 1800. After two weeks on the road, it’s time to get back to some Kalamazoo area blog posts.
I got home from D.C. around 7:00 on Monday night after driving all day. I had quite a bit of overtime and I had been gone for so long, my boss told me to take a couple of days off.
L was doing a theater camp again this year for Spring Break and since I was home, I told J I would pick her up as well as getting B from daycare. J gets home from work a little after 5:00 now. She didn’t feel like making dinner and I didn’t either…plus, she wanted to take me to a new brewery she and the kids went to with friends while I was traveling.
Presidential Brewing Company is yet another new brewery in the Kalamazoo metro area. It’s on Portage Road south of Centre Street. It’s actually in the building that used to be Lazer Land. The mini-golf course is still there but not being used at the moment. I guess they may try to rehab that and have some fun with it in the future.
Roy Rogers (North Somerset Travel Plaza)
179 N. Plaza Access RoadThis is it. After two weeks of travel in both Iowa and Washington, D.C., this is the last of my travel blogs. If you’ve been reading, yay! If not, I don’t blame you, but as I’ve said over and over these last ten years, this blog is essentially a journal for me…so that’s why I write about places not in Southwest Michigan.
I was nearing the point in my trip where I needed gas and a Pepsi or two. I don’t mind driving by myself and in some ways, prefer it, but I was starting to get tired and I wasn’t even halfway in to my trip yet.
I kept seeing signs for a place called Roy Rogers. This is, obviously, not a chain we have in Michigan despite being founded as a chain of roast beef stores in Ft. Wayne, IN. I didn’t know how far west they go. I knew if I was going to check this place out, I would have to do it soon.
Roy Rogers is a chain mostly in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States. They have a very convoluted history being bought and sold over the last several decades including being owned by Hardee’s at one point (I’ll come back to this in a few).
The Roy Rogers location I stopped at is actually run by HMS Host…the same people that do almost all of the airport food franchises. It’s in the north travel plaza on the Pennsylvania Turnpike just southeast of the city of Somerville, PA.
Waffle House (Urbana, MD)
8906 Fingerboard RoadTime to head home. I didn’t get to see many sites but actually had a pretty great time in D.C. for the work I was doing. I like to think I got to see more than the touristy stuff most people go to our nation’s capitol for.
My co-worker had something come up and needed to get home quicker than an 11 car ride would get him there so he ended up flying. I dropped him off at Reagan National around 8:30 AM then headed on the George Washington Parkway out of town. The next ten hours or so would just be me, some Marc Maron podcasts and long stretches of highway on the three Turnpike’s between me and Michigan.
I noticed on our way in to DC on Wednesday night we passes some Waffle Houses. I was looking for those on the way back hoping I was taking the same route. Near Frederick, Maryland I finally saw one of those little yellow signs on the big blue signs right off the highway.
The first one I came to was right off I-270 and MD-80 in the census designated community of Ubrana, Maryland. The newer looking building sits right next to a 7-11 Gas Station less than a half a mile from the freeway interchange.
Yard House (Chinatown)
812 7th Street NWOur last night in Washington, D.C. ended just before midnight. We headed back to our car having not eaten since lunch time, but it was almost midnight on a Sunday night so I assumed our options were limited.
We were driving down 7th Street heading back to our hotel and passed a few restaurants but other than McDonalds, all were closed.
As we hit the intersection of 7th and I Street, I saw lights on inside a restaurant so I quickly pulled over and Googled to see how late they were open. We had about another hour, so we made the decision to eat before heading back to the hotel for the night.
Yard House is a chain of upscale sports pubs based in California and owned by Darden Restaurants. Most of the stores are west of the Mississippi and located in large cities. Here in Michigan, there is one in Troy.
The D.C. location is in Chinatown somewhat near Capital One Arena where there are lot of similar type pubs. The restaurant is right on the corner of a multi-story mixed used building. Parking is whatever you can find in the area. There are some garages as well as on street spots.
Shake Shack (Logan Circle)
1400 14th Street NWI woke up our last full day in Washington, D.C. not feeling very well. I knew we were going to have a late night of work and the chance of getting dinner before midnight was pretty slim. I knew I had to find something to eat but I didn’t know what.
My co-worker took the morning to go do some sightseeing. I chose to sleep in and it’s a choice I don’t regret. One of these days I’ll get back to DC to do the sightseeing thing. We were in town to work and we were working long hours so I took advantage of the late start on Sunday.
I crawled out of bed around 11:00 and took a shower hoping that would help me feel better. It didn’t. I thought maybe if I ate that would help.
As I’ve mentioned in a few of my other blog posts, there really wasn’t any walk up counter service places around where I was staying. I expanded my search a little bit thinking a walk would do me good and I finally found a recognizable place that I don’t get very many opportunities to eat at.
