The Rib Cage
537 E. North StreetHave I mentioned how much I love BBQ? No? Really? Ok, I really love BBQ….and I really have a hard time finding the kind of BBQ I like. Every time I see a BBQ place I haven’t been to, I make it a point to get there as fast as I can.
I noticed a new place pop up on Urbanspoon called The Rib Cafe. It sounded like my kind of place so I waited until an opportunity to go pick up lunch.
J was working a little late the other day and I was hungry. I got L in to the car and headed to the Northside to see what this place is all about.
The Rib Cage is on the corner of North and Harrison just down the road from Louie’s Trophy House Grill. There’s a building on the corner with a sign for The Rib Cage, but there’s also a number of signs pointing you to the back of the restaurant where there’s a fenced in parking lot with a food truck. For now, this is the restaurant. The man I talked to said they were still working on the inside hoping to open a sit down restaurant, but the process has been real slow. Read more…
Farran’s Broaster Chicken
57649 Murray Street- Mattawan, MI 49071
- (269) 668-2499
- No Known Website
- Menu
BBQ and chicken. Two of my favorite foods (outside hamburgers and pizza of course) and two of the hardest things to find in Southwest Michigan. I’ve had minimal luck with chicken as the only real choice outside of the big chain is Chicken Coop, but they seem to be inconsistent. I like the Plainwell and South Westnedge locations, but don’t like most of the other ones.
A couple weeks ago, I noticed someone checked in to a chicken place in Mattawan. I recognized the Broaster Chicken name, but had never heard of this place. I did a Google search hoping to come up with some info, but found almost nothing other than an address.
Last weekend, I went to Paw Paw to pick up a pizza from Amore. On the way down I-94, I decided to take a detour to find this chicken place.
What I found was a little carry-out place that looked fairly new. I didn’t stop, but I should have to at least pick up a menu. It always helps when you can order chicken ahead of time, but without a website or menu, that’s a little tough to do.
This afternoon, J had a doctor’s appointment and I had some yard work to do. I finished up the mowing as she was getting ready to leave. Neither of us had eaten lunch yet. I told J I was going to make a trip to Mattawan and check out this chicken joint.
Farran’s Broaster Chicken is on Murray Street just north of Front Street. It sits right next to Halftime Food and Beverage. The building is pretty small and looks awfully new. They’re still working on an outdoor patio area which will provide more seating.
Inside the building there are less than half a dozen tables. The majority of the space is taken up by the kitchen and order counter. When you walk in the door, you have to go around the corner to get to the cash register to find a menu. There’s a big one on the wall as well as a handful of take out menus on the counter.
I noticed on a dry erase board as I walked in that the special today was an 8 piece mixed meal. That included two sides and dinner rolls. Perfect. Exactly what I was looking for. The two sides I got were french fries and potato salad. I paid the $13 bill (much less than the Chicken Coop) with my credit and took a seat at one of the tables to wait for the chicken to be cooked.
The restaurant itself if locally owned and operated, but the Broaster name is something you can find all over the country. The technique was invented in the 1950’s in Wisconsin. Instead of the traditional deep frying, Broaster uses a combination of pressure cooking and deep frying. Broasting cuts the cook time down by close to half.
I beat J back home by just a few minutes, so I opened the box containing the fries. They were standard food service fries with a light coating of salt. I sat there and ate them as I waited for my wife to get home not wanting to be totally rude and eating without her….but I was still really hungry.
About the time I finished the fries, J walked in the door so we got out some paper plates and cracked open box containing our chicken. The Broasting process is supposed to make the outside crispy while leaving the inside moist and tender. The first piece J pulled out was a wing. The meat was nice and juicy like it was supposed to be, but the breading wasn’t as crunchy as she would have liked. The second piece she pulled was a breast and this one was cooked the way it was supposed to. The breading was super crispy and the meat was juicy. I had about the same experience. The breast I pulled was deliciously crunchy, but the leg was still a little soft. The thigh I pulled out was about right in between the leg and the breast.
