Bojangles (Normal)
2007 N. Main StreetSunday was a travel day.
A colleague and I had been in St. Louis since Tuesday and we finished up with our work late Saturday night. We had planned on getting up around 9 AM and starting the drive home. But we were tired and ended up not leaving until 10 AM.
The drive from St. Louis to Kalamazoo is a little over six hours. It’s not a bad drive. It’s all highway so the time goes pretty fast.
Co-worker grabbed Starbucks for breakfast before we left town but I hadn’t eaten anything. I wasn’t really hungry and, honestly, I was just planning on stopping at Wally’s in Pontiac, IL to get gas and grab a sandwich.
The something happened.
As we were driving on I-55 near Lincoln, IL, I saw a billboard for a Loves Travel Center in Normal about a half hour up the road. That’s not really unusual but what was unusual was the restaurant in that Loves.
It was a Bojangles. And I was surprised because I didn’t realize Bojangles had restaurants that far north.
Bojangles in Normal is right off I-55 on North Main Street. The Loves Travel Center is a fairly recent development, opening in late 2022, on the north side of the highway. The Bojangles restaurant is in the main building on the south side. It’s one of three locations in Illinois but the one that’s furthest north.
Imo’s Pizza (Central West End)
4479 Forest Park AvenueI had to do it.
One last night in St. Louis. I had to do it.
I had to get another Imo’s Pizza.
We got back to our hotel after a long day of work around 11:00. I was hungry and thirsty but didn’t really know where to go. There were a couple of bars in the area that were still open but that felt like too much. I really just wanted to put on a pair of sweatpants, eat, and go to bed.
I was really excited to find an Imo’s Pizza within walking distance. It was about a ten minute walk and a St. Louis pizza before leaving the town the next day sounded amazing.
Imo’s Pizza in the Central West End neighborhood is on Forest Park Avenue and Taylor Avenue is a small shopping center. At 11:30 at night, it was the only thing open when I walked up. This Central West End location is one of about 100 Imo’s location in Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas.
Read more…Shake Shack (St. Louis)
60 N. Euclid AvenueGetting to sleep in on a work trip is a rarity. We typically work late in to the evening then are back at it early the next day.
We didn’t start work until late afternoon on Saturday and I took full advantage. I got up around 8 AM to watch a live stream of my daughter’s figure skating competition in Nashville then went back to sleep until my son skated later in the afternoon.
We had moved hotels the previous night. We were no longer in the suburbs. We were know in the Central West End Neighborhood of St. Louis. That meant we had a few more options for meals and there were places we could walk to.
I found a couple of different places that sounded good but most of them would have required me to drive. I didn’t really feel like getting the car out of the parking garage then finding a spot where ever I was going so I just stuck with something I could walk to.
What I found was a Shake Shack.
St. Louis has two locations of Shake Shack in the city. One is in the Enterprise Center so I don’t really consider that a location. The other wasn’t far from my hotel in the Central West End.
Shake Shack’s St Louis location is on Euclid Avenue and West Pine Boulevard not too far from Barnes Jewish Hospital. The multi-story, multi-use building was built on this corner about ten years ago replacing a single story commercial building that was anchored by a dry cleaner. Shake Shake takes up the prominent bottom floor corner space and is accessible from either Euclid or Pine Boulevard.
Read more…Mama’s on the Hill
2132 Edwards StreetMy weekend got extended in St. Louis so I wasn’t able to meet my family in Nashville.
It worked out alright. J took the kids and another skater and they hung out with their friends most of the weekend. I’m sure they didn’t even miss me.
Our Friday in St. Louis was a little bit of a shorter day. We were done with work by about 5:30 and started heading to a new hotel closer to Barnes Jewish Hospital.
As we pulled out of the parking garage downtown, I asked co-worker if she wanted to get dinner. Earlier in the week, she had mentioned going to The Hill and finding a place. This was our chance to do that.
If you’ve never been to The Hill neighborhood in St. Louis, it’s wild. It’s really just a neighborhood with Italian restaurants and businesses sprinkled in amongst the houses. Parking is a nightmare. It’s all street parking and when there are cars on both sides of the street, it becomes very hard for two cars to pass each other going opposite directions.
I have only been to The Hill once and I couldn’t tell you what restaurant we ate at. It was before that very awful Rascal Flatts concert I told you about in my blog post about the Enterprise Center so it was quite a while ago.
When we checked in to our hotel Tuesday, the guy checking us in gave a couple of recommendations. I just took the one that sounded somewhat familiar to me and headed there.
