Chick-Fil-A (Portage)
6202 S. Westnedge AvenueI bet you’re tired of hearing about Chick-Fil-A, aren’t you? I am yet I can’t stop eating there. I mean, it’s good, but is it really wait in the drive thru line for 40 minutes good?
Yeah…..I’m not waiting in any long line for fast food. The few times we’ve gone since it opened, J has went and went inside instead of waiting in that long drive thru line. I have avoided the place so far….until last Friday.
I wanted to try the breakfast. J has been telling me how good the breakfast is. I’ve only ever had the chicken sandwich, so I knew I had to try breakfast at some point.
The Portage Chick-Fil-A is the third one to open on the west side of the state and the first in Southwest Michigan. I’ve been to both the Gaines Township and Wyoming locations in the Grand Rapids area a time or two but always for lunch or dinner. I was hungry after I dropped L off for school on Friday morning and I needed to stop at Meijer, so I just kept going south until I hit the Chick-Fil-A.
The Portage store takes over the space that used to be Bilbo’s. I know a lot of people were sad to see that business go, but many more were happy to see Chick-Fil-A move in. The store is right along South Westnedge in the Southland Shopping Center. Read more…
Arturo’s Tacos
305 N. Beacon BoulevardI write a lot about burgers, pizza, wings, and BBQ, but there’s really one food that I crave fairly often. Tacos. Not Taco Bell or Qdoba tacos, but a good steak taco on a corn tortilla with just cilantro.
I’ve got a place in Grand Rapids that I really love going to when I get that taco craving. I don’t have one of those in Kalamazoo, but there is at least one good place and one I haven’t tried yet.
Early last week, I was traveling along the lakeshore for work and ended up in Grand Haven. I had time to stop and pick up dinner and there’s a taco place I drive by a lot when I’m in that area.
Arturo’s Tacos is right off US-31 which is the way most people come in and out of Grand Haven. Through town, 31 is Beacon Avenue and Arturo’s is on the corner of Beacon and Elliot Avenue. It’s a small shop that was extremely busy when I stopped in around 4:00 on a Monday evening. Read more…
The Union
125 S. Kalamazoo MallDate night! Holy cow, it’s been a while. Whenever our parents come to town, we usually spend all day running around and when dinner rolls around, J and I are too exhausted to take advantage of Nana & Grandpa or Grandma and Papa. It sucks because that’s really the only opportunity we ever have to go out by ourselves, but we spend so little time sleeping during the week that when weekends come around, neither one of us has the energy to do anything after 6:00.
This past weekend we tried to make things different. We slept a little longer, got a little longer naps, and had a little more of a relaxing day at home. J’s parents were in town and they were staying at the Holiday Inn on 11th, so L went back with them to swim while J and B took a nap. When B woke up, J asked her mom if a date night was a possibility and she said yes. J’s parents went to Panera to get dinner for themselves and the kids while J and I got out of the house as fast as we could.
We got in the car and didn’t really know where we wanted to go. I suggested Fieldstone Grill or Martell’s since it had been a while since we’ve been to either. J wanted to go downtown and suggested another Millennium Restaurant. One that I hadn’t been to in a while but one she was just at a couple of weeks ago during a day out with one of her friends.
The Union is one of several of Millennium Restaurant Group’s restaurants in the Kalamazoo area. It’s one of two downtown with Central City Taphouse being the other. J was just there a couple of weeks ago when she and a friend took an afternoon to just relax by themselves, so I didn’t bring it up when we were talking about dinner. The last time I had been there was in February of 2010 so it’s been seven years since I had been there and time for a revisit.
The Union is billed as a cabaret and jazz bar. It’s on the main floor of the Kalamazoo City Centre building which is part of the old Gilmore Brothers Department Store on the Kalamazoo Mall in downtown Kalamazoo. Read more…
Vitale’s Pizza & Subs
320 Western Avenue #A- Allegan, MI 49010
- (269) 673-2121
- No Known Website
- Menu
Some days are crazy at work. I started out in Kalamazoo. Made my way to Centreville. Started towards Bronson, then got called back to Allegan and finished up the night in Grand Rapids. I didn’t think I was going to get a dinner break, but I decided to force one. There’s a pizza place in Allegan that I’ve wanted to stop at for as long as I can remember and since I had a little bit of time. It was time to make that happen.
