Baby Wale
1124 9th StreetThe trip to Washington DC from West Michigan is a long one. With a few stops, it took us a little over 11 hours.
We got to our hotel in Downtown Washington DC right around 8:00. We got settled in to our rooms and decided to go find dinner. The clerk at the hotel gave us a list of nearby places. I found one that looked pretty good and was only a couple of blocks away so we headed there.
Baby Wale is on 9th Street near M Street across the street from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The restaurant is described as “an industrial style pub.” It’s along a very busy street in what looks like old row row style mixed use units.
Primanti Brothers (Strip District)
46 18th StreetI told you it was going to be a couple weeks of travel blog posts. I essentially went from Des Moines, IA to Washington D.C. with just two days off at home in Kalamazoo.
My colleague and I had to drive to D.C. It’s about a 10 1/2 drive from Grand Rapids. It’s not a cake walk but it’s not a bad drive either.
The best thing about driving that route was that we were going to be going around Pittsburgh. Sure…we could have skirted around it on the highways that bypass the city, but I had a better idea. Lunch at one of Pittsburgh’s most famous restaurants.
If you’ve watched any travel show about Pittsburgh or any show about great sandwiches in the country, you’ve heard of Primanti Bros. I have never had a reason to go to Pittsburgh before but now that I had one, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity.
The original Primanti Bros. location is in The Strip District on 18th Street. The Strip District runs along the Allegheny River. It’s populated by converted warehouses and has become kind of a hip area. Primanti Bros., however, has been there long before that happened. The shop was set up in the early 1930’s when the surrounding buildings were still actually used as warehouses.
Iowa 80 Kitchen
755 W. Iowa 80 RoadSometimes on road trips, you just do the kitschy things. Sometimes, you just go to the tourist traps along the highway just to say you did.
Two co-workers and I spent five days in Des Moines, IA. Our travel day home was Sunday. I really wanted to get back to Kalamazoo by 4 PM so I could go to ice skating with my daughter. I made the other two guys get up at 5:03 AM so we could get on the road. I had to take them back to Grand Rapids which extended my trip….and I wanted to stop for breakfast.
There are probably several great breakfast places in Des Moines and there are several truck stop options along I-80 heading back towards The Quad Cities, but that’s not what you do in Iowa. Nope. You wait and go to the “World’s Largest Truck Stop.”
Iowa 80 Kitchen is part of the Iowa 80 Truck Stop on Iowa 80 Road right off Interstate 80 in Walcott, IA at the Plainview Road exit just west of Davenport. You can’t miss the place. It’s huge. They claim to be the World’s Largest Truck Stop. Not sure if they have themselves that title or it’s something official, but it definitely is a rather large truck stop.
Maid-Rite (Ankeny)
802 SE Oralabor RoadThe best thing about traveling is hitting up the local legendary places. I worked in Central Illinois for about five years and made many trips to Iowa City and Cedar Rapids so I was fairly familiar with what a Maid-Rite is….but the two guys I was traveling with this week had no clue.
We needed a pretty quick lunch before starting our day on Saturday. I had noticed one of those blue signs on the highway for a Maid-Rite at the exit before ours. The guys I was with had no idea where we were going but they didn’t care as long as we were getting food.
Maid-Rite in Ankeny is Oralabor Road just west of the interchange with I-35. The restaurant is a fairly new one in a strip mall near the Walmart.
Zombie Burger + Drink Bar (Des Moines)
300 E. Grand AvenueOverwhelmingly, there was one place that was recommended to us over and over again as we went through our weekend in Des Moines. Finding time to get to that place was another issue.
Our fourth night in Des Moines was Friday night. We got down with our work downtown mid-evening then heading back out to our rental in Ankeny. A couple more hours of work sitting at the kitchen table led to discussions about food.
It was about nine o’clock when one of my colleagues and I decided to head back downtown. The other guy had picked up Wendy’s on the way back to the rental and was fine with it. He still had some work that he wanted to get done before going to bed so he stayed behind.
We headed back towards downtown Des Moines to find Zombie Burger + Drink Bar. We had heard so much about this place that we had to make the trip back in to the city.
The restaurant is on the corner of Grand and 4th on the east side of the Des Moines river in the East Village area of the city. The restaurant looks to be part of a mixed used building in an area of Des Moines where we noticed a lot of bars and a lot of foot traffic on a Friday night. Read more…
Lina’s Mexican Restaurant
1221 Keosauqua Way, Suite 101Thursday night in Des Moines was a late one. It was almost midnight by the time we got done with our work and it had been quite a while since we had eaten.
I started doing Google searches to find a 24 hour restaurant. I didn’t find much. It was mostly McDonalds, Perkins, and IHOP. None of which sounded good.
I did find one that sounded good to me. Co-Workers didn’t agree but I honestly didn’t care. I told them we could stop at McDonalds if they wanted for them but I was getting Mexican.