Overall, the chicken was really tasty. It’s still not that knock your socks off kind of place that I crave, but I knew that going in. I’ve had Broaster chicken several times over the years and Farran’s is right on par with what I was expecting. This little restaurant is definitely a place I will be going back to when I get that chicken craving. It’s not an awful drive from Kalamazoo and it’s still one of the better chicken places I have found in the area.
Potato Salad
Eight Piece Mixed Broaster Chicken
Niko’s Express
5876 King Highway- Kalamazoo, MI 49041
- (269) 342-0933
- Website
- No Online Menu
Saturday was a rough day. I worked essentially all day starting at about 8:00…and that was after just three hours or so of sleep. I somewhat volunteered to come in for a couple hours in the morning to complete a task that needed to be done here in Kalamazoo. After that, I headed home before our next event. J and I were going to take L to the Great Cloth Diaper Change at Small World Learning Village. As always, I figured we were heading to that side of town, so let’s find a restaurant over there we haven’t been to.
After a unusually lengthy Google search, I found Niko’s Express. It’s near the corner of Kings Highway and River Street in Comstock Township. The little restaurant is in front of the Niko’s Landing Banquet Center and the two share a parking lot.
Niko’s Express doesn’t really hold any surprises. There are two dining rooms separated by a partial wall. The space is filled with tables and booths packed in pretty tightly. The muted greens and browns and the specials written on a dry erase board make this feel like the corner family restaurant that it is. Read more…
From a Millennium Restaurant Group press release…..
Ellnora’s Kitchen
547 Eastern Avenue SE- Grand Rapids, MI 49503
- Telephone Unknown
- Menu
- No Known Website
I was on my way out the door for dinner tonight heading towards Chipotle. Not sure why, but out of nowhere, I decided I wanted rib tips. I have a few places I know do really good rib tips in Grand Rapids (Sandmann’s comes to mind), but me being me, I wanted to try some place new.
Last fall, I noticed a Soul Food place open up on Eastern Avenue just north of Sherman Street on the Southeast side of Grand Rapids where The Black Castle used to be. The sign in the window said “BBQ” and “Soul Food” so I assumed rib tips were on the menu.
Ellnora’s Kitchen opened up last fall after replacing the dark black paint on the small brick building with a fresh coat of white. There’s really not a whole lot of information out there on the place. Nothing on Google. Nothing on Yelp. Nothing on Urbanspoon. Nothing in the Press archives. It’s like the place almost doesn’t exist for someone like myself who gets pretty much all my information off the Internet.
I walked into the small dining room around 6:30 on a Friday night. There are a just a few tables and a LCD TV that was tuned to Family Feud. The order counter is chest high and it looks in to the kitchen. Read more…
Press Release – Annual Can Do Kitchen Open House
From a Fair Food Matters press release…..
Annual Can-Do Kitchen Expo links food producers to food buyers
The Fair Food Matters’ Can-Do Kitchen, the region’s only food business incubator, will present its 3rd Annual Can-Do Kitchen Expo, a trade show for food business entrepreneurs. The event will take place Friday, April 20, from 4:30-6 p.m. at the kitchen (511 Harrison Street, Kalamazoo).“The Expo is one of the many benefits we offer our clients,” said Can-Do Kitchen Program Manager Lucy Bland. “It’s a great chance for these entrepreneurs to meet people in the food service industry, showcase their products, make connections and gain new customers.”
Food industry buyers, brokers, distributors, merchandisers, marketers, designers, and business counselors are invited to taste samples of locally made foods and meet the people who make them.
The goal of the event, said Bland, is to make sure grocery buyers large and small, as well as other food-related business owners, are familiar with Can-Do Kitchen entrepreneurs. “We hope attendees come prepared to consider carrying and distributing the delicious Michigan-made products produced in the kitchen,” said Bland.
Can-Do Kitchen clients scheduled to take part in the Expo include: Ageless Pantry, a maker of bottled tea; The Adventures of Barb and Tammy, creators of granola and biscotti; Dough Chicks, making energy bars and Kara Komets; Unique Eats, developers of vegetarian meals; and Clara’s Kitchen, maker of Mike’s Famous Michigan Bean Dip.
