Final Gravity Brewing Company
103 N. Phelps StreetIt’s been a little over four weeks since Bell’s held the most fun I’ve ever had at a beer fest. The Bell’s Funivitational brought in so many great beers from so many great breweries that we don’t have access here to in Michigan.
Because there was so many amazing out of state beers, I only had one or two from local breweries, but there was something that caught my eye that I didn’t expect. As I was walking around Homer Stryker Field with my little book of beers, I noticed a sign for a brewery in Decatur. I had never heard of the place before, so I checked their website real quick, noticed they had a food menu, and did my best to remember the place when it came time for a night out with J.
The brewery is Final Gravity Brewing Company and it’s on Phelps Street in downtown Decatur. It’s kind of a spin-off from Patchwork Brewing Company. The father and son that are Final Gravity helped the owners of Patchwork and eventually took it over when she stepped aside to focus on her family.
The brewery shares a building with Harley’s Gentlemen’s Club right on the corner of Phelps and Delaware Streets. I thought at first there was a parking lot next to the building, but that turned out to not be the case, so we drove around the block and found street parking a little bit further down Phelps Street and walked back.
Final Gravity is not a big place. They have a small tap room and a large outdoor patio. Inside, there are only about half a dozen tables. Luckily, there was a four top pub table open when we walked in. It was a nice night out, but we’re not really patio people.
The lone waitress saw us sit down and asked from the bar if we needed menus. We said yes since food was the main reason for our visit. The beer is just always a bonus for me. Read more…
Confections With Convictions
116 W. Crosstown Parkway #101Part two of my chocolate anniversary gift for my wife was at a place I had been wanting to stop in to for quite some time. I’m not really sure why I never have, but the fact is, I didn’t….and now I have.
Confections With Convictions is a small chocolate shop that specializes in truffles and caramels. All of their truffles are made from fair trade and organic chocolate. That would be part of the “convictions” part of their name.
It’s located on Crosstown Parkway between Stockbridge and Burdick. The shop shares a building with The Victoria Bakery. When you enter the main door you have the option to choose another door on either side of the small entryway. I chose the right door to lead me in to the retail space of Confections With Convictions which isn’t a whole lot more than a large display case filled with hand-made truffles.
I was greeted by a woman who introduced herself as Dale’s mother. She proceeded to explain the process of how they’re made and what’s in each case. As she was starting to offer me a free sample, her son, who introduced himself as Dale, came out and took over. He then went in to more details about the truffles and offered me a sample. There were so many it was impossible to choose, but I finally chose one from the front of the case, and even though I can’t remember the name of it now, it was insanely delicious. So sweet and so gooey in the center with that perfect hard outer shell. I contemplated just buying the whole store and saying Happy Anniversary to myself. Read more…
Heilman’s Nuts and Confections
1804 S. Westnedge Avenue- Kalamazoo, MI 49008
- (269) 383-1188
- Website
J and I celebrated six magnificent years together this past weekend. We sort of started the tradition early on that we don’t go crazy on anniversary gifts. We pretty much stick to small gifts that fit the traditional present for that year’s anniversary.
The sixth year traditional gift is actually two things. One of those being iron. That’s a hard one. J doesn’t cook much, so cast iron cookware wouldn’t have been very thoughtful nor does she wear a lot of jewelry so things like bracelets wouldn’t have done much either. I racked my brain for weeks before finally coming up with a solution. I would use the iron part of the gift as a delivery vehicle for the other traditional gift….candy.
I’m not the kind of guy to just go buy a big heart filled with candy and try to pass that off as a gift. I wanted to take advantage of some of the great local candy shops we have in Kalamazoo, so I picked two of them and went with a unique gift from each one.
My first stop was Heilman’s Nuts and Confections on Westnedge Avenue right at the corner with Howard Street in the Southside Neighborhood. The shop is mostly a production facility as they do a lot of the business online, but there is a small, unassuming retail area on the north side of the building.
I was probably the first customer of the day showing up not long after their 8:30 AM opening time after I dropped my daughter off at school. I knew she couldn’t keep a secret, so I had to do all my candy shopping while I was alone. Read more…
Al Smith’s Place
3550 Executive Parkway #12Kids and hotel rooms….there’s just no way to avoid getting up early.
When I travel alone, I sleep right up to check out time. When I travel with my family, I’m up much, much earlier because there’s no place for them to go, so I get woken up. It’s fine though. It gives us a chance to eat breakfast before getting on the road.
