North Market
59 Spruce Street- Columbus, OH 43215
- (614) 463-9664
- Website
When we decided to make the trip to Columbus to go to the Zoo, we knew we didn’t want to do any driving before or after walking around in the heat all day. We drove to Columbus late Friday night and stayed until Sunday afternoon. The money spent on the hotels was worth it for our sanity.
If you don’t know J and my’s story, we met working for the same company in Peoria, IL about twelve years ago. It was the kind of company where there were a lot of young, single people which led to a lot of couples being formed in the years we spent there.
One of those couple moved to Columbus several years ago. The guy and I were pretty good friends before J ever moved to Peoria and the woman and J became fast friends in the short period of time we all worked together.
I got back in touch with them when we started planning this trip. I was really hoping we could meet up for lunch or something, but I know how summer’s go so I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had something going on the weekend we were in town. Luck would have it, they didn’t and we decided to meet up for lunch on Sunday.
I left picking a place to meet up to the people that know Columbus better than I do. On Sunday morning, I got a text asking if we wanted to meet at North Market.
The North Market is in downtown Columbus at the corner of Spruce and Park Street. It’s kind of tucked into a very crowded portion of the city near the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Read more…
Graeter’s Ice Cream (Dublin)
6255 Frantz RoadWe walked around the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium for about five and a half hours and every Dippin’ Dots stand we passed was closed. We kept telling L that we would get her some if we ever found one open….but we never did.
She handled not getting ice cream pretty well so I told her we’d get some after dinner and after we swam at the hotel for a while. I spotted a sign for an ice cream shop on our way to the hotel so I was pretty confident I could promise her some before bedtime.
Graeter’s Ice Cream is a chain of ice cream shops based out of Cincinatti. They have about 50 retail outlets in five states. Michigan is not one of the five.
Graeter’s is unique because they use the “french pot” method to making ice cream. What makes this so unique is that they can only make two gallons at a time, so it’s a slow process that produces rich, creamy, dense ice cream.
The Graeter’s store in Dublin is kind of in a weird spot. The address is on Frantz Road near Metro Place North. The entrance is actually off Metro Place North off an access road. There’s not a lot of retail in this area other than a Max & Erma’s restaurant next door. The building is very generic looking and from the street, it’s pretty difficult to spot as an ice cream joint. Read more…
Donatos Pizza (Dublin, High Street)
6 S. High StreetWe loved the Columbus Zoo. It was a long, hot day, but it was so worth it.
Five and a half hours after we started on our trek, we were back in the car and heading back towards our hotel in Dublin. We have friends that live in the area and talked about meeting them for dinner, but we were hot and the kids wanted to swim, so we made plans to meet for lunch the next day instead.
We still needed to do something for dinner. Neither of us wanted to sit down with cranky kids, so we decided on pizza. In a move totally unlike me, I didn’t do much homework so I didn’t know what was in the area. I did a Google search and came up with a chain that I had never heard of that got pretty good reviews. Since I didn’t have a lot of time to waste looking for true local places, I went with the chain that was new to me.
I picked Donatos Pizza in Historic District of Dublin right near the corner of High Street and Bridge Street. The historic district is the original downtown of the village of Dublin and features some buildings that are well over a hundred years old. Newer buildings have been built to seamlessly fit into the historic look. None of the buildings look like a typical chain restaurant including the Dominos Pizza across the street which has the same brick facade and muted signage as the rest of the shops in the area. Donatos has just small sign hanging above the door to mark it’s place in this well preserved downtown.
Columbus Zoo and Aquarium
4850 Powell Road- Powell, OH 43065
- (614) 645-3400
- Website
We’ve been to a lot of zoos over the years. Binder Park, John Ball, Brookfield, Lincoln Park, Potawatami, Miller Park, Peoria, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Toledo, Detroit, Potter Park. We like zoos.
Those zoo trips were usually planned around other trips. We fit the zoo in as part of bigger excursion, but there are a few zoos that are worth being the main focus of a vacation. One of those zoos is in Columbus, OH.
We have been talking about a trip to the Columbus Zoo for quite a while. We finally decided to pull the trigger this year. We have friends in that area whom we haven’t seen in years so we decided to make a weekend out of it. Go to the zoo on Saturday and lunch with friends on Sunday.
We drove to Columbus Friday night after I got off work so we’d wake up ready to go Saturday morning. We started with breakfast before heading to the zoo around 10:00.
The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium is actually northwest of the City of Columbus. It’s located in Powell, OH about 25 minutes from Downtown Columbus. The zoo is on the corner of Powell Road and Riverside on the banks of the Scioto River. The Zoo is kind of out in an area by itself but still pretty close to civilization. Read more…
Jack & Benny’s Barnstormer Diner
2160 W. Case RoadRoad trip! J and I have been wanting to take a trip to Columbus, Ohio for a few years. We love taking zoo trips in the summer and the Columbus Zoo has been on the shortlist of zoos we wanted to visit someday.
We finally decided to make the trip. It’s been a long summer already and we haven’t had much free time, so we both decided to take a week off work to just relax. We started our vacation by driving into “enemy territory.”
We made our drive on Friday night after I got off work. We didn’t end up leaving Kalamazoo until almost 7:30 PM which put us in Columbus a little after midnight. We got a room at the Hilton Garden Inn in Dublin which is northwest of Columbus proper.
Everyone was pretty excited for the day ahead so even though we didn’t get to bed until 12:30 or so, we were up a little after 8:00. I didn’t look very closely at the hotel. They don’t have free breakfast so we decided to go out instead of paying for breakfast or room service at the hotel.
