Ray Ray’s Italian Beef & Sausage
1715 Miller RoadFinding a good Italian beef outside of Chicago is hard. A lot of places claim to be “Chicago style” but very few are actually true to what you can actually get in Chicago.
A little over six years ago, I found a place in Kalamazoo that actually was true to it’s Chicago roots. It was owned by a guy who ran the same type of joint in a Chicago suburb and he took the time to get the locally made bread just right and comparable to what you can get in The City.
A year after Ray Ray’s Italian Beef & Sausage opened on Miller Road near the Post Office, J and I moved to the other side of town. Now, it’s a pretty good drive to get back to this little shop for lunch, so I haven’t done it much over the years, but one day last week, B and I were running some errands before we had to pick J up from a doctor’s appointment on that side of town, so I made a point to stop in for lunch.
Ray Ray’s Italian Beef & Sausage is exactly the kind of joint you find on every corner throughout Chicagoland. It’s not a fancy place, it’s covered in Chicago sports memorabilia, and the food is super greasy, but also super irresistible.
B and I stopped in at Ray Ray’s just before noon on a Wednesday. The place is mostly a carry-out restaurant and there were a couple KDPS cars out front picking up large orders for lunch.
Big Apple Bagels (Westnedge)
3811 S. Westnedge AvenueI typically get up for school days at the last minute possible to get everybody out of the house. I’ve always been that way. When I was in school, I slept until I heard the first round of buses pull up at the bus stop which was right next to my house. That gave me ten minutes to get up and dressed to get on the second round of buses so I could get to school. It got worse when I was able to start driving to school. I’m just not a morning person.
I don’t get to bed much before 2 AM most nights so that 7:30 AM alarm is brutal. If I’m lucky, I get to sleep until the alarm. The kids are either still or asleep or occupying themselves.
Last week, J had an early morning doctor’s appointment that I needed to drop her off at. The office she was going to opened at 7:30 and she needed to be there at 7:30. It was close to L’s school, but I couldn’t drop L off until 8:00. That gave me about a half hour that I needed to kill and the best way I could think of to do that was breakfast.
L was pushing for McDonalds but she doesn’t realize you can get Chicken McNuggets for breakfast, so I said no to that one. I drove past the McDonalds on Westnedge to the new Big Apple Bagels shop on the corner of Westnedge and Parker Avenue in the Westnedge Hill Neighborhood.
Big Apple Bagels used to have a presence just down the road at the corner of Whites and Westnedge, but that one closed in 2014. In an Kalamazoo Gazette article from the time, the parent company blamed that closure on the franchise holder and said immediately they were looking to reopen with a different franchisee. That building is now home to J. Gumbo’s. The building Big Apple Bagels is in now is brand new….built from the ground up. I just watched this build all summer and was excited to finally see it open in early September. It’s much bigger and much better suited for the cafe which also features Sweet Duet Frozen Yogurt.
Kazoopy’s Pizza (Westwood)
1908 W. Main SteetI took the family down to St. Louis this summer and I learned something. I like St. Louis pizza. While I was at a baseball game with my dad, my brother, and a friend, J and the kids ordered a pizza from Imo’s and it was delicious. When I blogged about Imo’s, someone mentioned Kazoopy’s did a St. Louis style pizza. I had forgotten about it until just recently when I drove by the new Kazoopy’s location and remembered, “damn, I need to try this.”
Kazoopy’s Pizza recently opened their second location in Kalamazoo and their second location on West Main Street. The new shop is in the Westwood area of Kalamazoo Township near North Clarendon Street where Pizza Hut used to be until they moved to the other side of the auto repair shop right next door. Read more…
Hot Chicken Kitchen – Nashville Style (Lansing)
128 S. Washington SquareI know I’ve mentioned many times in the past how much I love going to Lansing for work. It’s out of my normal work area which means the company pays for dinner.
Last week, a co-worker and I had to run to Lansing for a couple quick tasks. We both wanted to get dinner before leaving town although we couldn’t really come to an agreement on what we wanted. She’s more of a health nut and I like fried foods. I decided to drive through downtown to see if there was something we could agree on.