We checked out of our downtown Toledo hotel around 9:30 and went looking for someplace to eat. I did the Yelp and Google thing to find a pancake house near Toledo University that people rave about. The big thing there is….near Toledo University. It was packed. People waiting outside. We weren’t waiting outside.
We passed a different place on the way to that pancake house and J said to just try there. Again. Line outside.
She was ready to give up and head to Big Boy, but there was a third place that actually was on my short list when I was looking on the interwebs that we passed. We drove back there and the parking lot actually had spots open, so we were hopeful there wouldn’t be a wait.
Al Smith’s Place is on Executive Parkway on the northwest side of Toledo. It’s a pretty unassuming breakfast, lunch, and dinner spot in the typical strip mall setting. Read more…
The Original Tony Packo’s Cafe
1902 Front StreetLike a good little beer drinker, I knew that I had to take advantage of being in Ohio. Sure, it’s not the greatest beer there is, but there is still something about Yuengling. I’m sure most of that has to do with not actually being able to get Yuengling in Michigan…or Indiana….or Illinois….it’s kind of like my dad’s Coors Light.
J and L went to bed pretty early after we got done swimming at our hotel. They were both pretty exhausted from a day at the zoo. I wasn’t really tired yet and I wanted to get some beer anyway, so I went and got the car while they went to sleep and did a little exploring on my own.
My first stop was to get beer. I did a search for the best craft beer stores in Toledo and it brought me to a Meijer-esque supermarket called The Andersons. Turns out, they had a great beer section. I was able to get all the Yuengling I wanted plus a bunch of Ohio craft beer that I can’t get here in the Mitten State.
As I was checking out, I noticed a Tony Packo’s Express in the supermarket. I had heard of Tony Packo’s and it was even highly recommended to me by a Toledo native co-worker, but I’m just not a hot dog guy….and if I was going to do it, I was going to do the original.
Soooooo…..I headed to the original. Seriously. Tony Packo’s is synonymous with Toledo. The Hungarian joint has been around since the 1930’s. The famous wedge-shaped building was purchased in 1935 and that’s where I headed to find this authentic taste of Toledo. Read more…
Ye Olde Durty Bird
2 South St. Clair StreetThe Toledo Zoo was pretty awesome, but after a long day of driving and walking, we needed to find someplace to eat. I promised L that if she would just make it through dinner, we’d be at the hotel very soon and we could jump in the pool right away.
I didn’t know Toledo very well and hotel options seemed pretty limited for Ohio’s fourth largest city. I usually gravitate towards downtown hotels because they’re close to whatever it is we’re doing and there’s a variety of food options. Toledo only has two downtown hotels.
I used Priceline and got the one with the pool. I could have gotten a great deal on the other one, but we had to have the pool for L, so I booked the Grand Plaza Hotel right along the Maumee River.
We were heading downtown anyway, so I sort of scoped out our options for dinner. There was a brewery that I could have chosen that had food options, but I found a different bar that explicitly had a kids menu, so I knew we’d be able to find something for L to eat.
The bar is called Ye Olde Durty Bird (sic) and it’s on the corner of South Saint Clair and Washington Streets just across the street from Fifth Third Field…home of the Toledo Mud Hens. We found street parking along Saint Clair Street near where their patio is and walked back to the front entrance at the corner. Read more…
Toledo Zoo & Aquarium
- 2 Hippo Way
- Toledo, OH 43609
- (419) 385-4040
- Website
Zoos. Oh, how we love going to zoos. I’ve mentioned several times that we are members of Binder Park Zoo which gets us in to a number of zoos throughout the country for half price. We intend to take advantage of that as much as we possibly can.
We’ve been slacking a little bit this year. We’ve only been on zoo trips twice. Once to Binder Park Zoo early in the season and once a couple of weeks ago to John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids. This has been a busy summer so far that hasn’t allowed for my weekend excursions.
Once we finally got a weekend free this fall, we started talking about where to go. There aren’t many zoos left within weekend driving distance that we haven’t been to. The initial discussions were to make the longer road trip to the Columbus Zoo, but we eventually scaled back and settled on the Toledo Zoo.