Shake Shack has multiple locations in the DC area, but the closest one to me was the Logan Circle location on the corner of 14th Street and Rhode Island Avenue. The restaurant takes up space on the ground floor of a pretty new looking mixed-use building on a very busy corner with a number of shops and other restaurants. Read more…
Dacha Beer Garden
1600 7th Street NWI grew up near Chicago so I learned early on how to drive in a busy city. I’ve always laughed at people who complain about “Detroit traffic.”
I always thought the only place worse than Chicago for traffic would be New York City. I think I may have been wrong. Washington, D.C. is a nightmare.
A lot of big city traffic headaches come on the freeways but Washington, D.C.’s surface streets are amazingly awful. We stayed pretty close to downtown but tried to venture out in to the neighborhoods for meals.
We had a fairly early end to our day on Saturday so my colleague started asking around for restaurant suggestions. The one he kept getting was for the Federalist Pig. Unfortunately, they were closed by the time we made it out that way so we started looking for back ups. We tried another brewery closer to our hotel before getting frustrated with trying to drive around town and just started heading back. He was going to go out with some friends and I figured I’d just find a place I could walk to from the hotel.
We passed Dacha Beer Garden on our way back to the hotel. That’s a place that had been on my list of places to try while in town since it was close to us and, as luck would have it, there was an open parking spot right in front of the building. I whipped into the spot before asking my colleague if this was ok. It had beer and food so he was on board.
Dacha Beer Garden is an open air beer garden on the corner of 7th and Q Streets in the Shaw Neighborhood near downtown Washington, D.C.
SUNdeVICH (9th Street)
1314 9th StreetSaturday brought some of the same challenges as Friday. We didn’t have to get up really early for work. In fact, we didn’t have to start until late afternoon. That meant I had to find something for lunch before going to work.
Just like the night before, I wanted something quick and cheap. I decided to walk in the Shaw Neighborhood near our hotel to see what I could find.
Pretty much all I could find was hip sit down restaurants. Not really what I was looking for. I put “sandwich” in to Google to see what would come up. I got about ten different Subway’s and a place called SUNdeVICH.
SUNdeVICH is a counter service sandwich shop in an alley off 9th Street between N and O. The alleyway entrance is right across the street from the BP gas station on 9th. The restaurant itself is about halfway down the block in an old garage that has been converted into the restaurant.
Pizza D’Oro (T Street)
717 T Street NWFinding cheap places to eat in Washington D.C. was not easy. There were a lot of fantastic choices for meals around where we were staying by the Convention Center but I wasn’t always in the mood for a sit-down, cloth napkin kind of meal.
Our third day of this trip to DC started really early in the morning and ended really late at night. We finished our day a little before midnight. As we were walking back to the car to head back to the hotel, I asked my colleague if he wanted a pizza. I had spent about half my shift looking for a carry-out pizza place near our hotel and finally found one.
Pizza D’Oro has two D.C. locations but the one at T Street and 7th Street near Howard University was the one closest to us. Like most of D.C., parking was insane. This area has a lot of bars and nightclubs as well. It was a Friday night and parking was at a premium. Somehow, I got lucky and found a spot just across 7th Street on T. We parked and walked the half block back to the building.
Lincoln’s Waffle Shop
504 10th Street NWI don’t like getting up early when I travel. I love sleeping in hotels with the air cranked to 64 degrees and the black out shades pulled so I could sleep until after noon and still think it’s the middle of the night.
My boss had other plans last Friday. We had to get up well before dawn for our first task of the day. We’d then be able to go back to the hotel and back to bed for several hours before our evening task.
We were up at breakfast time though and when I’m up at breakfast time, I want breakfast.
We were in downtown Washington, D.C. so I started looking for someplace nearby that didn’t serve “brunch.” I wanted breakfast. Cheap diner food. And what do you know….I found one.
Lincoln’s Waffle Shop is on 10th Street right across the street from Ford’s Theater. This area of downtown D.C. is kind of touristy because of the theater. There isn’t much parking along this stretch of 10th and what little there is was taken up by street vendors getting set up for the tourists that would eventually make their way down to see where Abraham Lincoln was shot. The brightly painted restaurant that has been in this location for over twenty years doesn’t really look like it fits in with the rest of downtown. which is much more polished. Read more…
Carving Room Kitchen & Bar
300 Massachusetts Avenue NWOur first full day in Washington, D.C. was a pretty long work day. We got done with our tasks a little after 6:30.
We talked about heading back to the hotel and finding some place to walk to for dinner again but I had been searching Google for a place to eat.
I was really craving a pastrami sandwich after eating at Primanti Bros. the day before. I figured DC had to have some good deli’s or something.
I found a couple of options but the one that looked really good was Carving Room Kitchen & Bar on Massachusetts Avenue NW.
Carving Room is part of a large mixed used development across from the US Government Accountability Office. The entrance is actually on 4th Street east of H Avenue. We were lucky enough to find street parking just down the block from where we were going.
SW Michigan Dining 