There wasn’t, but there was something each of us wanted, so we split up. She went to Firehouse Subs and I went for fried chicken.
There’s a fairly new chicken shop on the corner of Washington Square and Allegan Street in downtown Lansing called Hot Chicken Kitchen – Nashville Style. The quick service restaurant takes up the space that was most recently a Tom and Chee. They do a special kind of fried chicken called Nashville Hot Chicken. It’s like regular fried chicken….but it’s hot.
The small chain of restaurants only has only two locations at this point…and surprisingly, none of those are in Tennessee. The Lansing location is the only Michigan location. The other one is in Alabama. Read more…
The Pantry On Tap
7634 S. Westnedge Avenue- Portage, MI 49002
- (269) 978-6641
- Website
Our baby is 1! B was born on Black Friday last year which made his birthday the Sunday after Thanksgiving this year. We were very adamant from the beginning he will have a noticeably separate birthday and Christmas. We weren’t going to let one run in to the other.
We also found out this year that finding a place to have a party on Thanksgiving weekend is going to be tough. L’s first birthday we had at a Gymboree Play & Music in Illinois with our friends and their kids, but we don’t have a lot of friends with kids near B’s age like we did with L. Even if we had found a place, we weren’t really sure we’d be able to find a place where all the kids would be entertained.
As much as we didn’t want to do it, we decided to host B’s first birthday party at our house. I love to entertain…well, let me walk that back a little, I love cooking for people. Neither of us are really excited about the cleaning the house part and I’m not huge on the small talk part, but the party was mostly family, so we made it work.
The morning of the party, I had to go to Party City to get some balloons blown up and I had to find a smash cake somewhere. I was sort of thinking about a couple of hors d’ouevres. J wanted to order pizza from Erbelli’s for the main part of the food, but we had a couple of small snack plates for people when they got there. One thing I was blanking on was a loaf of ciabatta bread I had bought for Thanksgiving but didn’t use. Then, I had an epiphany.
I remembered a place that sold flavored olive oils and thought that would be fun for the bread. It took me a few minutes to think of the name, but when I did, I also realized it was small business Saturday…so double win.
The Pantry on Tap is on South Westnedge in Portage in the Portage Plaza just north of where Westnedge turns into Shaver. The business is just a couple of doors down from Jac’s Cekola’s Pizza. Read more…
Schlotzsky’s – Downtown Battle Creek
14 W. Michigan AvenueI love the Battle Creek Christmas Parade. It’s at night. They do it down Michigan Avenue which is a really tight street through downtown. It’s usually not to terribly long. Parking is pretty easy. We’ve gone four out of the last five years missing last year’s parade because J was about two weeks from her due date with B.
J’s company enters a float in the parade, so she and the kids usually walk in it. Since I work at a competing company, I typically walk alongside behind the crowd in case she needs help with the kids.
We made our plans to walk in the parade again this year which started a little earlier than usual. In the past, we’ve always gone about an hour and a half before the parade started and gotten dinner at Arcadia Brewing Company. We tried that again this year. 45 minute wait. We walked back down to Griffin Grill & Pub. No available tables…..and that’s about the only options. Malia Mediterranean Bistro was open, but that’s way to fancy with two kids under the age of five. Rafaynee Southern Cuisine was closed. It didn’t appear that Pastrami Joe’s was open from across the street. That didn’t leave us with much choice.
We were already down Michigan Avenue near Griffin and could see a sign for either Subway or Schlotzsky’s. I think that’s kind of a no-brainer.
We ended up at Schlotzsky’s on Michigan Avenue in Downtown Battle Creek just north of Capitol Avenue. The store has entrances from both the street front Michigan Avenue side and the backside which is a parking lot off State Street. Read more…
Thanksgiving 2016
Once again, old Thanksgiving post are driving traffic to the blog, so I should probably go ahead and try to put something together for this year.
