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…Mustard’s Last Stand (Evanston)
1613 Central Street #3Last weekend was a long weekend.
I’ll really dive in to this over the next several blogs but basically I drove to Chicago, then to Detroit, then back to Chicago in the span of three days.
My weekend started on Friday with the first trip to Chicago. B’s synchronized skating team was competing at Synchro Illinois at the Robert Crown Community Center in Evanston. L’s team was competing on Sunday so our original plan was to just stay the whole weekend. But then I had to come back to Michigan to work. I left everyone else in Chicago and I did the back and forth.
We got to Evanston pretty early on Friday because we had to get their early for B. He’s on a team with 11 girls and while he doesn’t have to do as much hair and make up to get ready, they do and he has to be there with everyone else.
My parents also drove up for this one knowing it was B’s last competition of the year. L has one more so they didn’t make the return trip on Sunday. They’re just going to come to L’s last competition next weekend in Kalamazoo.
Once we got J and B with their team, I asked if I could take my parents to lunch since we still had a couple of hours until the competition began.
As we were walking out of the arena, I asked if there wasn’t anything in particular they wanted. My dad said he knew I already had a place I wanted to go so let’s just go there.
He was right.
We headed over to Mustard’s Last Stand on Central Street to the west of Ashland Avenue. The small 50 year old hot dog stand is right across the alley from Northwestern’s Ryan Field. There are a few parking spots right off the alley and a few more spots behind the building. Everything about this building is what you should think of when you think of Chicago dog joints.
Read more…Royale With Cheese
4163 Cass AvenueYou’re going to see a lot of wild travel over the next few blog posts. I had a pretty busy week with two trips to Detroit and two trips to Chicago. I’ll explain a lot more as we move along.
The first Detroit trip was last Wednesday. I picked a co-worker up in Grand Rapids then we drove to Detroit for a few hours of work.
We had a few stops. One in the area around the Detroit Institute of Arts. The other was in Greektown.
We got done with what we needed to do around 11:00. My co-worker asked if we were going to grab something to eat before heading home. I told him if he was hungry, I had some ideas.
I headed to the Cass Corridor to fine the Pulp Fiction inspired Royal with Cheese.
Royale with Cheese is on Cass Avenue at the intersection with Willis Street. The building is an early 1900’s two story building that was originally all one space but it was sectioned off and new entryways were added to make three different business around 10 years ago. Royale with Cheese moved in to the northern most space in the spring of 2017.
Olive Garden (Portage)
6700 S. Westnedge AvenueThis is the last of my revisits for a while. This one also has a funny story to make it worth reading.
A lot of L’s friends go to Olive Garden when we’re out of town on skating competitions. We do not. I find someplace local to eat or we pick up fast food. If I’m going to spend money on a sit down dinner, I want something other than a chain restaurant.
L had a synchronized skating competition coming up (the week after we ate at Olive Garden but the weekend before I wrote those) and one of the team meals was going to be from Olive Garden. J was telling some friends that she was excited about it because she had never had it before.
Those friends siezed the opportunity and started giving her a hard time about never having eaten at an Olive Garden before. We thought that was absolutely hilarious when L was telling us about it.
We had some errands to run on Saturday and I suggested we give L (and B by default) her first Olive Garden experience.
The Olive Garden in the Kalamazoo metro area is on South Westnedge just north of JL Hudson Drive in front of the Crossroads Mall. You go in on Hudson Drive and turn just past the Aspen Dental to get in to the parking lot. I almost missed it but J shouted at me at the last minute and I didn’t miss my turn.
Jaspare’s Pizza (Sprinkle Road)
5965 S. Sprinkle RoadI told you I was going to doing a bunch of blog posts for places I blogged about already but haven’t been to in a while. It’s time for an update.
This one is that and also kind of an oops. I was looking through my links and I couldn’t find a link to this restaurant. I could have sworn I had been there but I wasn’t seeing it. Of course, when I went to edit pictures, I found the post I thought I had done but couldn’t find.
Oh well. It’s time for an update anyway.
We had a late Friday night of figure skating practice at Wings Event Center. That’s not something that usually happens. Usually Wednesday is our late night but it was Friday last week.
B got done with his practice before L did. Since it was Friday night, I asked J if she wanted to just order a pizza. She said yes as long as it wasn’t Cottage Inn.
Of course I had another plan.
There’s a Jaspare’s Pizza on Sprinkle Road not too far from Wings Event Center. It’s in a small shopping plaza on the corner of Sprinkle Road and Milham Avenue. I wrote a blog post about this restaurant 12 years ago and must have forgot to add it to my list of Portage restaurants.
Read more…Dairy Queen (Michigan Avenue)
1040 W. Michigan AvenueI kind of got on a kick last week going to restaurants I haven’t blogged about in years. I figured it was time. It started with my previous post on 50’s Drive-In in South Haven. It continues with this one and at least for the next two after this.
It has been 12 years since I’ve blogged about the Dairy Queen across the street from Waldo Stadium (also a blog that desperately needs updated) and even then, we only got ice cream. I didn’t even dive in to the food side of that location so it was definitely time for an update.
I was colleagueless last Friday and was just catching up on some things around the office. I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on lunch nor did I want to go very far. I pass that Dairy Queen everyday on my way to work and never even think of it for lunch.
The Dairy Queen near Western Michigan University is on Michigan Avenue south of the Lovell Street intersection. It’s at that odd location between Michigan Avenue (which just becomes Michigan Avenue as Stadium Drive ends almost at the building) and the train tracks just before the area where Lovell meets with both Oakland Drive and Michigan Avenue. The building is pretty old and doesn’t look like the newer chain like Dairy Queen Grill and Chill locations. There was an update done earlier this summer that did spruce up the curb appeal a little and updated the signage to the newer logos.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 