Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken (Battle Creek)
14301 Beadle Lake RoadWhen I worked in Grand Rapids, a lot of our office staff was obsessed with Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken. There isn’t a location anywhere in Grand Rapids and at that time, Kalamazoo and Muskegon were the only places to get it.
I never got the obsession. Maybe it was because it was readily available to me in Kalamazoo.
We would pick up chicken from Lee’s occasionally but it was never the “oh my god! I have to have it” chicken place that a lot of my co-worker made it out to be.
It’s been quite a long time since I’ve actually been to one of the two Lee’s locations in Kalamazoo. I eat a lot of gas station chicken so I really don’t think about it as an option for dinner anymore.
I was heading to Detroit last week for a job assignment but first, I had to meet a co-worker in Lansing. I got B on the bus to get to school and still had time to take a quick nap before making the trip.
I woke up around 11:30 and got on the road about noon to meet her in Lansing by 2:00.
I was a little ahead of schedule and hungry. I typically just eat at the Hardees in Delta Township but a new gas station opened in Battle Creek with a couple of new food options.
Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken is right off Interstate 94 on Beadle Lake Road. There’s a new Amoco station right next to the off ramp on the south side of the highway. The Lee’s portion of the building is seperate from the gas station convenience store on the north side of the building. It has an exterior entrance but you can also get to it from a door from inside the gas station.
Read more…Longship Brewing Company
114 N. Main StreetJ and I used to take road trips all the time just to find new restaurants.
Our kids don’t enjoy eating out nearly as much as we do so the road trips have pretty much stopped.
There are so many breweries and restaurants outside of Kalamazoo I want to try but it’s hard to find a reason to do so anymore. And dragging the kids out of the house usually isn’t worth it.
I worked a lot of extra hours a few weeks ago and had a little bit bigger of a check than normal so I asked J if we could go to lunch last Saturday. There’s a brewery in Van Buren County I’ve really wanted to check out.
We headed to Lawton to find Longship Brewing. The restaurant is on South Main Street just south of Union Street. When we were there, and for the last several months, Main Street/M-40 has been closed for a major reconstruction project which essentially shut down access to the entire town. That’s been cleared now and the road is back open.
The building has been in Lawton for a long time. It was originally built in the 1870’s as a tailor shop. It was a lot of things over the years until a brewery was opened in 1993. It’s operated as a brewery ever since with Larry Bell opening Old Hat Brewery in the late 90’s (we tried to go there once and didn’t have the greatest experience) followed by Barn Brewery and now Longship Brewing.
Read more…Jersey Giant Subs (Battle Creek)
2245 W. Columbia AvenueFriday night has always been pizza night and I usually tried to keep that going with my Friday night overtime in the fall.
That hasn’t been the case much this year. I’m running out of new pizza places as I’m getting sent back to places I already go to pretty often.
Last week, I was sent to the west side of Battle Creek. I didn’t even try to find pizza. I knew there were a couple of restaurants on that side of town I haven’t been to yet and both of them sounded good.
I picked one of my all time favorites, Jersey Giant Subs.
The Jersey Giant Subs location in Battle Creek is on Columbia Avenue at Helmer Road. There’s a little shopping plaza on the southwest side of the intersection. There are quite a few food options tucked in to this location on the edge of town. Island Style BBQ and South Side Grubz a couple of the other occupants.
Read more…Champs Chicken (Wayland)
1331 142nd AvenueWe’ve talked a lot about my (probably unhealthy) obsession with gas station chicken.
I get super excited when I stop for gas and I walk in to the store to smell deep fried chicken.
I had to meet a colleague in the Moline area one day last week. It was an afternoon meetup so I left Kalamazoo around lunch time with a plan.
I had stopped at a gas station right off US-131 a few weeks ago and found they had put in a chicken restaurant since the last time I was there. It was closed at that time due to low staffing. There was a sign at that time saying they were pretty much only open for lunch.
I was coming through at lunch time this time so I made it a point to stop in.