Mama’s on the Hill is on the corner of Edwards Street and Bischoff Avenue in St. Louis’ The Hill Neighborhood. The restaurant is surrounded by houses and just kind of tucked in to the corner. The building has a long history as a restaurant. It was first opened as Oldani’s in 1939 then became Mamma Campisi’s in 1982. It closed in 2005 but was reopened by a new family in 2006 and became known as Mama’s on the Hill. The restaurant’s real claim to fame is the invention of toasted ravioli…a food that has become synonymous with St. Louis.
Read more…Waffle House (Maryland Heights)
12215 Dorsett Road When we planned out trip to Nashville, long before I knew I was going to St. Louis this weekend, one of the most exciting things outside of the skating the kids were going to do was that the hotel we booked had a Waffle House in the parking lot.
L has picked up on my love for Waffle House after she and J took a trip to Tampa last year for skating.
This was another thing that bummed me out when I realized I wasn’t going to Nashville with everyone else.
When my colleague and I got to St. Louis, Waffle House was brought up. I got curious. Are there Waffle Houses in St. Louis.
The answer was yes. Yes there are.
Thursday was our really long work day. We started around 11 AM and worked until about 11 PM.
When we got back in the car to head to the hotel I asked if she was hungry. She kind of gave me a non-answer until I said this was our chance to go to Waffle House. That non-answer changed to a “let’s go.”
We picked the Waffle House in Maryland Heights. The shop is on Old Dorsett Road right off Dorsett Road. It’s wedged into a space between Homewood Suites and a shopping plaza. It looks like any other Waffle House…a long skinny building, and the property is the same. Long and skinny with just enough room for the building and a parking lot.
Read more…Enterprise Center
1401 Clark Avenue- St. Louis, MO 63103
- (314) 622-5400
- Website
On one of our first dates back in 2007, J and I took a trip to St. Louis to see Rascal Flatts at what was then called the Scotttrade Center.
It was probably the worst concert I have ever been to in my life. The show was awful. Gary LeVox left the stage for like 45 minutes in the middle of the set and the other two guys played a guitar cover of Somewhere over the Rainbow that seems like it lasted an hour.
Fortunately, J didn’t hold it against me.
I don’t really remember anything about the arena. I just remember how bad the show was.
I was back in that arena this past week while we were in St. Louis. Western Michigan was playing in the Frozen Four.
The Enterprise Center is the home to the St. Louis Blues. It was built in the mid-90’s and originally opened as the Kiel Center named after former Mayor Henry Kiel. The building replaced Kiel Auditorium which was on that site at the corner of 14th and Clark in downtown St. Louis. The 18,000 seat arena hosts most of the major shows and events in the St. Louis area. There are parking lots all around the arena including a connected parking garage that is still named Kiel Center Parking garage. Over the years, the arena has been known as the Savvis Center, Scottrade Center and now the Enterprise Center who bought the naming rights in 2018.
Read more…Wally’s (Fenton)
950 Assembly Parkway- Fenton, MO 63026
- (636) 678-7087
- Website
Like I mentioned in my first post from this trip, I was supposed to be in Nashville this weekend.
We signed the kids up for a figure skating competition in Nashville and had been making plans ever since. J and I went to Nashville for one night on our honeymoon on our way back to Michigan from Pigeon Forge. That’s the only time we’ve been there.
One of the biggest thing the kids were looking forward to was stopping at Buc-ees. There’s one along the way in Smiths Grove, TN. B wanted so much stuff. A few of his friends have blankets, t-shirts, onesies, etc. He wanted those things too.
When my plans got changed and I was heading to St. Louis for the weekend. I was going to miss out on the Buc-ees stop. I’ve never been to one and I was looking forward to it too.
No worries though, there’s an equally ridiculous gas station stop along the way in Pontiac, IL.
I told my colleague we were going to stop at Wally’s. It was like Buc-ees but it’s not Buc-ees. I figured we’d grab lunch there on our way down. I’ve been there before. Two of my aunts are in a nursing home nearby and I stopped there last time I went to visit.
Our second night in St. Louis we headed back to the hotel after our shift was done. We stayed at Drury Plaza that in addition to free breakfast, has free dinner for guests. My colleague said she was tired and we’d see what hotel dinner was. It was pasta and chicken and it wasn’t bad so we just ate there and enjoyed a couple of free drinks that came with it.
