Brown Iron Brewhouse
57695 Van Dyke AvenueSo, even at work, I’ve become the guy who always has a place to eat no matter what town we’re in.
A co-worker and I traveled to the east side of the state on Saturday to Macomb County. Our day was broken up with about a three hour break in the middle of the afternoon. We could have just sat in the car watching Netflix on our phones but lunch sounded like a better idea. Co-worker looked at me and said, “You already have a place picked out, don’t you?”
The place I picked out was Brown Iron Brewhouse in Washington Township. The restaurant is a huge building on Van Dyke Avenue north of 26 Mile Road. The big brick building was built new about three years ago for the restaurant. Read more…
Arcadia Brewing Company
701 E. Michigan AvenueWe have been really big fans of Arcadia Brewing Company for a long time. From the first time we ate at their now closed Battle Creek pub to the many times we stopped in to the Kalamazoo tap room for a quick weekend meal before getting on our with our plans for the day.
The thing we have always loved about Arcadia Ales, other than the beer and the food, is the deli counter service. We could always get in and out pretty quickly, but we were always there at non-busy times. The service worked great for us. Grab a quick meal and a couple of drinks and we could be in and out in less than a half hour.
That all changed a few week ago when Arcadia moved to a full service restaurant. I’m sure we were in the minority with liking the counter service and, like I said, we were always there at off-peak times so I have no idea what the wait was like on Friday and Saturday nights.
I got off work early on Friday because I was going to be working an incredibly long overtime shift on Saturday. We picked L up from the bus stop and asked where she wanted to go for dinner. She actually suggested Arcadia because she likes their mac & cheese. I’m not going to argue when my kid picks a delicious brewery for dinner.
Things have changed since the last time I blogged about Arcadia Ales when they opened in 2014. The Battle Creek pub and production facility are closed. All the beer is now produced at this facility on Michigan Avenue right next to the Kalamazoo River. Read more…
W.K. Kellogg Bird Sanctuary
12685 East C Avenue- Augusta, MI 49012
- (269) 671-2510
- Website
It’s nice outside. It’s finally nice outside. We no longer have to feel trapped inside the house on weekends.
This past Sunday, we met some friends for lunch at Latitude 42 in Oshtemo right when they opened at 11:00. We wanted to get a table near the play area so we could watch the kids and still be able to have a conversation. We tied up a table for about an hour and a half then went our separate ways.
J wasn’t ready to go home yet and neither was I. She had read about free admission to a place we had never been to but heard good things about. It was a nice day and we wanted to be outside so why not? We strapped the kids in and made our way towards northeastern Kalamazoo County.
The W.K. Kellogg Bird Sanctuary is part of Michigan State University’s Kellogg Biological Station. The sanctuary was gifted to MSU in 1928 after being opened a year earlier as a refuge. The sanctuary takes up a large track of land that includes Wintergreen Lake near the southeastern edge of Gull Lake in Ross Township. Read more…
Five Star Pizza (Marshall)
104 Michigan AvenueEveryone knows Friday night is pizza night, right? I mean, that’s a universal thing…right?
Last Friday I was stuck in Lansing pretty late for work. J went ahead and got pizza for her and the kids from Cottage Inn on KL Avenue like we do quite often. I wanted to take advantage of being away from home to find a new pizza place. Every little town has it’s own pizza place so I had a lot to choose from between East Lansing and Kalamazoo.
I looked at places in Charlotte and Marshall because they were the bigger towns and closest to the highway on the way home. Both had something that would work but I chose the Marshall one since I’d be a little closer to home by then.
Five Star Pizza is in downtown Marshall on Michigan Avenue just west of Jefferson Street. It looks like the building may have been a Schlotsky’s at one point before it became home to this local pizza chain. Read more…
Two Fellas Grill (Drake Road)
1381 S. Drake RoadWe had a great opportunity to introduce L to live theater last week. The Lion King was playing at Miller Auditorium. She has never actually seen The Lion King movie but it’s a Disney movie so we thought she’d love the musical.
No surprise, she loved it. We went with a group of friends and had pretty good seats about sixteen rows from the stage. At intermission she said to us, “I could do that! I should be up there!”
