Hungry As A Wolf – Traverse City
3575 US 31Our first day in Traverse City saw us in the water park at Great Wolf Lodge for almost three hours. We had planned on finding another brewery, but we were all so tired that we skipped it. We were meeting friends at the Lodge and they got a late start, so by the time they got there and got in the pool, we were already pushing dinner time. We didn’t want to drag the kids out of the pool, get them cleaned up and shuffle them off to another brewery.
All of the Great Wolf Lodge properties have a couple of different options when it comes to food. There’s the Camp Critter Bar & Grill (which we would eat at on night #2), Buckets Incredible Craveables (a concession stand in the water park area) and Hungry as a Wolf…which is what we decided to do for dinner on this night.
Hungry as a Wolf is a pizza place on the first level of Great Wolf Lodge right next to the water park. It shares a space with Bear Paw Sweets & Eats. Read more…
Rare Bird Brewpub
229 Lake AvenueLots of Traverse City area blog posts coming your way over the next week or so. We took a little mini-vacation to northern Michigan to take the kids to Great Wolf Lodge just outside of Traverse City. Of course, we need some mommy and daddy activities too, so we hit up a couple of breweries in the Traverse City area and a lighthouse museum…but we’ll get to all of that eventually.
When we arrived in town on Friday afternoon, we were still a few hours from check-in time at the hotel. We actually left Kalamazoo early so we could find a place to eat lunch before we did some swimming.
I had a list of breweries that I wanted to try to get to, so J asked me to pick. We were meeting another family up there eventually and one of the breweries on my list didn’t have a kids menu online. I’m always a little hesitant when we go to a place without a kids menu, so I wasn’t going to drag someone else there…so that was our first stop since we were dining alone for this meal.
Rare Bird Brewpub took over a 1930’s era warehouse south of Traverse City’s downtown near the Boardman River. The brewpub is nestled between a couple of other retail shops, but it sits right across the street from a working warehouse. The narrow street has metered parallel parking of which we were able to find a spot right near the front door. I have to assume there’s a lot or something nearby that can be used, but we didn’t seek one out and nothing popped out at me as we were driving by. Read more…
Hopcat – Kalamazoo
300 E. Water StreetEvery time a Hopcat would open, I would tweet at the main Hopcat account begging for one to be opened in Kalamazoo. They answered almost every time and the message was always the same. “Stay tuned.” Well, I don’t have to tweet at them anymore. Hopcat is open in Kalamazoo.
I threw our weekend schedule off by taking some extra work which kept me away from home all weekend. L was so confused. She knows I have Friday and Saturday off and when I dropped her off at school Friday morning, I told her I wouldn’t be there when she got home. By the time I got home Friday night, she was already in bed. I crawled in bed and snuggled with her for a few minutes, but she didn’t even notice. The same thing was going to happen on Saturday. I had a 12 hour day ahead of me, so daddy/L time was going to be short.
Sunday it was back to the regular job, so again, I didn’t get to spend anytime with the family. J had asked me on Saturday night if I wanted to get up and try to get to Hopcat before it got busy. I knew it was going to cut into my sleep, but I said yes. A lunch out would give me a little bit of time to spend with my family on a busy weekend.
Hopcat opened up this past Saturday at 300 E. Water Street in downtown Kalamazoo. The building, constructed in the 1920’s, was originally used by Grand Trunk Western Railroad as a freight office. Over the years, it’s been used for a variety of things including a home for Robinson Guitars. It was bought by Jon Stryker in 2007, but not much was done with it until Hopcat came in to the picture. Read more…
Chicken Plus
930 W. Michigan Avenue- Kalamazoo, MI 49006
- No Known Phone Number
- No Known Website
- Menu
I really like chicken wings. I love the places that just bread and fry wings whole. No fancy sauces. Just wings.
We don’t really have many places like that in Kalamazoo. I’ve found a number in Grand Rapids so I get my fix while I’m at work, but options close to home are nice too.
This past Friday, I was working at WMU. I had a pretty long lunch break and needed to go somewhere off of our work site to eat. For a couple of a weeks now, I’ve been passing a food truck on Michigan Avenue and since I had the time, I decided to check it out.
Chicken Plus is parked in the parking lot of Bottoms Up Snacks & Spirits on Michigan Avenue right at that weird intersection with West Lovell between Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College’s campuses.
The truck is pretty new as I’ve only seen it out there for a couple of weeks. There’s no information about it online. No website. No Facebook page. No Kalamazoo Gazette article. It’s one of those rare places that only exist in the physical world (right now anyway).
I parked behind the truck in the Bottoms Up parking lot just before 2:30. I was the only person at the truck so I told the guy working to give me a minute while I looked over the menu. The menu is simple, but pretty big for a food truck. They have an assortment of fried foods including several kinds of fish, wings, chicken strips, and a number of sides. Read more…
Jaspare’s Pizza & Fine Italian Food – Gull Road
5190 Gull RoadThe last three years, at two different schools, L has had a class field trip to Gull Meadow Farms during apple picking season. This year, it was L, B, and me out for a Thursday morning adventure with her classmates. J works in the mornings so she’s never able to go and J’s mom was coming to town that afternoon, so J asked if I would pick up lunch from somewhere on the way home.
The field trip ended just a little before 11:00. Initially, J had suggested Aubree’s Pizza and that was fine with me until I noticed something on the way out to Richland. Jaspare’s Pizza on Gull Road had closed….BUT, there was a sign that said they had moved down the road a little ways. In fact, we had actually passed the new restaurant and not even noticed on our way out of town.
