Quality Dairy (Charlotte)
680 Lansing RoadI’ve gone to Lansing quite a bit the last few weeks and we have a few more trips that way coming up.
Charlotte has become my go-to stop for gas, a snack and a bathroom. I like the easy access right off the highway to both a Speedway and a Mobil station.
That isn’t just any Mobil station though. That Mobil station is a Quality Dairy location and if you’ve spent anytime at all in the Lansing area, you know what a treat that can be.
Quality Dairy’s Charlotte location is on Lansing Road right off the I-69 interchange on the south side of the road as you’re heading in to Charlotte. The large building is not only a Mobil gas station but a full Quality Dairy convenience store and a laundromat. We’ve been stopping at this QD for years. It was a pit stop when we lived in Lansing as we headed back to Chicago for the weekend and it’s a pit stop now when we need to go to Lansing. I needed gas and a bathroom before I got to my job site in Lansing so I pulled off the highway….but there was another reason I chose QD over the Speedway this time.
El Paraiso Taqueria
604 Broadway StreetTuesday’s are one of my solo days.
When my new colleague started, changes were made to our schedules. We used to both work Monday through Friday but a decision was made to have the new guy work Thursday through Monday.
That leaves me two days a week on my own.
Last Tuesday’s assignment had me going to South Haven. It was an afternoon engagement so I had most of the morning to do things around the office before taking my time to get to the lakeshore.
I intentionally left earlier than I needed to so I could grab lunch. I had a couple of ideas for tacos.
My first choice was a grocery store in Covert but they aren’t open on Tuesday. Theirs were the cheapest so that was why I had initially picked them.
There are two other options in South Haven that I haven’t tried yet and sticking to the “cheapest” theme, I chose El Paraiso Taqueria.
El Paraiso Taqueria is on Broadway Street right where it split off with Phillips Street. The small building is a little weird to get to even though you can see it from the main road. The spot used to be a Chicken Coop then a cell phone repair store before becoming a couple of different Mexican restaurants. El Paraiso Taqueria moved in in April of 2021.
Babe’s Corner
800 E. Michigan AvenueHad to meet a co-worker in Lansing one day last week.
It was actually a crazy long day. I had an assignment in Kalamazoo at 10 AM then had to go to Lansing for an evening assignment. I ended up not getting home until after midnight.
I did my morning assignment then left for Lansing about 12:30. I was meeting my co-worker on the west side of town around 3:00 so I had some time.
That time is best spent grabbing lunch.
I headed towards downtown Lansing to find Babe’s Corner on the corner of East Michigan Avenue and Hosmer Street on the bottom floor of The Willis Apartments. When I lived in Lansing 15 years ago, this space was a party store. In between then and now, it was also a coffee shop. The small sandwich shop moved in in 2021 and has been getting some pretty rave reviews. Lansing friends keep talking about going there when they get a chance and since I had the chance, I figured I should too.
Read more…Jimmy John’s (Sprinkle Road)
3606 S. Sprinkle RoadYeah…sorry. Another chain blog post.
I didn’t have any overtime or any side gigs last week and that really cuts the paycheck down. We had to be a little more judicious when it came to eating out.
The kids were skating at Wings Event Center last Wednesday. I wouldn’t normally go there after work but J had a Zoom meeting that night and she didn’t want to start it at WEC then have to log off and drive home in a snow storm and log back on. She’d miss way too much. So I didn’t take a lunch and got out of work a little bit earlier so she could make her meeting.
Our go-to when the kids skate at WEC is Jimmy Johns. It’s right down the street. It’s quick. It’s fairly cheap. And everyone likes it.
The Jimmy Johns closest to Wings Event Center is on Sprinkle Road at the intersection with Vanrick Drive just to the south of the I-94 interchange. The sub shop is actually an addition that was added on to what is now Butler’s Breakfast & Lunch. It was in early 2017 that Michelle’s put an addition on the back of the building specifically for this Jimmy John’s.
Arby’s (9th Street)
5035 S. 9th StreetContinuing my trend of cheap lunches and writing blogs about chain restaurants that we’ve all eaten at and already have an opinion about.
I had to make a quick stop at Wings West one day last week to drop of L’s skates. She was getting a ride from school straight to the rink so J asked me to lock her skates in the office and she would get them when she got there.
I had a couple of things to do at work in the morning before I could take my lunch break and run over there so I threw her skates in my car and took care of that stuff first.
I dropped her stuff off around 11:30 and started to head back to work.
Of course, I was hungry and I thought it was just going to be easier to stop at one of the many fast food options on South 9th Street.
I picked the Arby’s on the corner of 9th Street and N Avenue in Texas Township. The restaurant on the corner has access from both 9th and N. I was coming from the east so I just pulled in off N Avenue. I’d typically do the drive thru but that makes for a boring blog. I got out of my car and went inside to order.
Read more…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.
SW Michigan Dining 