Potbelly Sandwich Works (Kalamazoo)
4608 Stadium DriveLast week was not a typical week for me. I had an all day doctor’s appointment and a sick kid the next day so I missed a couple of days of work. I’m pretty sure that’s the first two sick days I used all year.
I was done with my appointment on Wednesday early enough to relax for a while then pick L up from school to take her to Wings Event Center for figure skating. I do this a lot on Monday’s now because she has to be there early and I go in to work for a night shift that starts at 3:00 PM.
Most days we hit the Jimmy John’s right next to Wings Event Center for lunch. It’s quick and both kids like it. Best of all, it’s not greasy fast food.
I did that last Monday and since I was picking her up again two days later, I wanted to do something different. I still didn’t want to get her fast food but there’s another sandwich place along the way.
Potbelly Sandwich Works is on Stadium Drive in Kalamazoo’s Knollwood Neighborhood to the east of Drake Road. It’s part of one of the out building shopping plazas in the University Commons center. The Potbelly shares a building with Starbucks in the space that used to be a Jimmy John’s.
Read more…Hot ‘n Now (Wayland)
1146 129th AvenueNostalgia is a powerful thing.
I’m going to preface this by saying I didn’t grow up in Michigan. I grew up in the Chicago area. I don’t even know if there ever were Hot ‘n Now’s in Illinois but I know I never ate at one and my family ate at all of the fast food places. We were definitely a chain/fast food family.
As we all know, only one of the original Hot ‘n Now’s survived. That one in Sturgis is the only remnant remaining of the original chain. It’s been in continuous operation since the chain was thriving and once the parent company went bankrupt, the owners continued running it the best they could true to the original ways of the beloved chain.
Fast forward to 2025. Hot ‘n Now is back as a chain. Gun Lake Investments bought the brand and is recreating the iconic drive thrus and burgers that so many Michiganders grew up loving. The plan was to open two locations right away. One in Wayland. One in Alpena. The Sturgis location continues to operate as the direct lineage to Hot ‘n Now but is not part of this chain revitalization.
I’ve eaten at the one in Sturgis a couple of times. Again, no memory of the original chain. I’ve always thought the burgers were good but it was too much of a fast food burger for me to get the reason anyone would drive hours other than for the nostalgia. Which is actually a really good business model for them.
Now it was time to eat at the resurrection in Wayland.
The first of the new Hot ‘n Now chain locations is across the street from Gun Lake Casino on 129th Avenue east of the US-131 interchange. The building sits kind of behind the Noonday Market gas station which houses a really tasty Which Wich. The building will be instantly recognizable to those Gen X/Millenial Michiganders who grew up with it. They’re actually pre-fab buildings built off site and then assemble at the location. The only difference is that instead of the double drive through the original buildings had, there is only one drive thru lane. The second drive through lane is closed off now and servs as a walk up window.
Read more…Krispy Krunchy Chicken (Lake Street)
1102 Lake StreetIs it my goal to blog about every single Krispy Krunchy Chicken that pops up in Southwest Michigan?
No, but it looks like I’m doing it anyway.
I’ve been writing about Krispy Krunchy Chickens opening up in the area since I noticed the first one in Galesburg almost two years ago (not counting the one in Mendon that was really ahead of it’s time).
I don’t know why but I just really like gas station chicken. I also don’t know why but these Krispy Krunchy Chicken’s are popping up all over the place.
Kalamazoo got it’s first location on Douglas Avenue earlier this summer. I thought that was the only one in town until I took a detour coming from the I-94 Business Loop to get back downtown.
The next Krispy Krunchy Chicken in Kalamazoo is in the Edison Neighborhood at the Mills Street Market. The shop sits on the corner of Mills Street and Lake Street and while it has Mills Street in the name, the address is Lake Street.
Read more…Que Ricos Tacos
Food TruckLet’s try to get back to some Southwest Michigan blog posts. I know I’ve been on the road lately so I’ve neglected the home base a bit.
A colleague and I were in Battle Creek unexpectedly last Wednesday. I knew that there are food trucks that have been parking at the Federal Center and the Wednesday one is one that sounded really good to me.
We were kind of out by the zoo though. As we made our way back towards downtown, I also saw a taco truck. I told my co-worker that if the truck at the Federal Center wasn’t there then I’d go back to the taco truck.
We got downtown and no food truck. It was raining so I wasn’t that surprised. We still had some time to kill so I said I was going to go back to the taco truck. My co-worker didn’t argue.
