Red Robin (Portage)
5710 S. Westnedge AvenueI’m not much of a chain restaurant person but my parents, on the other hand, really are.
They were in town last weekend for the kids’ synchronized skating competition at Wings Event Center. L’s team competed on Saturday. B’s competed on Sunday.
L’s team is a little more advanced than B’s and they do more than just compete. They also had a judge’s critique after the competition which means they had to stick around for a few more hours. I didn’t see a reason to make my parents there and watch team that didn’t have her grandkids on them so I suggested we take B and just go eat somewhere.
If there’s some place I want to eat, I will usually tell them that’s where we’re going. There really isn’t any place I could think of that I knew they would like so I threw out a couple of chain restaurants knowing that is always easy and they’ll be happy with the meal.
There have been a lot of new restaurants come in to the main shopping areas by my parents since I left town over 20 years ago. But there’s one that my mom really likes that still hasn’t opened a restaurant by them.
Red Robin’s Portage location is on South Westnedge Avenue south of the I-94 interchange and near Idaho Street. The restaurant shares a parking lot with Carrabba’s Italian Grill and can be accessed either from Westnedge or Idaho.
Wingstop (Comstock Township)
5911 Gull RoadThe time from about Mid-November to Christmas gets really, really busy. There’s a lot of skating going on and a lot of that time is spent at Wings Event Center which is on the other side of town for us.
Our big synchronized skating competition takes place the weekend before Thanksgiving. The lead up to that is pretty hectic. J is on the club board and the organizing committee for Kick-Off Classic so she has a lot to do in the weeks leading up to it.
The competition is on Saturday and Sunday but team start coming to town on Friday for practice ice. It’s so nice having three rinks at Wings Event Center because the club can sell a lot of ice time but it also takes a lot of volunteers to make everything run.
My kids love to volunteer. B will run skate guards for teams and L loves to play music for teams practice sessions. J has to be there anyway. The original plan was for J’s parents to pick B up from school and just stay at home with him but he really wanted to volunteer so J just decided to take him.
I had a few errands to run right after work then I was going to go pick B up. He was at about his limit and ready to go home.
I was hungry though. He had already eaten food from the hospitality room so I just needed to feed myself.
For some reason, I was in the mood for wings.
I chose to go to the Wingstop on Gull Road. This is the third Wingstop in the Kalamazoo area. The other two are in Oshtemo Township and Portage. This location is in a small shopping plaza on Gull Road just to the west of 26th Street. It shares the property with Penn Station East Coast Subs and Rollup Ice Cream and Tea. This space was a Sprint store for quite a while. Not sure if there was anything in there between when that closed and when Wingstop opened earlier this year though.
Read more…Pizza Forno (Caledonia)
4500 68th Street EastI started seeing the news stories a couple of weeks ago for a pizza vending machine in the Grand Rapids area and had to try it. I mean, the idea sounds cool but what would the pizza taste like?
I happened to be in Grand Rapids one day last week and left a little early so I could hit up this machine on my way home. It was a little more out of the way than I expected it to be but it was fine. I just had to get to Wings Event Center at some point to pick B up from practice.
Pizza Forno is the name of this unique concept. The first one opened in Caledonia earlier this month. The machines are located at the Amazon Fulfillment Center on the corner of 68th Street and Patterson Avenue. Amazon is technically private property but the owners of these machines say that they are “open to the public.” The big problem is, there is really no where to park. The parking lot at Amazon is huge and you just have to find parking and then walk a really long way to the entrance of the building where the machines are located.
Taqueria La Yatekita (Decatur)
116 S. Phelps StreetMy last regularly scheduled overtime shift for the fall.
It wasn’t a Friday night though. It was a Saturday afternoon, so I don’t even have to pretend it’s pizza night even though I have pretty much made Friday night’s this fall taco nights.
I was heading to Decatur for about a four hour shift that started at 1 PM. I was only do this one assignment so I had plenty of time to get to Decatur early and grab lunch…something I made it a point to do because there’s a restaurant there that I have been meaning to find an excuse to go to Decatur for.
Taqueria La Yatekita is in downtown Decatur on Phelps Street south of M-51/Delaware Street. The name should be recognizable to food truck fan in Kalamazoo. I’ve eaten at their food truck many times when it was parked at the Sunny Mart on Cork or at the Sweet Convenience Store on Centre. They went for the brick and mortar thing last winter when they moved in to this building that used to be El Azteca Mexican Grill.
