Fish Express
620 Riverview DriveI’ve got a fried chicken problem. Obviously.
I never pass up gas station chicken when I come across it but I still feel like there’s something missing from today’s society. Good fried chicken places that aren’t a chain.
We had fried chicken all the time growing up. Maybe I’m just not remembering it right but it never came from a chain. My family rarely did Kentucky Fried Chicken and we didn’t have a Popeye’s until I was high school. I can vaguely remember a place we used to get it from and I know my grandma used to make her own. That was the best part about our road trips to Southern Illinois for the family reunion.
It seems like all that left now are grocery store deli’s, chain restaurants, and fish places that usually have whole chicken wings.
There’s really only one place in Kalamazoo that fits in to that latter category.
Fish Express is on Riverview Drive and Hotop in Kalamazoo’s Eastside Neighborhood. The small deep fried food restaurant has been there a little over twenty years. The building sits right along Riverview Drive but there’s a nice big parking lot between the building and Hotop so getting in and out is pretty simple.
Rynearson Stadium
799 N. Hewitt Road- Ypsilanti, MI 48197
- (734) 487-3669
- Website
Working on the east side of the state last Tuesday gave me a chance to do something I haven’t gotten to do in the 17 years I’ve lived in Michigan. See a football game at Eastern Michigan University.
I’ve been to both Waldo Stadium and Kelly/Shorts Stadium in the past but EMU is the MAC school that I haven’t been able to see a game at. I was in Ypsilanti and it was a MACtion night. EMU was playing WMU. Sounds like a good reason to go.
Eastern Michigan University’s football stadium in Rynearson Stadium. It’s on North Hewitt Road south of Huron River Drive. The stadium is the centerpiece of a sports complex that also includes the George Gervin GameAbove Center (basketball arena) Oestrike Stadium (baseball), Scicluna Field (soccer/lacrosse), an indoor practice facility, and tennis courts. The stadium is about a mile and a half from the main campus to the east. While the stadium’s official name is Rynearson Stadium, named after Elton Rynearson, the program affectionately refers to it as “The Factory.”
Read more…Jersey Giant Subs (Charlotte)
311 Lansing Street I end up meeting co-workers in Lansing a lot.
I had another job last week that I needed to pick up a Grand Rapids colleague in Lansing before heading to the east side of the state.
It was an afternoon/evening thing so I got the kids to school, took a nap, then got myself up and going around noon to head to our usual meeting spot in Grand Ledge.
Because I took a nap, I didn’t eat before leaving the house. I figured I’d grab something along the way like I usually do.
The last time I stopped along the route, I headed in to downtown Charlotte and picked up a sandwich from Sidestreets Deli & Bakery. As I was heading back to the highway that day, I made a mental note of another sandwich shop not too far off the highway. A favorite sandwich shop of mine.
Jersey Giant Subs in Charlotte is on the corner of Lansing Street and Hall Street on the east side of Charlotte not too far from the I-69 interchange with Lansing Street. The shop is in a small shopping plaza shared with a liquor store on the west side of the intersection. It’s kind of oddly placed so it doesn’t face either of the roads at the intersection but instead is on an angle so it’s accessible from either road.
Casey’s (54th Street)
I grew up in a small town in Illinois. My first job out of college was in Peoria. Like my current job, I did a lot of travel around the region.
GPS wasn’t quite as prevalent in those days. I got one my last couple of years in the job but before that, I had to print out Mapquest directions from stop to stop and try to read them while driving.
Getting directions verbally from someone who knew where they were going was also pretty common. Also common, being told to turn at the Casey’s…because every small town in Illinois had a Casey’s and it seemed like you always turned at the Casey’s no matter where you were going.
Casey’s weren’t really a thing in Michigan until recently. The first one in Southwest Michigan opened in Watervliet about seven years ago. Since then, they’ve slowly been making their way up I-94 towards Kalamazoo.