We didn’t really know what to expect as we headed in to Toledo. We knew they had elephants, but that was about it. We’d seen they’d been rated by USA Today as the top zoo in the country in 2014 but we really didn’t know what that meant. Boy, were we about to find out.
The Toledo Zoo and Aquarium is right off the Anthony Wayne Trail or Ohio SR 25 about 3 miles Southwest of downtown Toledo near the Maumee River. The main entrance is off of Anthony Wayne Trail where there’s a huge parking lot that leads to the newer North Side of the zoo which has the Africa! and Arctic Encounter portions of the zoo. It’s connected to the Historic South Side by a pedestrian bridge. Read more…
Samuel Mancino’s Italian Eatery – Gobles
407 S. State Street #FI normally have Friday nights off. I did not have that this past Friday. I was asked to pick up an extra shift and in return, I got Sunday off. Sounded like a good deal to me, so I took it.
I had a pretty light workload on Friday with my only real task driving to Paw Paw then back to Kalamazoo. I left Grand Rapids just before five and on the way, I realized I was hungry. I don’t know why, but for some incredibly dumb reason, I was craving grinders.
There was no place to get grinders on my way to Paw Paw, but I knew with a little detour, there would be a place to get grinders…so when I hit D Avenue, I pulled off the highway and headed towards Gobles.
There aren’t a lot of food options in Gobles, but right on the edge of town right on M-40, there’s a Samuel Mancino’s Italian Eatery. The small restaurant is in a small shopping center that also includes a Village Market.
I should have taken notice of the packed parking lot and the fact it was a Friday night, but I didn’t. I walked in to a pretty crowded store and grabbed a menu off the counter. I typically always order the same thing at any Mancino’s, but I decided to go a different way this time. Read more…
Barrett’s Smokehouse – Portage
9942 Oakland DriveL is finally getting to that age where she needs her own bed. We’ve done a lot of co-sleeping over the last few years and the bed we have set up in L’s room is mostly only used when she’s mad at us or wants “privacy” while watching something on the iPad.
We’ve looked around at prices for a new bed and really didn’t want to spend the kind of money that we had been finding. Somewhere along the line, J noticed Seat-N-Sleep in Portage. We liked the prices there a little bit better and headed over to see if there was something we liked.
After doing our shopping, we still had a little over an hour until I needed to go to work. J suggested lunch and I was in the mood for brisket.
I had thought about heading to the new Barret’s Smokehouse on Stadium Drive, but we were in Portage and we haven’t been to Barrett’s Smokehouse there since they renovated.
The “new” Barrett’s Smokehouse in Portage actually replaced the old Barrett’s Smokehouse near the corner of Oakland Drive and Shaver Road in Portage. The last time we were at this Barrett’s location was in 2010 not long after they started doing lunch at their small shop. Since then, we have visited the Main Street location that just closed and moved to Stadium Drive several times.
This new shop in Portage is called a renovation, but there is nothing I recognize from the smaller shop that used to sit on the site. The new building is much bigger with a large seating area. Except for the seating, the space is set up kind of like the old Main Street store. There’s a large butcher shop area next to the order counter. The menu hangs on a wall behind the cashier. There are coolers along the wall with frozen meats and drinks and pantry items including their home made BBQ sauces fill in the retail area of the store. Read more…
The 57 Burger Barrel
706 W. Chicago RoadJ and I moved to Kalamazoo almost six years ago. During the time, I can only think of driving through White Pigeon two or three times. We don’t go that far south on US-131 very often and we almost never go all the way down to the Tollway to get back to Chicago.
Somehow, I ended up in White Pigeon late last week for work. It wasn’t my intention to get dinner while we were there, but anytime I see a restaurant put the word “burger” in their name, I take that as a challenge. The burgers must be good.
A little restaurant in White Pigeon did more than just put the word “burger” in the name…..they did it at a drive-in….with actual carhops. How could I pass that up?
The 57 Burger Barrel is on Chicago Road between downtown White Pigeon and the US-131 intersection on the west end of town. Like most drive-ins in this area, the restaurant started it’s life as an A & W Drive-In many, many years ago. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe the last restaurant this building hosted was Lily Jean’s Drive-In. According to an article in the Sturgis Journal, the building had been empty for about four years before the current owners bought it, cleaned it up, and opened as The 57 Burger Barrel last summer. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 