Those of you that live in Grand Rapids are very familiar with the Vitale’s name. There’s a number of them in the area. Those in Kalamazoo are not quite as familiar with it….and that’s unfortunate. Vitale’s always delivers with great pizza.
Vitale’s is another one of those places where I don’t quite understand how they’re all connected. The Allegan store goes by “Vitale’s III,” but appears to have no connection to the Kent/Ottawa County stores..at least by the Vitale’s of Comstock Park website.
Vitale’s Pizza & Subs is a pretty small shop right on the corner of Western Avenue (which is M-40) and Grant Street on the west side of the City of Allegan. It a small corner building with very little parking. There’s a gravel area right next to the building and another gravel area right across Grant Street near the Autozone. For some reason, this was a really busy Thursday night and there were a lot of cars parked in the area, so I had to park across the street. Read more…
Frosty Boy
5030 Gull Road- Kalamazoo, MI 49048
- (269) 345-5360
- No Known Website
- Menu
Sixty degrees in February?! Seriously, that’s not Michigan weather.
We had to take advantage of this rare, awesome Saturday in the middle of winter. We planned on trying to eat on the patio at Hopcat, but we got there before food service outside began, so we just took a table at the bar. As we were eating lunch, J suggested we find an ice cream place where we could sit outside.
Kalamazoo really lacks local ice cream stands. We typically go to Culvers if we get ice cream because there just isn’t any place to go other than a couple of Dairy Queen’s and Ritter’s Frozen Custard. We really didn’t want DQ or Culvers and didn’t know if Ritter’s was even open yet….so Google to the rescue.
Google pointed me towards Frosty Boy on Gull Road. We had never been to Frosty Boy and it never even crossed my mind when we were talking about ice cream. We were already downtown, so the drive down Gull Road wasn’t that far. Read more…
Finale’s Pizzeria
8885 N. 32nd StreetA co-worker and I had a quick trip to Galesburg the other night and I hadn’t eaten all day. I was really hungry, but time was at a premium because we still had to go back to Grand Rapids. I knew I didn’t have a lot of choices, but I knew there were some pizza places along the way in Richland.
Google can be my best friend when I’m in a hurry and in an unfamiliar place. I mean, I know a little bit about what’s in Richland, but Google gives me options.
I got a couple of options when I put in pizza places in Richland, but only one was on my direct route back to Grand Rapids. That’s the one I chose.
Finale’s Pizzeria is right outside of Richland on 32nd Street in Richland Township. It’s actually kind of hard to spot coming from Richland. It shares a building with Texas Corners Cleaners, but there’s no sign on the 32nd Street sign of the building. I trusted my GPS and pulled in to the parking lot because I could see lights on in the front of the building. Read more…
Chau Haus Schnitzel Station
410 S. Burdick StreetAlright. All done with the travel blogs and time to get back to Kalamazoo. I only have a couple of ideas for new blogs in this area though because there just isn’t much opening. I have some intel on some really cool things in the works, so hopefully that will pick up as we get closer to summer.
One place I had been trying to get to for a while though is the Chau Haus Schnitzel Station on South Burdick near the State Theater. I saw this place had opened last fall, but it’s not a place I think J would enjoy, so I was kind of saving it until I had time to eat lunch by myself.
That time came while I was working an extra night at WMU. I got my lunch break around 2:00 and headed downtown.
The Chau Haus Schnitzel Station took over the space that used to be Dogs With Style right next to Harvey’s on the Mall. There was another hot dog place in between the time I first blogged about Dogs With Style and when Chau Haus moved in. I never made it there. It didn’t seem to last long because they wanted to be strictly a hot dog place and there just isn’t enough of a bar crowd in that area to support something like that. Read more…
Chick-Fil-A (Gaines Township)
1545 Edgeknoll Drive SESo it begins. Chick-Fil-A has finally arrived in West Michigan. The franchise will be opening three stores at the beginning of 2017 with a few more in the works. The first one to open in Grand Rapids opened in the middle of January to long lines and a lot of fan fare. Lucky me, J asked me to stop a little over a week after they opened to pick up lunch on my way home.