Casey’s got a huge boost in presence when they bought the Grand Rapids area Kum & Go stores. They went from zero stores in Grand Rapids to eight pretty much overnight.
I had to work a couple of shifts in Grand Rapids last week and I was super excited to get my hands on that Casey’s pizza.
The store I ended up stopping at is the one closest to US-131 on 54th Street in Wyoming. This is actually an old Maverick store and not actually branded a Kum & Go. Maverick had bought the Kum & Go chain before they sold these stores to Casey’s. It’s a fairly new gas station having been built in just the last couple of years. It’s right on the corner of 54th Street and Clyde Park Avenue right as you get off the highway on the west side of the interchange.
Read more…Saroki’s Crispy Chicken & Pizza (Haslett)
1619 Haslett RoadFriday night became Saturday night overtime last weekend. It was fine. J and the kids were busy all day volunteering for a synchronized skating competition at Wings Event Center. Neither of them are on synchro teams this year so I didn’t have to be there. The overtime opportunity came up so I took it.
This one was a little bit of a drive but nothing to outrageous. I needed to be in Haslett for an afternoon assignment. I was by myself so I could take my time getting over there.
I worked from about 1 – 4 PM then went looking for lunch. I was near the high school and I knew there were some options just to the north of where I was. Of course, I gravitated towards the gas station chicken.
Saroki’s Crispy Chicken & Pizza is inside the Marathon gas station on the corner of Haslett and Marsh Roads in the unincorporated community of Haslett near Lansing. The gas station is really kind of difficult to get in to. There’s an entrance before the building on Marsh Road and one on Marsh Road once you get past the building. The whole shopping plaza feels shoe horned in to the plot of land. The entrance to the building actually faces away from Haslett Road. There’s a sign for the restaurant portion of the building on the outside that almost looks like it has it’s own entrance but it doesn’t. You have to go in to the convenience store entrance to get to it.
Read more…Papa Murphy’s Pizza (Plainwell)
1285 M-89The Friday night overtime is over for the fall. It’s a good 13 weeks of extra paychecks but I’m also glad to get my Friday night’s back and that means Friday night pizza.
I had to work in Grand Rapids this past Friday and I knew I was going to be late getting home. J actually texted me around 5:00 and asked if I’d order delivery. I have the Cottage Inn account and app on my phone so it’s just easier if I do it and I get the points for doing it.
I wasn’t really feeling the Cottage Inn though. I like it wen it’s hot but we always get the thin crust…which is a better pizza…but it’s not the greatest cold. It’s fine. I like cold pizza. I’d just rather have Cottage Inn’s thin crust hot.
I didn’t want to bring anything home from Grand Rapids because…again, I wanted something hot. I had an idea for a stop in Plainwell for a pizza I haven’t had in a really long time.
I stopped at the Papa Murphy’s on M-89 between Oaks Crossing and 12th Avenue. The restaurant shares a small strip mall with an AT&T Store on a very commercialized section of M-89 west of the US-131 interchange. It’s one of those buildings that easier to get in to if you’re heading west but can be difficult to get back on M-89 if you’re heading east towards the highway unless you cut through the RX Optical parking lot next door to get to the light.
Read more…Richland Pub
8253 N. 32nd StreetWings West closing has had a pretty big impact on our routine. We’ve mostly adjusted to practices at Wings Event Center every night. The kids seem to like those rinks better but it’s farther from home for us.
One of the things that hasn’t adjusted to WEC though is Athletic Mentors. L loves those classes and was taking them three nights a week when practices were at West. There’s no space for Mentors at Wings Event Center so they’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the figure skaters since West closed.
After a few months, the only viable option was to move training to their gym in Richland. That’s even farther from home and a really complicated issue when B still needs to be at WEC the same time L needs to be in Richland. She was begging to do it though. The strength and conditioning she gets there has helped her skating so much.