Read more…Mamma Mineos Pizza
2237 W. 84th StreetMy Friday night overtime is winding down for the year.
I get about 13 weeks of Friday’s where I’m needed to work overtime shifts in the fall. Working Friday night sucks but it’s not like we’re go out on Friday night people anymore. The extra money is nice and it’s consistent extra money for a few weeks.
Last Friday would have been my last week of overtime but there was nothing for me to do in my area so it was a regular day (I actually picked up a few hours on Saturday but I’ll get to that in another blog).
Well, a sort of regular day. My Kalamazoo colleague was off so I got pulled up to the Grand Rapids office. I had to stay a little late and help a different co-worker so I was leaving the area closer to 7:00.
We were actually out in Byron Center which is closer to home for me than to leave straight from the office.
I had a pretty full day and other than a quick stop at NuVu Fuels in Ionia for lunch, I didn’t really have time to eat anything. I texted J and asked if I should bring a pizza home. She said no for them because they didn’t want to wait but if I wanted something for myself to go for it.
I picked Mamma Mineo’s Pizza because I passed it on my way in to town.
Mamma Mineo’s Pizza is on 84th Street in the Family Fare shopping plaza east of Byron Center Avenue. There’s a sign for the pizza place out by the road but once I got in to the shopping center, I couldn’t find it. There was no sign on the building anywhere but I finally realized the store space on the east side of the building that had lights on but no sign must be it.
Read more…Nuvu Fuels (Ionia)
75 E. Grand River AvenueSome days I’m just on the road a lot.
My day started out like normal in Kalamazoo. Then I got called up to the Grand Rapids office. When I got to the Grand Rapids office, I realized I needed to make a very quick trip to Lansing. I did what I needed to do and headed back to Grand Rapids to finish my day before heading home to Kalamazoo.
I was on the road all day so I really didn’t have time to stop and eat. I was hoping I could grab something quickly when I was in Lansing but I didn’t see anything that really stood out to me or looked like something I could grab quickly and get back on the road.
I did notice a gas station on my drive that I have never seen before and they were advertising food. I needed to find a restroom anyway and everyone knows how much I love gas station food.
Nuvu Fuels is a small chain of six gas station. Five are in West Michigan. The other is in Sarasota, FL. I stopped at the Ionia location on Grand River Avenue and M-66 just to the north of the interchange with I-96. This is the Ionia exit off I-96 but the actual city of Ionia is quite a ways north. This gas station sits in Orange Township and is easily accessible from the highway. The corner has been a gas station for a while but it was abandoned for several years until Nuvu came in in 2015.
The Heist Grille
200 N. Clinton AvenueSkate Midland is our last individual skating competition of the year. It’s always the first weekend in November and it wraps up our year as we start to transition in to Synchronized Skating and the Holiday Ice Revue.
We only had B in Midland this year. L has leveled out of the dance portion of that competition and a knee injury prevented her from working on her free skate after Solo Dance Finals in September.
Our original plan was to stay in Midland Friday and Saturday night but then we got the schedule. We didn’t have to be there at 7 AM and we weren’t going to be done after 4 PM. All three of the times B was on the ice were between 11:00 AM and 2 PM.
I was looking forward to relaxing at the bar at the hotel while the kids swam but J suggested we just cancel the hotel, save the money, and make the trip all in one day. I was a little annoyed because I was looking to forward to sitting at the bar and having a drink, but she was right. There was no reason for us to stay.
I was hopeful we could still have a good meal along the way that wasn’t fast food.
We left the Midland Civic Arena right around 3:00. J wanted to get on the road for a little bit before eating. That way we could take a break, find a bathroom, and have a little more time to relax on the way home.
She suggested St. Johns. I just happened to have a restaurant I had heard about recently in St Johns.
The Heist Grille is in downtown St. Johns on the corner of Clinton Avenue and Walker Street. It was a little hard to spot at first because the building actually looks like a bank….because it’s an old bank. The restaurant recently opened in the 130 year old bank building after St. Johns Brewing Company sold the property and closed in September. The Heist opened just a few days later with new ownership, a new name but retained a lot of the old menu, staff, and design of the building stayed the same.
