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…Repicci’s Italian Ice & Gelato of SW Michigan
FOOD TRUCKThree day weekends are rare. There’s always something that comes up. Somehow, I made it through the Labor Day weekend without any last minute work assignments.
We went to J’s parents house near Centreville like we usually do for holiday’s. We got a late start because L had a figure skating exhibition Friday night and practice before her trip to Florida on Saturday.
We headed towards St. Joseph County around 4:00 Saturday afternoon. L had talked us in to letting her bring a friend so all three of the kids spent the rest of the weekend either in the lake swimming or in the basement playing Roblox.
We pretty much always grill our meals while we’re at her parents house but will occasionally go out for ice cream or something after dinner.
There were a couple of food trucks at nearby Island Hills Golf Course right outside of Centreville. One of my favorites, MaMazonni’s Italian Beef was there but we had just eaten lunch. What we ventured out for this time was Italian ice and gelato.
Repicci’s Italian Ice & Gelato is a franchise of Italian ice trucks mostly in the midwest and southern part of the country. The only truck is Michigan is based in Southwest Michigan with a phone number linked to a White Pigeon address. It makes a lot of it’s stops in that area and this one near Centreville was in that area as well. The truck is actually a smaller pull behind trailer with a walk up window on one side.
Read more…Handmap Brewing
15 Carlyle StreetIt’s fall and that means a lot of extra work for me. I pick up overtime at work on Friday nights and will pick up a lot of side jobs and even more overtime on the weekends.
The work overtime started last week. I worked my regular 9:30-6:30 shift then headed to Battle Creek for the overtime.
I don’t really get much of a chance for a meal break in between shifts so over the years, I’ve kind of made it a habit to find a pizza place in what every city I’m working in and grab a pizza that I can eat as I’m driving between job assignments.
I’ve eaten at a lot of pizza places in Battle Creek and I always like to find new ones.
My first job site was near downtown and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a place that sells pizza near downtown that I’ve been wanting to eat at for a very long time.
Handmap Brewing is in downtown Battle Creek on the corner of Carlysle Street and Jackson Street along the Battle Creek. The brewery takes up the whole first floor of the Record Box Lofts. This historic building received $200K from Battle Creek Unlimited in 2017 to bring life back to it and to bring another brewery to downtown Battle Creek. Handmap Brewing is the brewery that filled that space.
Read more…Mochinut (Comstock Township)
5585 Gull Road, Suite 118Finding someone to sharpen figure skates in Kalamazoo is hard. There are a lot of places that do hockey but there’s only a couple of people who know how to properly do figure skates.
We’ve struggled for a couple of years with finding one of those people available when we need it done. We were typically at the mercy of someone saying, “yeah, I’ve got some time tomorrow night” and we’d leave our skates somewhere to be picked up.
The parents of one of our club members decided to figure it out themselves. They bought a sharpener and have done a lot of training and a lot of practicing on some of their old skates to get it right.
We got my daughter’s done with them a couple of months ago and she loved the way they were done. She said she has never felt so good on her blades.
She’s heading to the National Solo Dance finals in a couple of weeks so it was time to get them sharpened again. J asked if they’d be able to do it one night this week. They said yes so I grabbed L’s skates after I got off work and headed out to their place near Gull Lake.
It only took about 15 minutes to sharpen them then I headed home.
But I was hungry. So I took kind of the long way through Richland and came back in to Kalamazoo on Gull Road.
This was intentional as there are a couple of places in that part of Comstock Township that I wanted to grab food from.
I stopped at the new mochi donut and Korean corn dog place Mochinut.
Mochinut is donut chain that has around 150 stores in over 30 states plus locations in South Korea and Thailand. The Comstock Township store is one of 3 currently in Michigan. It’s located on Gull Road east of Sprinkle Road in the same shopping plaza where Two Fellas Grill is located. The space is right next to the old North Eleven in what was formerly a Cricket Wireless store.
Read more…Raising Cane’s (Michigan City)
5000 Franklin SteetMy baseball trip every year is typically a one day thing. I’ll leave Kalamazoo in the morning, go a game at Guaranteed Rate Field with my dad, brother, and friend from elementary school, then drive back to Kalamazoo after it’s over.
I did something different this year. I went to my parents after the game.
My dad always gives me a little grief for not going back to their place and hanging out but I typically just want to go home. They live a little over an hour south of Chicago so it’s back tracking when I do decide to leave.
This year, our trip coincided with my home town’s “homecoming.” It’s not the school homecoming but the village festival. When I was a kid, it was three days long, had carnival rides and games, and a slow pitch softball tournament. Like most things, it’s not that anymore. It’s now two days, doesn’t really have much for kids to do but they still have a beer tent open until 1 AM with live music,
We headed back to the beer tent for about an hour then went to one of the bars in town for one last drink before going to bed.
