Social House Kitchen & Bar (Grand Rapids)
25 Ottawa Avenue, Suite 100You all know I work too much.
It’s fine when I’m choosing to work those hours. The overtime is really nice.
What makes me angry when I’m forced to “work” weekends when I have plans.
Our company put in an “on-call” schedule where they just assign people weekends to be on call. Those days aren’t paid unless we get called in….but it also limits what we can plan for and do on those weekends.
My on-call weekend happened to be the weekend Disney on Ice was in Grand Rapids. My kids aren’t really in to Disney anymore but they are really in to ice skating. That and one of the performers is from Galesburg and skated in the Greater Kalamazoo Skating Association so there’s a connection there that made them really excited to go.
J didn’t want to take a chance on buying a ticket and then me getting called in to work thus wasting the ticket. I was angry…not because I was going to miss Disney on Ice but because I was being forced to miss Disney on Ice without getting paid for it.
By the time J was ready to leave for Grand Rapids, I hadn’t gotten called in and the chances of me getting called in for a shift were very slim. I decided to chance it and drove J and the kids to Grand Rapids. It was snowing and J doesn’t really like driving in snow. It doesn’t bother me and I figured I could find something to do in downtown Grand Rapids while they were at the show.
I dropped everyone off in front of Van Andel Arena around 6:00 on Saturday night. There was no way in hell I was going to pay event parking downtown so I started driving around looking for a meter….which is free on weekends. I wasn’t in a hurry so I could drive around for a while to find one.
I eventually found one on Monroe Center then had to make the decision on where to go to eat. When I dropped J and the kids off, I saw a restaurant across the street that I’ve been wanting to go to so I headed back towards Fulton Street.
Social House Kitchen & Bar is on Ottawa Avenue just south of Fulton Street across from Van Andel Arena in downtown Grand Rapids. The bar takes up a large street level space in the 25 Ottawa Building in the city’s Arena District. The building underwent major renovations in 2015 give the spaces an updated feel and even included a skybridge to the Arena.
Read more…Little Caesars Pizza (Edison)
930 Portage StreetLike everything else, pizza seems to have gotten ridiculously expensive. Back in my (college) days, pizza was the cheap thing to order to the dorms. Less than $10 delivered. Granted this was late 1990’s/early 2000’s but still. It was cheap.
A couple of weeks ago, I ordered two 10-inch pizzas from my favorite pizza place near my house….I’m not going to name it because I don’t mean for this to be a slam on them…but it cost me $50 delivered.
That sucks. I love good pizza.
But sometimes you just gotta settle for cheap pizza.
J and the kids were not home when I left work last Friday night so I texted to see if they had dinner plans. She said no so I put in a pizza order.
I chose the Little Caesars in the Edison neighborhood. I don’t really like Little Caesars but I could get way more food for way less dollars than if I was ordering our typical Friday night pizza.
The Little Caesars I chose was the one on Portage Street just to the south of Jackson Street. The shop is kind of a cookie cutter stand alone shop on a stretch of Portage Street that is pretty commercial. It’s very similar in design to the Little Caesars on Park Street in the Northside Neighborhood.
Read more…Super Carniceria Las Palmas Food Truck
911 Cork StreetI just can’t pass up a taco truck.
My colleague and I were driving around one day last week and we came across a food truck in the Milwood neighborhood. We didn’t have time to stop but I made a mental not of it so I could go back later.
I had time for lunch a few days later. I wasn’t really doing anything so I clocked out for a while and headed out to find some tacos.
The truck I passed sits at the Super Carniceria Las Palmas on the corner of East Cork and St. Mary’s Street just to the west of Lovers Lane. The food truck is parked out front and kind of blocks the sign for the meat market if you’re coming from the west. The store has been there for seven or eight years. The food truck is a fairly new addition. This spot has a history of being a restaurant. It was a Hogzilla BBQ joint for a few years and a Little Caesars for many years before that.
Cancun Mexican Restaurant
324 N. Drake RoadLast weekend was nuts. Our figure skating club hosted the US Figure Skating Midwest Synchronized Skating Sectionals at Wings Event Center.
J was part of the Local Organizing Committee so she spent pretty much all day there between Wednesday and Saturday. The kids love volunteering at our competitions so they also spent pretty much all day there between Wednesday and Saturday.
I….don’t love volunteering. I’m not a people person and I don’t love making small talk with people I don’t know or barely know. J still needed me to volunteer one shift because it’s hard to get parents to volunteer during the week when they should be at work. I already had the day off because L was competing that day so she threw me in for an early morning shift before L’s group went.
