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.
Staymaker at Journeyman Distillery
109 Generation DriveWe started something last summer when J’s mom and dad asked if they could take L with them on vacation to Wisconsin. L was so excited to spend a week with NaNa and Grandpa fishing, swimming, and winning too many prizes from the claw machines.
It was always that L would go again this year. They typically go a week around the 4th of July and their schedule worked out this year to leave the Friday after.
I worked on the 4th and in return, my company gave me Thursday off as my holiday. We decided to meet J’s parents in New Buffalo to hand L off to them for the week.
We did the same thing last year and after getting L ready to go with NaNa and Grandpa on vacation, J, B, and I went on a little side trip for lunch. We picked Round Barn Public House. It’s a place we had been wanting to go to, but Baroda is pretty far to go just for a meal with both kids.
Our decision this year was to go to another place we’ve been wanting to go in Southern Berrien County. Staymaker at Journeyman Distillery.
Studio Grill
312 W. Michigan AvenueThere are days where everything you do just doesn’t work out. That was my issue last Friday. My colleague was off, so I was in the office by myself. Every task I was attempting to complete was failing and my day was going by pretty slow.
Around lunch time, J asked if I wanted to meet her to grab something to eat. At first, I assumed she meant Lunchtime Live, but she actually wanted to go sit down at a restaurant somewhere.
I love working downtown now and having options, but I also needed something fairly quick. My day could pivot at any moment and I could go from throwing playing cards into a hat to extremely busy in a matter of seconds.
I asked if she wanted to meet me at the Studio Grill on West Main Street. We last ate there in 2010 despite the fact any time the best burger in Kalamazoo is brought up, Studio Grill is mentioned.
Studio Grill is on West Michigan Avenue just past the Park Street intersection. The building is part of several older buildings built all connected to each other. Before becoming Studio Grill, the building served as home to a place called the Copy Cup. Read more…
Latitude 42 Brewing Company (Portage)
7842 Portage RoadJ and I go to a lot of breweries. I like beer and the food is almost always amazing. It’s just kind of craft brewery thing to put the same amount of love and creativity into the food as they do the beers.
We almost exclusively go to breweries that serve food because J doesn’t like beer as much as I do and we have two little ones who are with us 99% of the time.
We have no problem taking our kids to breweries, but we also realize, it’s a brewery and it doesn’t have to be kid friendly. I’ve eaten lunch with a baby on my lap before and specifically ordered food off an adult menu that my kid(s) would eat because there is no kid menu and never (and never will) complain about it. Beer is for adults so why should a brewery be expected to cater to kids.
With that being said, the ones that do cater to families always seem to be busy during off peak hours. There are lot of people like me….mid to late 30’s with a little bit of disposable income and a family they love being around…who drink craft beer. The 20-something college kids that are off drinking their Natty Light and trying to hook up aren’t really spending the $6/beer that craft breweries offer.
One of our favorite breweries to take the kids to has always been Latitude 42 in Portage.
Read more…
Watermark Brewing Company
5781 St. Joseph AvenueI’ve been to more Major League Baseball games this year than I have in several years. We took the kids to Milwaukee and Detroit, I did my yearly trip with my dad, brother, and friend from high school, then my dad and I went to the game this past weekend to see the White Sox retire Mark Buhrle’s number 56.
Normally, J would come with me and she and the kids would stay at her parents house while I went to the game with my dad. Her parents were out of town this weekend, so J stayed home. I waited until we put the kids to bed then I headed to my parents house in Illinois about an hour south of Chicago.
I left Kalamazoo around 7:30. I realized I had the opportunity to make a quick stop at one of the breweries that don’t serve food. If we’re going to eat dinner, J and I have no problem stopping at breweries with kids, but when no food is involved, it makes it harder for them to sit and makes it harder for us to justify going to a brewery with kids.
There’s a place in Bridgman I’ve heard a lot of good about, but they’re only open for four hours a day and close by eight. I knew there were a couple of more along the way, so it was just deciding which one I was going to stop at.
For no particular reason, I picked Watermark Brewing Company in downtown Stevensville.
Haymarket Brewery & Taproom
9301 Red Arrow HighwayOur most recent long weekend in Chicago wrapped up on Father’s Day. J usually lets me pick someplace for dinner on my birthday and Father’s Day and usually, I pick a brewery.
We left Chicago just before noon and started heading towards Michigan. I could have found someplace in the Chicago suburbs, but I wanted to take advantage of the trip back home and stop in Bridgman.
Haymarket Brewery & Taproom is the third brewery to open in the small town of Bridgman near the Michigan/Indiana border. Haymarket Pub & Brewery is already established in Chicago, but when the duo that owns the brewery was looking to expand, they looked to the east side of Lake Michigan after striking out in their hometown.
Haymarket Brewery & Taproom is on Red Arrow Highway on the north side of Bridgman. It’s right across the street from Lost Dunes Golf Club just inside the city limits. The new venture took over the old Michigan State Police post that was vacated by MSP in 2011 when the State Police closed 21 posts statewide.
Slice Factory (Oak Lawn)
9600 S. Pulaski RoadIt didn’t take me long to find an Italian beef on our most recent trip to Chicago, but the rest of my family doesn’t really like the foods that I like. A lot of times I have to make two or three stops to get food for everyone. I get the beef I want. The kids get what they want. J gets what she wants. Everyone is happy.
I asked L what she wanted for lunch before I headed out. I was assuming she was going to say a grilled cheese or McDonalds. I figured I could find either along the way. She surprised me and said pizza. I really didn’t know what I was going to do. Sure, I passed a lot of pizza places, but I just needed something for L and she wasn’t going to eat a whole pizza by herself.
I took Pulaski north into the city from Oak Lawn to find my Italian beef. To my surprise, I passed a pizza by the slice place and I would have to pass it again on my way home. My pizza dilemma with L was solved.
Slice Factory is a small Chicago chain with eight locations (including one in Champaign, IL near the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana). The Oak Lawn location sits near the intersection of South Pulaski Road and 96th Street just a few blocks south of the very busy Pulaski and 95th Street intersection. Read more…
Tony’s Italian Beef
7007 S. Pulaski RoadIt doesn’t take me long. The first thing I usually do when we get to Chicago for a long weekend is start planning out my meals. An Italian beef is always on the agenda and finding a new place to get one from is always exciting.
We were in Chicago last weekend because I had a three day weekend. It just happened to work out that my niece’s birthday party was on Saturday so we could hang out with J’s family in the Chicago suburbs then head south to my brother’s house for a Saturday with my family.
We got in to town around noon on Friday. J asked what we should do for lunch. She was hungry and started snacking so I started looking for food. I stumbled upon an Italian beef place not far away that happened to be on a couple of Chicago’s best lists (including Chicago’s Best, Thrillest, and The Hungry Hound..who didn’t really like it but still made the list.)
Tony’s Italian Beef is on Chicago’s south side near the corner of Pulaski Road and 70th. The small restaurant can best be described as something you will only find in Chicago. It’s a true Chicago sandwich shop with just enough room to barely breath with a kitchen full of fast talking and quick working employees serving up what Chicago does best.
SW Michigan Dining 