The new location for Jaspare’s Pizza and Fine Italian Food on Gull Road is about a mile west of the old location. The restaurant is in what used to be the Educational Community Credit Union (now Arbor Financial Credit Union) which itself moved just down the street to a new location of their own. Read more…
The Knickerbocker Brewpub & Distillery
417 Bridge Street NWI always get excited for new brewpubs opening. It doesn’t matter if it’s Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids or anywhere else in West Michigan. Any place that serves delicious beer and just as delicious food is always going to be a high priority for J and I.
This past weekend, J wanted to go to the Tanger Outlets in Byron Township. The only other time we’ve tried going to the outlets L had a massive meltdown in the Gap and we had to make a run for the car to get her out of there. We decided to try again by telling her there is a playground that she could play at while Momma went shopping.
Anytime we go to Grand Rapids as a family, we try to knock off one of the many, many places we want to eat at. It just so happens, one of those high priority ones popped up for us. It actually made the decision to take the road trip to the outlets that much easier.
The Knickerbocker Brewpub & Distillery doesn’t have it in it’s name, but it’s part of a very successful West Michigan beer company. The brewpub is New Holland Brewing’s second location. They’ve opened a massive brewpub, new offices, retail space, and production floor with a three vessel 10 BBL with six fermenters. It also has two distillers for their artisan spirits. The building is just west of downtown Grand Rapids in what is known as the “West Side.” The building is an original build that looks sort of out of place in this location right now. The word massive barely does it justice. It was just under a year ago that they broke ground on this spot just a couple years after speculation that they would be opening a brewpub in the Downtown Market. The brewpub, pays homage to it’s home in Holland by naming the brewpub after the Knickerbocker Theater at Hope College. Read more…
Marie’s Snack Shop
459 E. Laketon Avenue- Muskegon, MI 49442
- (231) 578-7645
- No Known Website
- Menu
I’m not gonna lie. I love taking co-workers to new places and watching their faces as we pull up. The places that make them say, “We’re eating here?” are the best. I work in a business where 90% of our meals are eaten at fast food places and/or in the car while driving to the next location. Technically, we get an hour lunch break, but in 15 years, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually been able to walk away from work for an hour and enjoy a lunch.
I’ve spent a little extra time in Muskegon this week with two different co-workers. The first night, our dinner was a bottle of Pepsi and the delicious popcorn from Wesco. The second night, with a different co-worker, we had a little more time and there was a sign that caught my eye. Co-worker wanted Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken. I said I had a better idea.
We ended up at Marie’s Snack Shop in Musekgon’s Marsh Field neighborhood. The tiny shop is on the corner of Laketon and Manz Street. The building is a walk up type restaurant with no seating or inside public space. It looks like in a previous life, it was Kacey’s Big Dipper. Read more…
Bowmans BBQ & Meat Market
14377 East ON AvenueI used to watch a lot of Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives when it first premiered on the Food Network in 2007. I just loved the ideas of all these hidden gems hiding in plain sight. Some of my favorite where the ones that were part of something else. They were delicious little restaurants tucked in the back of a hardware store or a grocery store that you would never even thought about if someone hadn’t told you how great they were.
J and I really wanted to take the kids to Binder Park Zoo one last time before they close for the season. We’ve been talking about it for a few weeks, but the threat of rain has kept us away. When J got home from work…and L got home from school on Friday, we decided now is as good of a time as ever, so we headed over to Battle Creek to feed the giraffes one more time this year.
We got there pretty late in the day, so as they were starting to close up near 5:00, we were making our way back to the car. I asked J what she wanted to do for dinner. I had a pizza option in Battle Creek or a BBQ option in Climax. No surprise to me, she chose the BBQ option even though it was just a little bit out of the way on our trip back to Kalamazoo.
Now, this is where my Triple D comments come in to play. We pulled in to the parking lot of Bowmans BBQ & Meat Market just west of the Village of Climax. J seemed confused. It’s a grocery store. It’s an IGA grocery store. She was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and we grabbed the kids and headed in. Read more…
Pieology – Grand Rapids
2006 East Beltline Avenue NEIt wasn’t that long ago that I had never heard of a fast-fired pizza place. Blaze Pizza opened about two years ago in Oshtemo Township and all of a sudden, I see competitors popping up all over the place. Now, I don’t know who was first or who copied who. That’s not really important to me. I’m just saying there are a lot of places starting to open up that all do the same thing….very similarly.
Last week I was driving down the East Beltline on the Northeast Side of Grand Rapids near Knapps Corner. I noticed a pizza place and quickly turned in to see what it was all about.
Pieology is in a new development right on the corner of the East Beltline and Knapp Street. It sits right in front of the D & W Fresh Market and near the PF Changs that is so popular. The address is on the Beltline, but the access to the restaurant is from Knapp Street. You have to go in to the D & W parking lot to get to the small parking lot between the building and the Beltline for this development.
Pennfield Pizza
1432 Capital Avenue NEI don’t usually work Friday nights, but I was offered a couple hours of overtime for some pretty easy work, so I took it. The kids were going to bed right after I left anyway, so I wasn’t missing out on anything other than a little extra sleep.
I ended my night on the northeast side of Battle Creek. Actually, in Pennfield Township. It was still fairly early and I was hungry. There’s a few food options on that side of town, but you know me, always hoping for something local.
I found a pizza place that was open until midnight and, since it’s Friday night, I decided to grab a pizza and go home and drink a couple of beers.
Pennfield Pizza is on Capital Avenue NE just north of the Bailey Park in Pennfield Township. It’s a stand alone building on the east side of the road just south of J Bartlett Drive. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 