Champs Chicken is a chain of chicken joints in the upper Midwest. There are four locations in Michigan right now. Three are in the thumb and the other is at the J & H Family Store on 142nd Avenue right off the US-131 interchange. The address is listed as Wayland but I would have thought of this stop as being Dorr. It’s the exit you would get off to go to Dorr, not the exit to Wayland.
Erbelli’s Gourmet Pizzeria, Italian Bistro & Pub (Portage)
8342 Portage RoadMy Friday night overtime took me to south Kalamazoo county last week I had a bit of time between my regular Friday shift and my overtime Friday shift so I took my time figuring out what I wanted for dinner.
It was Friday night, so that usually defaults to pizza. I don’t always have time to get a pizza but I did this week so I started looking at my options.
It didn’t take me long to figure it out. I had a gift card that needed to be used and I had the time to go a little out of my way. That made the decision a little bit easier.
I picked the Erbelli’s Gourment Pizzeria, Italian Bistro & Pub on Portage Road in Portage. It has been years since we went to this location. We live just around the corner from the Stadium Drive location and go there every so often. The last time we went to the Portage location was way back in 2009 right after we moved to Kalamazoo. It was our New Year’s Eve date.
The Portage location is on Portage Road north of Zylman Avenue. The pizza joint shares a parking lot with Kelvin & Co. which sits a little behind the building. The shop isn’t very big and the parking lot can be a little tight when coming in off a busy Portage Road.
Read more…Kum & Go (Kalamazoo Avenue)
5215 Kalamazoo Avenue SE- Kentwood, MI 49508
- (616) 512-3380
- Website
- No Online Menu
I hate the days I get stuck in Grand Rapids late.
L had an appointment in the morning so I took half a sick day. Work was apparently annoyed by that (meaning I should have just taken a full sick day) and they brought me up to Grand Rapids in the afternoon. I got assigned a task that would keep in Grand Rapids past my shift end time so it was going to be a long night.
A co-worker was annoyed that they even brought me to Grand Rapids because it wasn’t really necessary. He decided to take a bullet for me and took the late assignment. He’d get home a few minutes late but not as late as I would have.
I was in South Grand Rapids when he met me to take over the job. I thanked him many, many times then started heading south towards Kalamazoo.
I was hungry and needed gas. I was driving down Kalamazoo Avenue in Kentwood and I saw a familiar sign.
Kum & Go has two Kentwood locations among the eight locations in West Michigan. I came upon the location at the corner of Kalamazoo Avenue and 52nd Street. This corner location used to be a used car dealership but now, it’s a gas station and convenience store with that all too funny name.
Crow’s Nest
816 S. Westnedge AvenueJ got the fun of missing work to go to Florida with L.
I get the appointment a week later.
L had a special opportunity Tuesday morning to do something with figure skating that she’s been wanting to do for quite a while. It meant missing about two hours of school and she had just gotten back from a four day trip to Florida.
J couldn’t take anymore time off so I volunteered to go in to work late.
I kept my usual morning routine of getting up way too late then getting B on the bus. I didn’t have enough time to take a nap before I had to pick L up around 10:15, so I went to breakfast.
I still have a small list of newer breakfast places around town that I haven’t been to yet but there’s one longtime Kalamazoo staple that I haven’t been to in years. I needed to be close to the Vine Neighborhood anyway so I went to Crow’s Nest.
Crow’s Nest is such a unique restaurant on South Westnedge Avenue in a historic part of Kalamazoo just south of Vine Street. The restaurant is on the second floor of a two story red brick building with Fourth Coast Cafe taking up the main floor. The restaurant part of this building has been around just over 20 years while the coffee shop has been in this spot for over 30.
Read more…America’s Best Wings (Kalamazoo)
2727 W. Michigan AvenueLast week was a whopper. J and L were in Florida for a figure skating competition. Meanwhile, I stayed home and worked a little over 80’s between my regular job, overtime, and some side work.