Saturday was a super busy day. L finished up her volunteer shift about 10:00 Friday night and wanted to go back for a 7 AM shift Saturday morning. J had gotten home at midnight on Friday and opted to take the noon shift. I took L and one of her friends to the rink and came back home and went to bed.
I got back up as J was getting ready to leave. B was supposed to be done for the weekend but he asked to go back. He didn’t have a shift scheduled but there would be enough for him to do. He had been hanging out with girls from some of the Chicago teams all weekend and wanted to go find them.
That meant, I had the afternoon to myself until B decided he wanted to come home. I had some grocery shopping to do and did some other errands around the house.
I went to Meijer to do my shopping and realized while I was shopping, I was hungry. Instead of getting something to make, I just decided to pick up food on my way home. There’s a new Mexican restaurant I wanted to try.
Cancun Mexican Restaurant opened up on Drake Road just south of West Main Street at the end of last year. The name may sound familiar if you’ve lived in Southwest Michigan for a while. This is the same restaurant that used to be on Red Arrow Highway in Paw Paw. The owners were having a hard time getting staff and decided to move to Kalamazoo when their lease ran out it. It’s also a sister restaurant to Acapulco Mexican Restaurant in Lawrence. Both have been around for a long time and have been hugely successful. This move puts Cancun in to the building that was formerly a Chinese restaurant in a pretty busy shopping area of Kalamazoo.
Read more…Rico’s Deli
2103 Alpine Avenue NWI get to be the lucky one who knows how to do something very few other people I work with know how to do.
One of our Grand Rapids employees is assigned to a specialized weekly task. He’s been doing it for several years and there’s typically only one or two other people that know how to do that task when he’s off.
I’m one of them.
That meant I had to go to Grand Rapids for the day while a Grand Rapids colleague had to come to Kalamazoo to cover my shift.
I got to Grand Rapids pretty early on Thursday morning and got to work. At one point, I got to a spot that I needed guidance from a colleague who didn’t come in until 3:00. I was as far as I could get until I could get something very specific approved so I took my lunch break and left the office.
I had some time so I went for a drive. I was just looking for a sandwich place and Google found me one..like it always does.
I stopped at Rico’s Deli on Alpine Avenue northwest north of Ann Street. The small deli is in a building that comes up with a Grand Rapids address on Google but is inside the Walker city limits. The small building was a Franco’s Pizza shop for a long time but Rico’s Deli moved in in 2022. The deli is a long time staple in Grand Rapids having previously been on Front Avenue about three miles away and before that on Monroe Avenue. I actually went to the Monroe Avenue location in 2014 and I have no recollection of it. If it wasn’t for an old blog post, I wouldn’t have remember that I ever ate there. I apparently really liked the sandwich but I’m not sure if I ever went back. It was in an odd location and I didn’t go to that area very often. This location is much more visible on the very heavily traveled Alpine Avenue. The small brick building stands out amongst the heavy chain commercial buildings in the area.
Pastrami Joe’s (Battle Creek)
32 W. Michigan Avenue, Suite 2Pastrami Joe’s is back in Battle Creek.
The restaurant was what I really looked forward to anytime I went to downtown Battle Creek. The deli was near the end of Michigan Avenue (or beginning depending on which way you were coming from) on the north side of downtown Battle Creek. It closed in 2021 after taking a hit during the pandemic.
The flagship Marshall location remained open though so I just had to find a reason to go to Marshall when wanted a sandwich.
Last fall, Pastrami Joe’s made it’s way back to downtown Battle Creek…albeit in a different location
The new location for Pastrami Joe’s is still on Michigan Avenue in downtown Battle Creek but it’s further south across the street from The Milton between McCamly and Capitol. The restaurant is actually inside the Hampton Building which is home to the Battle Creek Community Foundation. The space was most recently Veggz Cafe.
Popeyes (Gull Road)
3800 Gull RoadMy family was one of those families in the 80’s and 90’s that, if we ate out, we ate at a chain restaurant. I grew up in the Kankakee/Bradley/Bourbonnais area in Illinois and I can probably count on one hand the number of non-chain restaurants we ate it my entire childhood.
Arby’s was a big one because of their 5 for $5 roast beefs. We ate at Pizza Hut because we got free Book-It pizzas. We ate at Taco Johns because they gave Tacos for A’s (on report cards). We ate at Ponderosa and Old Country Buffet because my brother and I were two growing boys and we could put away half the buffet each time we ate there.
When Popeyes moved to Bradley, IL….oh boy. Everything changed. We had a new favorite go-to fast food joint.
When J and I moved to Kalamazoo in 2009, there were no Popeyes in town. There had been one on Gull Road but that was a Dairy Queen by the time we moved here.