The one draw back to the show was the length. J and I have been to several shows so the almost three hour run time was expected. L isn’t used to sitting that long. When we asked if she liked it, she kept saying “It was really long.” Once we said we just wouldn’t take her to another show if she didn’t like the length, she changed her tune and said it was fine. She really enjoyed herself.
We walked out of miller about 10:00. That’s really late for all of us anymore. We were all pretty hungry when we left the theater and L asked if we could get something to eat. We had discussed going to McDonalds but J came up with an even better idea.
We headed back towards Drake Road and pulled in to Drake Plaza which is where the second Kalamazoo location of Two Fellas Grill opened up a few months ago (they also have one in West Lafayette, IN). According to a Western Herald article, the original idea was just to use the space as a kitchen for take-out orders but they acquired the space behind them as well and decided to make it another walk-in option as well.
Final Gravity Brewing Company (Kalamazoo)
246 N. Burdick StreetMore beer is a good thing for Kalamazoo. J and I love going to the great breweries we have in town and we were excited when we heard a Van Buren County brewery was going to open a location in downtown Kalamazoo.
A few years back, J and I took a trip to Decatur for dinner. We had a babysitter and wanted to get to someplace we had never been before. I found Final Gravity Brewing at the Bell’s Funvitational and really enjoyed the beers. At that time, their only taproom was in Decatur. That’s not the case anymore.
Final Gravity Brewing’s second location is in downtown Kalamazoo on the section of Burdick Street that is still closed off between Water and Eleanor Streets. The pub is closest to Eleanor Street which has plenty of nearby parking either on the street at meters or in nearby Ramp 4.
El Taco Mexican Grill
4550 W. Dickman RoadI never like passing up a taco place. That happened a few months ago as I was driving from Battle Creek to Augusta on M-96. I passed a store that had huge banners out front with the word “TACOS” on it. I didn’t have time to stop but I filed it away as a place I needed to stop next time I was in the area.
Late last week, my co-worker and I were on the west side of Battle Creek. We had some time to kill and I remembered that little taco stand. I didn’t even give him a choice. I told him we were going to get tacos and go to get tacos we did.
El Taco Mexican Grill is on Dickman Road (or M-89) just to the southeast of Hill Brady Road in Springfield. The small taco stand is inside Custer Party Store #2. Read more…
Five Guys (Oshtemo)
5153 W. Main StreetThis is dangerous. Super dangerous.
Kalamazoo got it’s second Five Guys location and it’s close to home for me. I get the craving all the time for a greasy burger and fries but Portage is too far to go for lunch. I don’t have that problem anymore. Five Guys decided to open on the west side.
Kalamazoo’s second Five Guys location is on West Main near Drake Road. It’s in some new construction in front of Kohls right next to Panera Bread. The building was built in what used to be a parking lot between Panera and the Shell station. The building has space for three business and all of them will be restaurants. Jimmy Johns and Kelvin & Company will join this Five Guys.
Samuel Mancino’s Italian Eatery (South Haven)
8093 M-140I used to have a co-worker that loved Mancino’s. I accidentally introduced her to the delicious Michigan-born sandwiches while we were driving from Mt. Pleasant to Grand Rapids one dark, winter night a few years back. Whenever we worked together after that, she would ask if there was one close to us no matter where we were. I still technically have this co-worker but we never work together anymore.
I decided to introduce another co-worker to these delicious sandwiches earlier this week when we were in South Haven. We had time to kill and I needed gas. I knew we could kill two birds with one stone and I may just make another co-worker crave a grinder.
The South Haven location of this delicious chain is a Samuel Mancino’s Pizza & Grinder shop. It’s located just outside of the South Haven city limits on M-140 and Alyworth Avenue. The shop is inside the Village Express gas station right on the corner.
10 Years…..
We’ve been in Michigan ten years. March 29, 2008 is when J and I first moved to Lansing. I started this blog not long after. My first actual post was on April 1, 2008, but my first restaurant visit blog post was ten years ago today…April, 11, 2008. It was The Nuthouse Sports Grill in downtown Lansing. I’ve blogged about that place on two more occasions since that initial post. The first one was bout a year later while we still lived in Lansing. The second was in 2012 after we had moved to Kalamazoo and I went back for work one night. The Nuthouse was the first restaurant we ate at in Lansing and one of my favorite restaurants from our time there…so it was a good place to start.