Saturday I had a long day of side work. I was at Western Michigan from about noon until almost 11:00 PM.
I got fed in that time. The guys from South Bend I was working with love coming to Kalamazoo because they love Cottage Inn’s Cuban Pizza so we got pizzas for lunch.
I was still really hungry when I got off work right around 11:00. I was in the area of WMU so there are a few options for late night dinners that aren’t fast food.
I don’t know why but earlier in the week I drove down West Michigan Avenue on my way home. I was really surprised to see a new wing place. It was one I had never heard of but that didn’t really matter. There is now a late night wing place near Western.
America’s Best Wings is franchise but it’s hard to figure out just how many franchises there are. The franchising website only shows a few locations in the Dallas area but the phone number to call is an Atlanta number. Doing a quick Google search, the only one that comes up right away is one in Maryland. It looks like this could be an off shoot of Atlanta’s Best Wings but even that’s hard to figure out for sure.
Whatever the corporate structure is, there’s a location in Kalamazoo on West Michigan Avenue in the 2700 West Development just to the west of Howard Street. This particular spot is one that has had some changeover next to the Old Goat Tavern. Most recently, this spot was B-Side Social House. Before that, it was Nick’s Gyros.
Read more…Rollup Ice Cream & Tea (Portage)
6005 S. Westnedge Avenue
Friday nights in the fall are overtime nights and I always try to find someplace new to grab dinner. Usually it’s pizza but I’m running out of new pizza places in the area.
I missed a chance a couple of weeks ago when my overtime assignment was in South Portage. I was actually going to grab a pizza from Fricano’s Sub Station because it has been a lot of years since I ate there but the wait was too long. I ended up not eating until I was done for the night.
As I was driving down Westnedge, I passed like three other places that I could have stopped for a non-pizza dinner but I was running late at that point.
Last week, my job site was near Schoolcraft. I had some time to get there so I decided to hit one of the Portage places that I keep forgetting about before getting on the highway to head south.
Rollup Ice Cream & Tea has been around the Kalamazoo area for a about four years. We first found them right at the beginning of the pandemic when they opened their first (and now closed) store on Stadium Drive. From there, another shop was opened in Portage on Portage Road. That one is closed now too but that is where they started offering fried chicken sandwiches. A third location was opened on Gull Road in Comstock Township where they continued the ice cream, tea, and chicken sandwiches.
The newest location moves the business from that Portage Road location up to the corner of Milham and Westnedge in Portage. It’s in the two restaurant building on the southeast side of the road next to Little Caesars. This spot was a Schlotzky’s for a long time. Once that business closed, Wing Heaven came in for a while followed by Skinny Kenny’s. Rollup Ice Cream & Tea is now giving the prime corner real estate a shot.
Read more…La Chula Mexican Market & Restaurant
349 N. Main StreetI like to take the long way home from Benton Harbor.
It seems like whenever I get sent to Benton Harbor or St. Joseph, I’m there pretty much until the end of my shift. That was the case yesterday when I left town a little before 5:00.
I could have just hopped on I-94 and headed back to Kalamazoo but whenever I’m in that area, I like to stop at the Casey’s in Watervliet.
Growing up in Illinois, Casey’s was the place in every small town. No matter where you were, the directions you would get from locals (before the days of GPS) was always turn (left/right) at the Casey’s.
I planned on making my Casey’s stop on the way home to grab a slice of pizza and a Pepsi.
I also had other plans. I knew there was a food truck that usually parks at the Shell station across the street from the Casey’s. I was just going to go there but when I looked them up, I saw they actually have a market/restaurant in downtown Watervliet. Since I had time, I decided to go to the brick and mortar store.
La Chula Mexican Market is on North Main Street )(M-140) in downtown Watervliet between the railroad tracks and 1st Street. The market is part of a series of buildings butted up to each other that make up the main business district of the small city in Berrien County. The market takes up the first floor of the two story building right next to the Ace Hardware.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 