The taco truck I found was Que Ricos Tacos. It’s parked semi-permanently on Beadle Lake Road south of Columbia Avenue. This spot has had a couple of different food trucks parked here over the years including OT’s Up in Smoke several years ago. There’s actually a permanent cement pad that the food truck sits next to so even on rainy days like this, you don’t have to stand in the mud to order.
Read more…Sheetz (Smith Road)
29225 Smith RoadI had another late night in Detroit.
Usually when I have those really late nights, I have a colleague with me that I have to take back to Lansing before coming home.
I didn’t have that this time. There were two co-workers coming from Grand Rapids so they drove all the way to Detroit together. That meant I could just meet them there.
I got to Detroit early and got myself a sandwich from The Original Gonella’s. That held me over for most of the day but I didn’t eat while at our job site so I was pretty hungry by the time I got back on the road to head back to Kalamazoo around 1:00 AM.
I know the choices are pretty limited but there is a really good option not too far off I-94 not far from the city.
Sheetz has opened two locations in Romulus near the Detroit Metro Airport. I stopped at the one of Wick Road back in January so I decided to find the other one which just opened not too far away earlier this summer.
The second Detroit area Sheetz location is on Smith Road at the intersection with Middlebelt Road right off I-94 in Romulus. This location is about 3 miles from the Wick Road location. It’s funny to me they opened the first two Sheetz’s in Michigan so close to each other. The gas station takes up a pretty large plot of land right on the corner. From the outside, it looks like any other roadside stop.
Read more…The Original Gonella’s (Detroit)
295 Oakwood BoulevardSunday in Chicago, Monday in Detroit.
It was another long week for me. I did technically get a day off, Sunday, but I used that day off to go to a Bears game in Chicago. It didn’t actually feel like a day off because it was still a long day with a lot of driving.
Monday I needed to meet some co-workers in Detroit around 4 PM. I didn’t have to pick them up in Lansing this time like I usually do because there were two of them coming. I do that when it’s only one so they don’t have to make a long drive, usually very late at night, home all the way from Detroit by themselves.
This gave me an opportunity to search for something to eat either in Detroit or on the way before I met them downtown. I had a few options and a few places I wanted to try but it’s a longstanding sandwich shop that won out.
I headed to The Original Gonella’s on the corner of Oakwood Boulevard and Powell Street in the Oakwood Heights Neighborhood in the far southwest corner of Detroit. The location opened over 75 years ago in this very industrialized neighborhood. The Marathon refinery is just down the street and there is very little actual housing in the area. Gonnell’s two story brick building stands alone on the corner just a couple of blocks away from the rows of storage tanks at the Marathon plant.
Read more…Nicky’s Gyros
2050 Sibley BoulevardI’m not going to leave Chicago without getting an Italian Beef.
Yes, I could have gotten one at Soldier Field. There actually was a Mr. Beef location inside the stadium. I didn’t go look at the prices but I’m sure they were a lot.
I was pretty surprised at how easily we got out of the McCormick Place parking deck after the Bears game. There was a little bit of traffic but it really was only about ten minutes of back up and we were back on the Dan Ryan Expressway heading to where my car was parked in Calumet Park.
My brother and dad dropped me off then they continued down I-57 towards home. I had make my way back to Michigan, but first a stop for dinner.
I did a pretty rudimentary Google search for “Best Italian Beef’s on the Southside of Chicago.” I got a few good hits but one of them stood out as the winner for me.
I headed about 15 minutes from where I was parked to Nicky’s Gyros on the corner of Sibley Boulevard and Madison Avenue in Calumet City. The small, barn shaped sandwich shop is about half a block from I-94 (at this point called the Bishop Ford Freeway). I had to turn around a couple of times to get in to the parking lot because I missed it at first….the GPS directions made no sense as it wanted to turn the wrong way, U-Turn and come back but I eventually got in to the small parking lot which was pretty packed on this Sunday afternoon around 5 PM.
Read more…Soldier Field
1410 Special Olympics Drive- Chicago, IL 60605
- (312) 235-7000
- Website
One of the first adjustments I had to make when we moved to Michigan 17 years ago (besides the switch to Eastern Time from Central Time) was that I no longer had easy access to my favorite sports teams.
I grew up near Chicago. My allegiances are to Chicago teams so that means I pretty much only get to see “my teams” play when they play Detroit teams.