I needed to go get gas in the car though before our next day in St. Louis. I realized we were really close to the other Wally’s and I had just enough gas to get there. So once we got done with hotel dinner, I headed to Fenton.
The other of the two Wally’s locations is on Assembly Parkway in Fenton, MO at N Highway Drive right off I-44. It’s really kind of confusing to get to if you’re not familiar with the location. I was coming from the east on I-44 and it had me get off the highway a mile before the store. N Highway Drive is one way heading west. If you get off at Bowles Avenue coming from the west, you’ll weave your way to Assembly Parkway and come in from that side of the travel plaza.
Read more…Imo’s Pizza (Chesterfield)
1717 Clarkson RoadThis is going to be a really hot take. A very unpopular take.
I like St. Louis pizza.
Most people will say, “St. Louis has it’s own pizza?” Yes. I’ve blogged about it before both in St. Louis and in Kalamazoo.
We had already went to dinner at Hwy 61 Roadhouse our first day in St. Louis but I was concerned I wasn’t going to have time to actually order a pizza. I was laying in my room watching Daredevil: Born Again when I decided to see how far the closest Imo’s was from me. It was just down the street and closing in an hour. I decided I needed to get a pizza while I was in town and if I ordered a large, I could eat a few pieces tonight and have some leftover for later in the week.
Imo’s Pizza is a St. Louis based pizza chain with over 100 locations in Missouri, Illinois and Kansas. The original store was in The Hill where all of the best St. Louis Italian restaurants are. They were also the first delivery pizza shop in St. Louis and the one who changed the traditional mozzarella cheese topping to Provel. Imo’s is literally the inventor of St. Louis style pizza.
The store I ordered from is on Clarkson Road near Baxter Road in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield. The restaurant is part of the Clarkson Square shopping center and by the time I got there at 9:30 at night…about a half hour before closing, the shopping plaza was pretty empty.
Hwy 61 Roadhouse
34 S. Orchard AvenuePlans change.
We have been planning a trip to Nashville for a figure skating competition for a couple of months. We had the weekend pretty planned out. Where we were going to eat. When we were going to drive. Everything pretty much planned.
But plans change.
J and the kids were still going to Nashville but work through a wrench in my plans.
I had the opportunity for a big overtime week with a trip to St. Louis. We weren’t sure if it was going to be for the whole weekend or not so there was a contingency for me to bail out of St. Louis on Friday if we were done with job and meet them in Nashville.
Because of that contingency, I had my colleague meet me in Kalamazoo Tuesday morning. We left my work vehicle at home for my usual Kalamazoo area colleague that I share a truck with. We took her company car to St. Louis in case she was driving home by herself Friday morning.
It’s about a six hour drive from Kalamazoo to St. Louis. We left around 10 AM. We made a stop in the Chicago area for gas then a stop at Wally’s in Pontiac to grab something to eat. After that, we stayed on the road until we got East St. Louis where we pulled off just to get some scenic pictures for the ‘Gram because isn’t that some the kids do?
We got to our hotel in Chesterfield around 4:00. Co-worker asked if I wanted to go out for dinner. We’d get some chances to eat out later in the week but the travel day was the day we could really relax and enjoy dinner.
She suggested Italian on The Hill because someone told her she needs to do that. I had another idea with plans to go to The Hill later in the week. I gave her a couple of options and she picked cajun.
We headed to Hwy 61 Roadhouse in Webster Groves to the southwest of St. Louis proper.
Hwy 61 Roadhouse is on South Orchard Avenue and Frisco Avenue backing up to I-44. I’m not familiar with the local geography but I know US-61, or The Blues Highway runs or used to run through the area. The restaurant is in the style of an old roadhouse and it’s tucked tightly on to the corner. Parking was a little confusing. The spots right next to the building were theirs but the ones in the parking lot to the north are for the business next door. We found a spot on the southside of the building then walked around front to Orchard Avenue to find the front door.
La Loma Supermercado
1791 W. Columbia Avenue, Suite CIt’s not every often J finds out about a new restaurant before I do but that’s what happened a few weeks ago.
She saw a Facebook post for a Mexican grocery store in Battle Creek that some really good looking baked goods. They also have a taqueria.
A colleague and I were in Battle Creek last Monday for a job assignment. We got done just before 7:30 and I was hungry. I decided to see how far we were from the grocery store J found and we were right around the corner.
La Loma Supermercado is on Columbia Avenue near South 28th on the west side of Battle Creek. The Mexican grocery store is in a spot that used to be a Dollar General right next to the Pet Supplies Plus.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 