I had gotten the idea for a blog when J and I lived in Morton, IL just outside of Peoria. The Internet was different then. Myspace was still a thing and restaurants weren’t using it like they use Facebook now. Finding menus online was sometimes a maddening experience. I used to write quick little reviews for We8There.com but blogging was just becoming popular. I wanted to have a place where I could post those menus if I had to.
I had been contemplating joining the Peoria blogging scene. There were a couple of political pundits that really made blogging popular and I thought I could capitalize on their success.
J was looking for a job though and I had always planned to go with her. I decided to wait until we figured out where we were going next. Turns out, next was Lansing.
We spent about a year and a half in Lansing. In that time, I published 1,031 posts on Midmichigandining.com. I treated the blog a little different then. It wasn’t just about restaurant and entertainment spots in the area. There was more commentary, press release, and somewhat newsie posts. I didn’t have a full time job when we lived there so I had a lot more free time to write and post.
We moved to Kalamazoo in September of 2009 after J got a transfer. MidMichiganDining.com wouldn’t work in Southwest Michigan, so I created a whole new blog. I kept the old one up so I could link back to it. I probably just should have changed the address but, you know, hindsight. Also looking back, I should have picked something other than SWMichiganDining.com….I mean, I like to block about concert venues, sporting arenas, and other entertainment options in the area even if it doesn’t include food…so the “dining” part of it gets weird. You’ve also probably noticed I blog when I travel so the “SW Michigan” part doesn’t really apply there although the majority of what you read on this blog is from Southwest Michigan and does have to do with dining.
I kept doing what I was doing for a while but then I got a full time job and we had our first kid in 2012 and the time for writing was getting harder and harder to get. I still liked the restaurant part of it so I found time…and I still do, to write those posts.
Why have I done this for ten years? I like to eat. I like to explore. I think J does too. We get excited about restaurant openings. We’re not regulars at any restaurant in town because we like to try new places. We like being the people that our friends ask for recommendations or ask what we know about a place they’re thinking of taking a date or out of town guests.
The big reason I continue to blog is because this blog is my journal. The last ten years of our lives, from J and I dating and making a big move and commitment to each other when we moved to Lansing, to the day I proposed to her, to the day we got married, to the first night in our new house in Kalamazoo, to the nights each of our kids were born and all of the wild adventures, road trips, vacations, and trips to see family in between, they’re all documented on these two blogs.
I like to share my experiences because we love what what Michigan has to offer. I’m careful about how I word things when I don’t like something because an Internet post can ruin a business and who am I to destroy someone’s dream over what could be a misunderstanding or a difference of opinion? I’m not a critic. I don’t like using the word “reviews.” I like to eat and I want other to find the great things about what we have in this community.
I know there are a few people that have read this blog from the beginning and that always surprises me. I’ve never used any of our names yet there have been enough clues for a handful of people to figure it out and we’ve actually become friends with some of them. I don’t get anything out of this other than the memories and the record of what we’ve done, where we’ve gone and what we’ve eaten. There are no ads on this blog that are mined (WordPress puts some in, but they get that money, not me). I have only accepted a free meal once and I felt dirty about it. Nothing I wrote was a lie…I meant every word of it, but it just didn’t feel right. I’ve turned several offers to “review” a place before they open and I will continue to do so.
This blog isn’t the most highly trafficked food blog on the Internet. I get about 500 page views a day which, again, always surprises me. Some days, 100 of those could be me. I get lost in reading some of my old posts and before you know it, an hour is gone.
I have no plans to stop doing what I’m doing. When J tells me she’s tired of me taking pictures at restaurants, I’ll stop then. I hope I’m helping people with this blog…both restaurant owners and diners looking for someplace unique or someplace they may not have thought to try on their own.
So, if you’ve made it through this post, thanks for reading.
SW Michigan Dining 