She only goes two nights to Richland instead of the three they used to do at Wings West. J has a system worked out on Monday nights where L gets a ride with one of the other skaters then J picks her up while B is in lessons at WEC.
Thursday nights, I’m usually off in time to at least get to Wings Event Center to pick B up so J can take L to Richland.
This past Thursday night, I got to the rink with enough time to take L out to Richland. Since J has to do it most weeks, I offered to drive her.
It’s not worth going home as the class is only an hour long. There a few restaurants in Richland I either haven’t been to or haven’t been to in a long time. If I’m going to drive L to Richland and have to wait around, I’m going to check out some of these restaurants.
I decided on this trip to go to a restaurant I haven’t been to in a really long time. The last time I ate a meal at The Richland Pub was back in 2010 not long after J and I had moved to Kalamazoo. We had heard good things about the food at Richland Pub and that was when we were still adventurous, kidless, and would go out to dinner a few times a week.
The Richland Pub is pretty easy to spot on North 32nd Street/M-89 on the north side of Richland. There’s a large neon sign out front that draws your attention right away. The building itself is kind of oddly shaped and kind of has a barn motif to the side of the building that faces M-89. I pulled in to the parking lot around 6:30 on a Thursday night and it was pretty full.
Read more…Little Caesars Express (Zeeland)
5 W. Main StreetHow many times have I said it? I wasn’t planning on buying lunch/dinner at work.
My colleague and I were in Zeeland Monday night for an assignment. We had some down time and I had to find a bathroom. My usual go-to in Zeeland is the 7Eleven on the Business Loop near the I-196 Interchange. I started to head there from downtown but something else caught my eye and made me do a double take.
I swung back around to the J & H Family Store on the corner of West Main Street and South State Street just to the west of downtown Zeeland. It’s not totally uncommon for J & H stores to have some kind of chain restaurant inside of them. Some do. Some don’t. But this one in Zeeland has something I have never seen before. A Little Caesars Express. I wasn’t planning on getting dinner but I couldn’t pass this up.
Cantu’s Cocina
330 E. Centre AvenueMy last Friday night overtime shift of the fall. And, as has been the case a lot this fall, I was in Portage.
I had a little bit of time between the regular shift and the overtime shift and I wanted to grab dinner before my shift this week. Last week, I did the opposite and grabbed Applebee’s afterwards.
I drove kind of aimlessly down Westnedge but nothing really jumped out at me. I had one more idea a little further south…if it was open.
I pulled in to Sweet Convenience Party Store on the corner of Centre Avenue and Mustang Way right in front of Portage Central High School to find a large blue tent set up in the parking lot. That’s what I was looking for.
Cantu’s Cocina can’t quite be called a “food truck” but they are a mobile food operation who has set up a semi permanent business in the parking lot of Sweet Convenience. They use a couple of pop up tents and have them tied together with blue tarp walls. Their whole operation is mobile with cooking taking place on a Blackstone and the rest of the food being kept warm in slow cookers on tables behind the cook.
Read more…The Nest Bar & Grill
3600 Vanrick DriveWings West closing a huge impact on our routine. Like a lot of figure skating and hockey families, we spend six nights a week at the rink.
Things haven’t changed all that much yet. We’re now over at Wings Event Center skating on either The Valley or the Zoo most nights. The kids like skating over there better the parents have really missed one big thing from Wings West. Old Burdick’s.
The Valley usually has their concession stand open so you can get snacks along with a few meals. Plus they have beer but it’s just not the same as the full menu and full bar from Burdick’s.
That’s where The Nest comes in to play. It’s a restaurant inside Wings Event Center near the concession stand in the upstairs lobby for The Valley. The space actually used to be a Burdick’s. When we moved here in 2010, this space was Burdick’s Icehouse. We tried going once when we went to the US Curling Nationals but it wasn’t open that day so we never ate there when it was a working restaurant. Now that space has been opened back up with a larger food menu than the concession stand hands and with a much bigger bar.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 