Lina’s Mexican Restaurant is in a small strip mall at the corner of Keosauqua and Crocker on the southwest side of downtown. Unfortunately, the dining room is closed at this time of night and only the drive thru is open 24-hours. This worked out fine since, at first, it was just me getting food.
El Bait Shop
200 SW 2nd StreetI started asking around for brewery recommendations when I found out I was heading to Des Moines for the week. I got a few but what I got more of is, “You need to go to El Bait Shop.”
The first full day in Des Moines was a long one We put in a 12+ hour day and headed back to the house in Ankeny. I wanted to go back in to Des Moines for dinner and asked if anyone else was interested. One of the guys was. The other still had some work he wanted to get down and passed.
We headed back towards downtown to find this amazing craft beer restaurant I heard so much about. We found it on 2nd and Market Streets not too far away from Principal Field where the Iowa Cubs play. Read more…
Leaning Tower of Pizza (Uptown Ankeny)
512 SW 3rd StreetJ went on her first work trip at her now job two weeks ago. Three days later, it was my turn. I was heading to Des Moines, IA for six nights with a couple of co-workers
We drove the 7 1/2 hours to Des Moines (from Grand Rapids…I had to go there first) on Tuesday afternoon. We left GR around 1:30 and with just a couple of stops, we made it to Des Moines just before 9:00 Central time.
We did an AirBnB rental in a suburb of Des Moines called Ankeny. It was cheaper for the three of us to do that and this way we’d all get our own room. If we had done a hotel, at least two of us would have had to share rooms.
We had stopped for lunch in Tinley Park, Illinois. I wanted an Italian beef and there is an Al’s Beef right off I-80 there. When we got to Ankeny, we were starting to get hungry again.
I didn’t really want to go out for dinner. We needed to get settled in to the house and I just wanted to relax a little after that long drive. I asked if everyone was up for pizza. There was no arguments so I did a search and found something nearby that looked good.
I picked Leaning Tower of Pizza based on the pictures of their pizzas on Google. There are two locations of this joint in Ankeny but I went with the original one on 3rd Street.
The restaurant has been in this location since the 1980’s in a the oldest commercial building in Ankeny. The pizzeria itself has been a local tradition since the 1960’s when it started in Des Moines. Read more…
OpenRoad Brewery
128 S. Main StreetOur second trip to Grand Rapids last Saturday was also our second trip to Gerald R. Ford International Airport. We had to drop J’s mom off to fly back to Florida in the morning then go back later in the evening to pick J up from her trip to Las Vegas.
J wasn’t supposed to fly in to Grand Rapids. Her flight on Friday which ended in Kalamazoo was cancelled and the quickest way to get home to was to fly to GRR. It made for a long day for the kids and traveling back and forth on 131 but we were all happy to get her home.
The flight came in a little after 5:00 and we were just pulling into the parking garage as she landed. We found her at the gate, grabbed her bag, then started heading home.
I asked if she had eaten and she said yes, but it wasn’t very satisfying so she could eat again. I also knew she had originally planned for a get together with some friends so I asked if she still wanted to go there or go eat. She essentially said, “why not both?”
There’s a brewery in Wayland that I have been wanting to get to for quite a while. I have heard good things about it from friends but we don’t go north very often. I finally had my opportunity.
OpenRoad Brewery is in downtown Wayland on Main Street just south of Superior Street. The building is part of a downtown that utilizes street parking and lots behind the buildings We found a spot just around the corner on Pine Street and walked around to the front entrance.
Old Plank Road Restaurant
137 N. Main StreetSaturday was a crazy day. J’s mom had flown in from Florida to help me with after school care while J was in Las Vegas. She still has a couple more weeks down there before moving back up to St. Joseph County for the warm months. She flew Allegiant this time because there is a direct flight between Punta Gorda and Grand Rapids…and it was cheap.
Her flight Saturday morning left Grand Rapids at about 10:30. We had to get the kids up and get them in the car so we could get Nana to the airport in time. That would be the first of our two airport trips that day. You see, J’s flight from Las Vegas to Kalamazoo on Friday was cancelled the quickest way for her to get home was to fly in to Grand Rapids at 5:00 Saturday evening.
There was no way I could kill all day with the kids so we just made the trip twice. We dropped Nana off curbside at the airport, said our good-byes, then headed back towards home.
When we got close to Plainwell I asked the kids if they would want to stop for breakfast. Both of them said yes, so I pulled off the highway at 106th Street and headed towards downtown Plainwell. I knew there’s a couple of diners close to downtown so I just figured we’d stop at the first one we hit.
We found a spot to park on the street on North Main Street then walked a few doors down to Old Plank Road Restaurant. The diner is right along the busy stretch of town and is tucked into an old wood building with a stone facade. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 