When I got up Sunday morning, my mom wanted to go to breakfast before I left so we went to the one sit down restaurant in town for a really delicious breakfast. I hung out for a while longer because I didn’t really see my mom all that much as she was working when I got to town on Saturday afternoon and it bed by the time we got home from the ball game and the drinking.
I got on the road right around 11 AM central which was slightly later than I wanted to leave but it was fine. I didn’t have to rush home for anything.
I wasn’t super hungry as I was driving through the final stretch on Indiana but there’s a restaurant there that I was really craving. I figured it couldn’t hurt to stop so I pulled off the highway at the Michigan City exit.
I was heading towards a new Raising Cane’s not far off I-94 in Michigan City. The restaurant is on Franklin Street in front of the Meijer between US-20 and I-94. The building sits where a Buffalo Wild Wings used to be. That building was tore down and this new fast food building was erected in it’s place.
Chicago Wingz Around the World
108 E. 47th Street We’ve all noticed how bad the Chicago White Sox are this year, haven’t we?
If you’re not a baseball fan, they’re historically bad.
As a fan of that team, it’s hard to even want to go to a game, but every year, my dad, my brother, and my best friend from elementary school get together to go to a game.
Finding a time was hard this year. We all have kids in sports and things going on in our own life. We had planned for a day in May but something came up for one of us. Then we got in to travel softball season and figure skating competitions. August starts football season for my friend so that limits days.
We finally found a Saturday in that all four of us were able to go and the Sox were at home.
Our tradition has been to grab wings somewhere and tailgate in the parking lot. Chicago has such an awesome tailgate culture that even during bad years, people sit out in the parking lot along the Dan Ryan Expressway drinking, grilling, and having a good time.
When I got married in 2009, my bachelor party was a White Sox game. I found a wing place on the south side of Chicago that had really good reviews. We got 100 wings and had a blast in the parking lot before the game.
That original wing place closed and a new one popped up a few years later. Eventually that one closed to so we had to find other places to get wings from. We’ve had a few hits and a few misses but we all missed the original place.
I was looking for a new place this year and a familiar name popped up in my search. The name was the same. The menu was the same. It was just in a different spot a little closer to Guaranteed Rate Field.
Chicago Wingz Around the world is a small, carry out only wing joint on East 47th Street near Michigan Avenue in the Grand Boulevard Neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. The restaurant is a one story brick building that spans half the block. It looks like the space was a taco joint before my wing place came back sometime in 2022 and a Harold’s Chicken Shack (well known in Chicago) before that. Parking is limited to street spots in the area. My brother was driving and it took him a while to swing around and pull in to a spot right in front of the restaurant.
Read more…Kalako Street Cuisine
FOOD TRUCKSummer is almost over and with that, Lunchtime Live will be ending soon. I want to make sure I’ve taken advantage of the great lunch options all the way up until they pack up shop for the summer.
For the third week in a row, I was in my office in downtown Kalamazoo on Friday. I had an assignment I had to run out to around 11:30 but I was back in my leather office chair by a little before 1:00.
I stopped what I was doing and made my way towards Bronson Park. There was still about 45 minutes left before everyone would move on to their next gig and I noticed another truck that I haven’t eaten from yet.
That truck is Kalako Street Cuisine & Events based in the Greater Kalamazoo area. The small black pull behind trailer was parked right across the street from City Hall. I did my usual walk up and down South Street to make sure I wasn’t missing anything but I pretty much knew what I was getting before I even got to the park.
Read more…Chipotle Mexican Grill (Portage)
5964 S. Westnedge AvenueI have written many, many blog posts about my love for tacos. Like, actual tacos. Not the stuff you get at fast casual chain restaurants.
This is also going to be a blog about tacos. The stuff you get from fast casual chain restaurants. Not the authentic tacos.
It was time for another fundraiser for my kids’ synchronized skating team. We’ve done Blaze Pizza and Panera already this season. This month it was Chipotle.
There are two Chipotle Mexican Grill’s in the Kalamazoo area. One of them is near my house and near Wings West in Oshtemo Township. The other is in Portage. That was the one we had to order from to get the money for skating.
The Portage location of Chipotle Mexican Grill is on South Westnedge Avenue just north of Milham. The restaurant takes up northern most spot in the building that also houses the McAlister’s Deli in front of the old Bed Bath & Beyond store. The restaurant has been there since 2017 when it took the place of Complete Nutrition.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 