A new Popeyes was opened on West Main Street in 2015 and people freaked out. The line spilled out frequently on to the busy stretch of road for weeks after the restaurant opened.
Now, there’s a Popeyes back on Gull Road. It’s just barely inside the Kalamazoo Township limits on Gull Road near Eastland Drive. It’s a new build right next to Roxie’s Breakfast and Lunch. The land was actually a car wash up until last year when it was torn down to make way for this new chicken joint.
New York Bagel and Bialy (Lincolnwood)
4714 W. Touhy AvenueBack to Chicago.
I got home from Detroit about 4 AM Sunday morning. I slept for a couple of hours and got up about 7:30 AM to head back to Chicago. L was competing at Synchro Illinois in Evanston a little after noon central time.
I told L I would do everything I could to make it back to watch her skate Sunday afternoon. She told me it was ok if I missed it but, come on, I wasn’t going to miss it if I could get back. The only thing that would have stopped me was weather.
I ran in to a little bit of snow around Hartford and Benton Harbor but once I got out of Michigan, I ran in to blue skies and dry roads all the way to the city.
I made a little bit better time than I thought and I was hungry. I have been eyeing a bagel shop not too far off the Edens Expressway (I-94) since we started going to this competition three years ago. I’ve told myself every year I’m going to stop on my way in but I never do.
I had to pick J and B up at their hotel in Chicago near Loyola University. I was going a little out of my way to go up the Edens but I had time.
New York Bagel & Bialy is on Touhy Avenue just to the east of Cicero Avenue in the Chicago suburb of Lincolnwood. The small strip mall bagel shop is a little difficult to get in to. The parking lot runs parallel with Touhy and it only goes one way. If you’re coming from the highway, like I was, you have to go past the business and come back around to get in to the parking lot.
Read more…Sheetz (Wick Road)
33380 Wick RoadBack to Detroit. I told you this was going to be a wild weekend.
I left my family in Chicago on Friday and drove back to Kalamazoo. I had to work in Detroit Saturday night.
Typically, I meet a co-worker at the Love’s Truck Stop in Lansing and we go to Detroit together but this time, there were three of them coming. We couldn’t all fit in one car with all of the equipment we needed so I asked if I could just meet them in Detroit this time and they agreed.
I was kind of excited about this because there is a place near the Detroit Airport I’ve been wanting to stop at. This was finally going to be my opportunity.
I’ve been to Sheetz many times. Mostly in Ohio or Pennsylvania on my way to the East Coast somewhere. I’ve only blogged about it once because I’ve really only gotten food from there once. It’s typically a gas or bathroom stop but I always love finding these gas stations because they’re always pretty clean and really well stocked.
Michigan got it’s first Sheetz location last fall in Romulus. The gas station is just off I-94 at the Vining Road interchange. The building is just to the north on Wick Road. There’s not much else around it right now but with this huge gas station, the area near the freeway exit will likely become a prime retail area.
Read more…D’Agostino’s Pizza & Pub (Wrigleyville)
1351 W. Addison StreetMy original plan for the weekend was to spend a weekend in Chicago with my family.
Plans change.
The kids competed at Synchro Illinois at the Robert Crown Ice Arena in Evanston last weekend. In the past, this has always been a one day thing on Saturday. Somehow, this year, my kids got split up. B skated on Friday. L skated on Sunday. Instead of a day trip, it turned in to a weekend with missed school and work plus a two night hotel stay.
I thought, great. We have all day Saturday to enjoy Chicago….except L had to stay with her team all weekend despite the fact they weren’t competing until Sunday. Oh, and I had to come back to Michigan to work. Luckily, it was Saturday that I had to work so I wouldn’t miss any skating.
After B got done competing on Friday, I took J and the kids to the hotel. We had a block of rooms at the Hampton Inn near Loyola University for the club. It was a great location with a lot of great restaurants within walking distance. Parking, however, was almost $50 so I just dropped everyone off, made sure they got their stuff and I headed back to Kalamazoo.
I couldn’t leave Chicago without a pizza though. My plan was to pick one up near the hotel but when I went to order, at 6:00 on a Friday night, they weren’t taking online orders.
That’s fine. I always have a plan B.
A friend of mine used to live in Wrigleyville and I used to see him post about a pizza place near where he lived all the time. I wasn’t too far from Wrigleyville and I needed a pizza so I got online and ordered one.
D’Agostino’s Pizza & Pub is a small chain of six pizzerias on the North side of Chicago and in the north suburbs. The Wrigleyville location is the original having opened in 1968. The restaurant is on the corner of Addison and Southport a little over three blocks from Wrigley Field. The restaurant is a pretty typical Chicago neighborhood building with the restaurant on the first floor and two floors of housing above it.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 