I quickly looked for breakfast joints before falling asleep Friday night and came up with a couple. There are Waffle Houses in the area too…and you know that’s always an option and probably what I would have chose if I didn’t find a diner that seemed too good to pas up.
Jack & Benny’s is a Columbus staple. The original location is close to THE Ohio State University….(side bar….I’m not a U of M fan. I have no dog in the fight between Wolverines and Buckeyes….but I will always choose Wolverines only because of the “THE” in OSU’s name. Seriously….that’s pretty damn pretentious…..side bar over.)
About five years ago, Jack & Benny’s saw an opportunity and seized it. There is a small diner at THE Ohio State University Airport that had seen seven different owners in ten years. Read more…
Silver Harbor Brewing Company
721 Pleasant StreetIt’s over. Finally. It’s over. No more weddings this year. I love my friends and family, but three weeks in a row to start the month of July J and I had weddings to go to.
The final of the three took us to Hobart, IN. The reception for J’s cousin’s wedding was at County Line Orchard. It was a family wedding, so the kids were invited which meant all four of us stayed in a hotel in nearby Portage, IN.
The hotel had free breakfast so we didn’t leave for that meal and we left around nap time for B. Luckily, he fell asleep at about the time we got on the highway.
We were just going to head straight home, but around Stevensville, we started talking about lunch. B had been asleep for over and an hour and I had a brewery in St. Joseph that I’ve been wanting to go to. J initially said no, but after I missed my exit, she said, “what the hell.”
I got off at the Niles Road exit and headed towards downtown St. Joseph. The car was pointed towards Silver Harbor Brewing Company which is right on the corner of Pleasant and Court Streets east of the main downtown district.
Firehouse Subs (Oshtemo Township)
1750 S. Drake Road Suite AWe had one last day with only one kid at home. L was still with J’s parents. We were meeting them in Portage, IN before all of us headed to a wedding in Hobart.
The morning of the wedding, we decided to run to Kohls and get me a new shirt. We also needed to make a quick Costco run. All of this was happening around lunch time so in between Kohls and Costco we decided we needed lunch.
I wasn’t feeling anything along West Main so I asked J if Firehouse Subs worked for her. It’s right in the Costco parking lot and we could quickly stop for lunch then get back on track.
Firehouse Subs is a national chain of toasted sub restaurants with it’s home base in Jacksonville, Florida. The first Kalamazoo area location is on Drake Road in the Corner Shoppes @ Drake development. Read more…
Smokin D’s “The Smoke House”
205 W. Monroe StreetIt’s been a weird week. L has been on vacation with J’s parents all week, so it’s just been three of us at home. We’ve been pretty bad about making meals and have eaten out more than we usually do.
Thursday night I texted J asking if she wanted to go out for dinner. I was in the mood for BBQ and Arcadia just sounded good to me. She wasn’t in the mood for going out so I picked up Qdoba instead.
I tried again on Friday night and this time J was up to going out. Since it was Friday night and neither of us had to work the next day, I suggested we go someplace we wouldn’t normally go. We used to travel around the region all the time on weekends before we had kids and since we only had the one, why not take a little road trip?
I still wanted BBQ and there is a place I’ve been driving by in Bangor that keeps grabbing my attention. It’s a little far for dinner for us, but J had no objections so we headed towards the lake on M-43.
Smokin D’s The Smoke House is in downtown Bangor right on the corner of Monroe Street (M-43) and Railroad Street. The restaurant is in an old mixed use building that has served as a restaurant for many years in the downtown business district. The last restaurant I could find that used the space was Mimi’s Pancake House & Restaurant. Read more…
Via Gelato
8340 Portage RoadWe’re all about dessert. Ice cream. Custard. Gelato. Fro-Yo. It doesn’t matter. Give us a frozen dairy treat and everyone in our household is happy.
We went to Latitude 42 a few weeks ago and planned on going out for gelato afterwards. There’s a new cafe that opened up not too far from Latitude 42 on Portage Road, but their Sunday hours don’t have them opening until 4:00.
Sunday was a lazy day at our house. We were at a wedding in South Haven on Saturday night so Sunday was trying to squeeze our weekend activities in to one day. We went to Penn Station for a late lunch with my mom before she left town so we weren’t really hungry around our typical dinner time. J suggested we take a little trip to Portage for gelato and just make that our dinner.
Via Gelato has been open about a month on Portage Road right next to Erbelli’s Pizzeria & Italian Bistro about halfway between Centre Street and West Lake. The building shares a parking lot with Erbelli’s and sits quite a ways off the road. The previous tenant of the building was the Academy of Dance Arts.
Sprinkle Road Tap House
5001 Park Circle DriveI typically get pretty excited when another new Millennium Restaurant opens in the Kalamazoo area. Sure, they’re all similar, but each one is just enough different.
Millennium seems to be expanding the Tap House brand to the four corners of Kalamazoo. It started in 2010 with Central City Tap House. They expanded in 2013 to Portage with Centre Street Tap House. Now, they’ve opened in Comstock with Sprinkle Road Tap House. (Also, not to ruin the surprise, but they’re also working on approvals for Drake Road Tap House in Oshtemo….this one excites me the most)
Sprinkle Road Tap House is part of the much larger Zeigler Motorsports complex that just opened on the corner of Park Circle Drive and Sprinkle Road just south of I-94. The Tap House takes up the south end of the large building.
SW Michigan Dining 