For more information on the Can-Do Kitchen Expo, please contact Lucy Bland at (269) 492-0261 or lucy@fairfoodmatters.org.
Mandarin Orange Propel is Back!!!
Sorry, I’m a little geeked out. A few years ago, I wrote about my disappointment that Propel pulled the Mandarin Orange flavor off the shelf when they discontinued the Propel w/Calcium line.
Right after it was discontinued, my Mother-In-Law bought up all the Mandarin Orange she could find. I drank it all but one bottle. It’s one of those cases where I was so sad to see it go, I didn’t want to drink the last bottle, so it’s been sitting in my fridge ever since.
I no longer have to mourn the fallen flavor. Look what I found at Meijer today…. 🙂
Amore Pizza
117 W. Michigan AvenueL was starting to get a little cranky and J really wanted to take a shower before going to bed. I asked if she wanted to go on a little road trip. J asked what I had in mind and I said pizza.
It was dinner time anyway and someone had just recommended a pizza place in Paw Paw to me. L sleeps pretty good in her car seat so I knew the trip down I-94 would give J enough time to do what she wanted to do and I got pizza. Win win.
Amore Pizza is on West Michigan Avenue just to the west of the downtown business district. I put in our order for an 18″ thin crust pizza from home and by the time I got to the small store, it was ready.
The restaurant is a full service, sit down joint with a pretty typical Italian restaurant decor. The paint scheme is the same as an Italian flag and the table cloths were the red and white checkered ones you see at a lot of pizza joints. Read more…
Player’s Grill
1290 M-83J sort of let me sleep in this morning. About 11:30 she went down to the basement to throw in a load of laundry leaving L on the floor watching TV. L didn’t like that. Not long after J left, L started screaming. I got up to see why she was screaming because she doesn’t do that when one of us are with her. As soon as I picked her, she stopped then I went looking for mommy.
Since I was up, I asked J if she wanted to go out to eat. She was up for it so we got L ready and got out the door.
I’ve been wanting to go to The Fly Inn near Plainwell, but we got there as they were closing up for the day. They only do breakfast on Sunday and close at noon.
Since we were already in Plainwell, I figured we should just stay in town and check out someplace we haven’t been yet.
Player’s Grill is right on M-89 on the west side of US 131 near the Walmart. It’s a pretty non-descript building that really would have never drawn my interest except for the sign near the road. Underneath the pertinent information (ie. name of the restaurant) is another sign that says “Food Inspired by Niskers.” That did it for me.
We walked in to the restaurant about 12:30 on a Sunday afternoon and found a pretty mixed crowd. There were a few people sitting at the bar watching the Red Wings game, but there were also some older people sitting in the small dining area between the bar and the pool tables enjoying lunch. Read more…
Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill – Grand Rapids
4875 28th Street SEI was in the mood for BBQ, but not really sure to go. I’ve found a couple pretty good BBQ places in the Grand Rapids area, but none of them are really the true Memphis style that I really like.
I decided just to go with a chain and started looking up Famous Dave’s in Grandville. It’s not the best BBQ in the world, but I remember liking the place when I lived in Peoria. I would take my parents there all the time. As I was getting ready to call in an order, I remembered another place out on 28th Street that I really liked.
When J and I lived in Lansing, we had a really hard time finding BBQ there too. In fact, the only decent place we could find was Smokey Bones in Lansing Township. We only ate there once because it was so far from our apartment, but I remember really liking it.
OK, back to last night. I was starting to call in my order to Famous Dave’s when I decided to check the Smokey Bones website. I noticed they had online ordering which I am always a fan of, so I changed my mind and went with Smokey Bones.
The Grand Rapids Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill is on the corner of 28th and Patterson which is about a mile from the I-96 exit. As I walked in to the log cabin themed restaurant on Saturday night, I was really happy I was doing carry-out. I have to say I was a little shocked by the long line. I guess I’m not the only one who can’t find the type of BBQ I like in the Grand Rapids area. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 