It’s not a huge deal. Yes, I could buy the league passes but I’m not that big of a sports fan. I like sports. I like my teams, but even if they were on my TV, I’m not the guy that’s going to be sitting down in front of the TV every single night to watch a game.
Living in Kalamazoo, we have a pretty easy drive to both Chicago and Detroit. They’re about the same distance so if I want to go a game in Chicago, it’s an easy one day trip. Same for Detroit.
Every year since I got married in 2009, my dad, my brother, and my best friend from elementary/middle school have gone to a White Sox game at US Cellular Field/Guaranteed Rate Field/Rate Field. That didn’t happen this year for the first time in 15 years. We just couldn’t get our schedules to work out on a weekend that the White Sox were home.
About a month ago, that friend of ours sent a text asking if we wanted to do a Bears game instead this year. He had access to four tickets and figured we could still do a game this year even if it was in a different venue.
I had nothing going on that day so I said I was in.
The game we went to was last Sunday’s New Orleans Saints vs Chicago Bears game at Soldier Field.
Soldier Field is right off of Lakeshore Drive just south of downtown Chicago and near McCormick Place. The address is actually on Special Olympics Drive which is on the east side of the structure between the stadium and Lake Michigan.
Soldier Field has a heckuva history both in the City of Chicago and with the Chicago Bears. It was built in 1924 and opened as Grant Park Stadium It was renamed a year later Soldier Field as a dedication to soldiers who died in World War I. The stadium has hosted football for a hundred years now and has also seen soccer, motorsports, ice hockey, rugby, and hundreds of concerts over the years. The Bears first played a game in Soldier Field in 1926 but they didn’t move in full time until 1974. The stadium underwent a major renovation/reconstruction in 2003 that completely gutted the structure and essentially put a new football stadium right in the middle of it. I touched on it the last time I blogged about Soldier field in 2009. I’ll get to more of it later in this blog.
Read more…Chicken Coop (Portage)
109 E. Centre AvenueSkipping out on the Friday night pizza once again.
A few weeks ago I ordered a pizza from Franco’s Italian Pizzeria in Portage for something to eat between my normal work shift and my Friday night overtime shift. I hadn’t eaten there in a really long time so I figured it was time to go back.
When I went to pick that pizza up, I realized there was another restaurant right next to it that I haven’t been to in a really long time. The thing about writing this blog, I’ve been doing it so long, some of my observations and opinions have become dated. Going back and revisiting some of these places seems like a good idea sometimes.
I was in the same boat this past Friday night. I had a little bit of time between my normal shift and my overtime shift. I was in Portage again. I remembered I made a mental note about that place next to Franco’s and this night seemed like as good as any.
That business is the Chicken Coop on the corner of Centre Avenue and South Westnedge Avenue. The small chicken joint has been a consistent presence on this corner for many years. It used to be part of a large chain that included restaurants owned by the same people in Paw Paw, Plainwell, Kalamazoo Township, and Watervliet but it appears this location in Portage is the only one left.
Read more…Sidestreets Deli & Bakery
116 S. Cochran RoadWednesday afternoon I got a text message from one of my supervisors asking if I could meet a colleague in East Lansing on Thursday.
If it was early in the morning, that was going to be a challenge because I have to get B to school. It wasn’t early in the morning though. It was a job at 12:30 near Michigan State University.
That gave me plenty of time to get B off to school, finish up a few things in my office, then pack up and head to East Lansing.
I always try to find some place to eat when I’m in the Lansing area. This blog started 17 years ago when J and I lived on Lansing’s east side as midmichigandining.com. It started as a hobby because I moved to Michigan with J without a job.
Since then, it’s kind of turned in to a journal so I keep going.
I don’t always like finding places to eat in East Lansing because we spend time there every spring for a figure skating competition. That’s when I usually try to find new places.
Instead of looking for places in East Lansing proper, I looked for places on my drive. I’m not sure how I eventually found it but a while ago I found a deli in Charlotte that looked really good. This was my chance to take a little detour off the highway and grab a sandwich.
Sidestreets Deli & Bakery is on Cochran Street south of Lawrence Avenue in downtown Charlotte. This space downtown is actually a relocation and growth from the original deli which was about a block away in a very tiny 456 sq-foot space. The move in to a building which house a market and a cabinet making shop prior to becoming a deli gave them a lot of space to expand.
SW Michigan Dining 