These are the places that advertise as being open on their websites or social media. If you know of any other place that will be open at some point on Thanksgiving (besides fast food, Denny’s, or IHOP) please let me know and I’ll try to confirm and add to the list
Fieldstone Grill – regular service
Martell’s – regular service
Terrace Grill at Baypoint Inn – Thansgiving Brunch – Menu – Reservations Recommended
Henderson Castle – Thanksgiving Brunch – Reservations Recommended
Theo & Stacy’s Downtown – 11:00 AM – 4:00PM – FREE Thanksgiving Dinner
Firekeeper’s Casino – 10:30 AM-2:30 PM – Thanksgiving Brunch – Reservations Required
Alamo Drafthouse – regular hours
Sweetwaters Donuts – Open 24 Hours
The Crew Family Restaurant – 5 AM – 10 PM
I’ll keep adding to this as I find places open, but these are the regulars that have been open the last few years.
Chunky Dunk
Various (Food Truck)- Kalamazoo, MI 49006
- (269) 760-4092
- Website
- Sample Menu
There have been a number of late night food truck rally’s over the summer, but I’m really, really lazy on nights that I don’t work. I’m super lucky if I make it past 9:00, so getting to a food truck rally that doesn’t start until 10:00 PM has been out of the question no matter how much I really wanted to try some of the trucks that have been part of the rallys.
I had a job at Western Michigan University this past Friday night and it also happened to be the last late night food truck rally of the season. My job ended around 11:30, so once we were done, I hopped in my truck and headed towards downtown to see which trucks had decided to brave the windy, cold weather to serve up delicious food.
The rally’s happen on Water Street between Church and Rose Streets. The rally itself is actually under the part of the Radisson parking ramp that covers Water Street, so had it been snowing or raining, the festival would have been covered, but that didn’t stop the wind from getting in to the tunnel.
While the rally’s take place under a parking ramp, unless you want to walk a couple of blocks from the ramp entrance, you’ll need to find street parking in the area. There’s nothing on Rose Street, but if you’re patient and know how to navigate the one ways, you can usually find something nearby. I actually parked on Eleanor and walked on the closed part of Church Street back to the rally area.
It turns out they ended up closing before the 1 AM advertised end time, so I was probably one of the last customers when I got there around 11:45. A couple of the trucks had already shut down for the night, but the one I was looking for happened to be right near the entrance that I entered from and they were still open. It looked like the ladies inside were starting to clean up, but one of them noticed me standing there and turned around to help me out.
Coexist Cafe
2901 Howard StreetI’ve spent a lot of time on Western Michigan University’s campus this week. There’s been a lot going on and a lot of work for my company.
I spent most of the day Friday at WMU and even though it’s close enough for me to go home on my dinner break, I decided to seek out some of the new places around campus. I’ve tried a couple times now to go to Fifth Avenue which replaced AFB Bar & Grill, but they don’t open until 5:00 (even though their website and Facebook say 11:30) so I’ve failed on both attempts.
While driving through Campus Pointe Mall at the corner of Howard and West Michigan, likely on my way to Wendy’s, I noticed another long empty storefront was filled with another new coffee shop. I couldn’t find a food menu online, but I figured it had to be better than Wendy’s so I parked my car and took my chances there instead.
Coexist Cafe opened up at the beginning of the summer in the corner space of the Campus Pointe Mall that has housed a couple of burger shops in recent memory. Both Real Deal: Classic Burgers and Shakes and Sliders Burgers and Belgian Fries haven’t been able to make the location work, but Coexist has totally revamped the space to a point it would be unrecognizable to patrons of the two previous businesses.
Fresh Coast Tacos
1903 W. Michigan AvenueI don’t hang around Western Michigan University much and I sure don’t eat there very often, but I had a quick stop to make on campus near the Bernhard Center and that reminded me of a recommendation I got a while ago about one of their food court options.
Now, the recommendation I had was actually for Santorini Island Grill. That’s where I was headed when I walked in….but then something else grabbed my attention.
Tacos! Tacos grabbed my attention. I love tacos and I love tacos made the right way.
Fresh Coast Tacos is a new addition to the Bronco Mall at the Bernhard Center right in the middle of Western Michigan University’s campus on West Michigan Avenue. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 