Read more…Biggby (Saginaw Road)
957 S. Saginaw RoadTime for the road trip for my *favorite* figure skating competition of the year. Skate Midland.
It’s not that I don’t like the competition. It’s actually great for the younger skaters and the kids always have so much fun. There’s a lot of friends that go to this competition because it’s the last Basic Skills competition of the year. Some want to finish on a high note while others, like my kids, get a head start on debuting new programs for the next year.
I just hate the drive.
There’s no easy way to get to Midland and once you get past St. Johns, there’s not even a place to stop and use a bathroom. We run in to that problem every year and have to frantically try to detour to some small town hoping they have a gas station with a public restroom.
We were only taking B this year. L has leveled out of the basic skills dance levels and she didn’t want to do free skate because she’s been battling a knee injury and hasn’t worked much on jumps.
We got super lucky in that all of B’s events were within about two hours of each other and we didn’t have to be there until late morning.
We ended up cancelling our hotel and just making it a day trip.
B’s first event at the Midland Civic Arena was a little after 11. He didn’t place as well as he wanted to (again, new level, new program for this competition) so he started complaining that he didn’t do well because he was hungry. By hungry, he meant he wanted candy from the vending machine. T
That wasn’t going to happen. Not while he was still competing.
J asked if wanted a bagel or something. The concession stand at the arena was closed by I was given the name “Dad Dash” by L for nothing.
He begrudgingly agreed to the bagel so I got sent out to get one.
I haven’t been to or blogged about a Biggby in a long time. That wasn’t the reason I chose Biggby…it was fairly close and there was a drink I could get B as well that wasn’t coffee so that’s where I went.
The closest Biggby that came up on Google maps to the ice arena was on Saginaw Road near Eastlawn Drive. It’s in a shopping plaza called Food Court as there are several other food establishments in the complex as well. The Biggby is in the back building that’s actually closer to the intersection of Eastlawn and Washington Street.
Read more…La Finca Mexican Restaurant
10412 Portage RoadIt seems like this fall has become taco Friday instead of pizza Friday.
I always work a lot of overtime on Friday nights in the fall. I usually go out of my way to find new pizza places in whatever town I’m going to work in but I seem to be running out of new pizza places.
I’ve been finding a lot of Mexican places instead. I have a love for tacos so I’m not bothered by the surprising revelation at all.
This past Friday night I was working in the southern part of Kalamazoo County. Whenever that happens, I tend to find dinner in Portage as I’ve tapped out places like Schoolcraft and Vicksburg.
I drove down Portage Road to get to where I was going because there’s a Mexican restaurant in the very southern part of Portage that I’ve never been to. I’ve driven by many times but never when I could stop in for a meal.
La Finca Mexican Restaurant is on Portage Road just north of Osterhout Avenue. The small stand alone building is right next to what used to be Chicago Style Pizza (which is becoming Kalako Pizza soon) and Great Skate Roller Rink.
Benito’s Pizza Cafe (Novi)
24270 Novi RoadI’ve worked a lot of extra hours the last few months. It’s just the nature of the beast.
Some relief came last week as some of the work winds down for the season. I still had one really long (almost 24 straight hours) of work left before a big chunk of it would be over.
I knew it was going to be a long day with little time to eat so I made sure to eat a big breakfast at Wolfgang’s Restaurant in Grand Rapids before I picked up a colleague to drive to the Detroit area for the night.
It was another one of those days that we had to be there early to get all of our equipment set up but then we’d have some down time. My colleague ordered Chipotle from Door Dash but we had some time so I decided to go with pizza. I could eat some now and then eat the rest when I got back to my hotel room long after most restaurants have closed.
We were in Novi and I’m not really familiar with restaurants there. I loved Primanti Bros. but it has closed since the last time I was in Novi a couple of years ago. I started looking for pizzas near me and a couple of good looking options popped up.
I went with Benito’s Pizza Cafe on Novi Road just north of 10 Mile Road in Novi. The restaurant is part of a small shopping center on the east side of the road that also has Penn Station East Coast Subs and a gym. The Novi location, part of the Benito’s chain that started with a single shop in Belleville in the late 1970’s has been in this location since the Mid-2000’s.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 