I was coming home from Big Rapids after spending the night due to work. I set an alarm so I would get up and get moving in the morning so I didn’t waste a day off with my family. Up and moving in the morning for me is 9 AM. It was 9:30 by the time I left my hotel in Big Rapids and started heading south. J knew that the one open Chick-Fil-A in the area wasn’t too far out of my way and asked if I’d stop and pick up lunch.
West Michigan’s first Chick-Fil-A is in Gaines Township right off M-6 at the Kalamazoo Avenue exit on Edgeknoll Drive. The restaurant is in a very weird spot sort of tucked in between Bob Evan’s and the highway. There’s no way to access it from Kalamazoo Avenue even though that is what appears to be the “front” of the building. You actually have to go past Bob Evans and turn on Edgeknoll Avenue. There’s a couple of parking lot entrances from there to go behind Bob Evans and enter the Chick-Fil-A parking area. If you’re going to the drive thru, you have to go through this lot and up and around the building. Really…it’s quite an odd set up. Read more…
#52 Sports Bar and Kitchen
1005 Perry AvenueTwo blog posts in a row in Big Rapids? That’s nuts. Especially because they are from two different days. I think I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been to Big Rapids in the past nine years and I had two reasons to visit in one week late last month.
I was in town for a hockey game. My work outside work brought me to Ewigleben Ice Arena. So, after a quick stop in Big Rapids on Monday for lunch, I was back in town on Friday for work.
The way my day usually goes when I do this outside work is that we work for about three hours, take an hour lunch, then come back for another six or so depending on the night and how quickly we work. I got to Big Rapids at 2:30 for this job and by 5:00, we were headed out to lunch.
Despite the fact Big Rapids is a college town, restaurants are pretty slim pickens. I’ve eaten at a couple in the past, but there are no good sandwich shops and very few non-chain restaurants that come with any sort of recommendation from students. While I was in the arena, I happened to see advertisements for what sounded like a local sports bar, so I looked it up. The menu looked good, so I broke with my colleagues (who were going to Crankers…and what’s the point if you can’t drink, right?) and headed back towards US-131.
#52 Sports Bar and Kitchen is inside the Holiday Inn on Perry Street in Big Rapids just off the US-131 exit. I wasn’t entirely aware of that when I started driving that way, but the closer I got to the address, I figured it out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but I wasn’t expecting a hotel bar. Had I know that, I probably would have passed and tried something else, but I was already there and my lunch break was slowly ticking away.
Raven Brewing & BBQ
121 N. Michigan AvenueWell, we’re done in Traverse City this time, but still not back to Kalamazoo. Hang tight, just a few more blog posts and I’ve got one back in the area that this blog is actually named for.
First thing’s first though. Our trip home from Traverse City.
We checked out of Great Wolf Lodge at the last possible minute. L did one last craft in the lobby then we packed the car and headed south at about 11:45. We had all eaten breakfast at the Dunkin’ Donuts inside Great Wolf so we weren’t really hungry yet. We were just trying to get on the road and get home. It was a fun weekend, but also a very tiring one.
Not long after we got on the highway, J asked if there was a brewery along the way we could stop at for lunch. I mean, there’s still several in Grand Rapids I haven’t been to, but there’s also one in Big Rapids. One that does not only beer, but BBQ as well.
Raven Brewing & BBQ is in downtown Big Rapids on Michigan Avenue. It’s just to the north of Maple Street in the building that housed the beloved Pepper’s Cafe & Deli. The brewery is owned by the same people that own the Blue Cow next door. When Pepper’s closed, the Blue Cow bought the building, renovated it, and named their new brewery after the building’s original name. Raven. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 