The Outpouring Cafe
507 W. Michigan AvenueBeing in Paw Paw early on a Tuesday morning was not on my plans for this week but that’s what happened.
I got up and started a normal day of work but then had to make a run to Paw Paw almost as soon as I got in the office. I was there about 45 minutes and then started to head back to Kalamazoo.
I wasn’t super hungry yet but there’s a coffee shop I pass all the time on my way to football games at Falan Field. It’s never open on Friday nights but since it was still morning, I noticed the open sign on and made a quick turn in to the parking lot.
The Outpouring Cafe is on Michigan Avenue at Johnson Road right across the street from Paw Paw Middle School. The cafe is part of the larger Outpouring of Hope ministry in the large cinder block building that used to be an interior design office. The cafe takes up space on the north side of the building and is easily identifiable from the awning over the door.
Read more…Dani’s Kitchen and Pancake House
3501 Stadium Drive, Suite AWorking overnights is the worst. There’s really no way to sleep before the shift if it’s not something you do often so you then have to waste the entire next day sleeping.
It’s the worst.
But it happens from time to time and I just deal with it.
We had a last minute call off at work this past weekend and I was the on-call guy, so I got stuck with it. I did my midnight to 9 AM shift then headed home…exhausted but also hungry.
I had actually asked J on Saturday if she wanted to get up and go to breakfast when I got home. The kids had skating in the morning but we could do breakfast, I could go back to bed, and J could take L to the rink. Perfect plan.
I wanted to stay close to home and there is a fairly new breakfast joint not too far from home.
Dani’s Kitchen & Pancake House is on Stadium Drive near Adios Drive. The restaurant is in the duplex building with Wild Bill’s Tobacco Shop next to Sweetwater’s Donuts. This space was most recently Little Mexico and before that Menna’s Joint.
Read more…Big Fish Wings & Things
817 Martin Luther KingF Jr. Street SEFriday nights in Grand Rapids.
We’re a little short staffed right now and to fill the Friday night slot, it automatically goes to the person on call for the weekend. Last weekend was my weekend so I got the Friday night slot.
I didn’t have much to do. In fact, I didn’t really do anything all other than sit in the office just in case a problem arose that I would have to deal with.
No such problem arose so I essentially sat there and collected my paycheck.
Around 5:00 I told my supervisor I was hungry and I was going to clock out for my meal break and go outside of the building to find something to eat. I had passed a spot on the Southeast side of Grand Rapids a few times that jumped out to me but I didn’t have time to stop those nights. I had the time on this night.
Big Fish Wings & Things is a small, mostly take out restaurant near the corner of MLK Jr Street (formerly Franklin Street) and Eastern Avenue. The white building is very distinct looking with large columns out front that make it look like this used to be a bank or something. The last restaurant I remember being in here was a version of Sandmanns that I never stopped at. Most of the time I worked in Grand Rapids (2010-2017) the building was empty. It was always a noticeable building so I was always surprised there was nothing in there.
Zingerman’s Roadhouse
2501 Jackson AvenueAlright…so I fibbed a little bit. I got one Southwest Michigan blog post in then, of course, I’m back on the road.
It’s only to Ann Arbor though so at least I’m still in the right state.
I had a little bit of a drive last Thursday. I had to meet a co-worker in Alto for an assignment then we had to rush over to Ann Arbor for an afternoon assignment. There was hope that we’d have time for lunch once we got to Ann Arbor but we didn’t leave the Grand Rapids area as early as we thought we would. We just barely made it to Ann Arbor in time.
We spent about two hours at our job assignment in Ann Arbor then I had to drive my colleague back to Grand Rapids. We didn’t have time to figure out where to leave a car so I just said screw it and offered to take the extra long day so we weren’t in two cars to Ann Arbor.
We were both really hungry when we got done and my colleague suggested Zingerman’s. My question to him was Deli or Roadhouse? He had never heard of the Roadhouse before and I think I sold it to him because it’s a full service sit down restaurant.
Zingerman’s Roadhouse is on the corner of Jackson and Maple Road on the west side of Ann Arbor near the Jackson Avenue interchange with I-94. The Roadhouse opened about 20 years ago on this corner and just like the Deli, focuses a lot of attention on high quality ingredients and experiences.
Read more…Tacos Y Gorditas Santos
Food TruckIt’s been a while since I’ve actually written a blog post about a place in Kalamazoo.
Let me let you in on a little secret. Figure skating is expensive. We’ve curbed our eating out at home because we have to eat out when we’re at competitions. There’s not a lot extra left in the weekly budget to for luxuries until we get through competition season.
I’ve been working a ton of overtime recently and I decided to take advantage of a little bit of padding in the check. Lunchtime Live is back at Bronson Park on Friday’s and I happened to be in the office during the lunch hour.
This was my first excursion to Lunchtime Live this year. There were some familiar trucks but also some new ones that I can’t wait to try over the next several weeks.
I was in a taco mood on this particular day so I got in line at Tacos Y Gorditas Santos.
This small yellow food truck looks like it’s been around for about three years yet somehow I have neve crossed paths with them. They’re based in Kalamazoo and do typical Mexican street foods like tacos, burritos, quesadillas, and tortas.
Kwik Trip (Kenosha/31st Street)
5800 31st StreetYou didn’t think I’d get out of Wisconsin without a Kwik Trip blog, did you?
Our last day in the Kenosha area started bright and early. This was the last day of the Southport Summer Classic at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex. Both kids were skating….finally. B had been so patient waiting for his turn.
We had already stopped at Kwik Trip several times but it was one I blogged about last year so I didn’t have a chance to write a new one. We were coming from a different hotel on Saturday morning and we needed breakfast so the plan was to stop at the first Kwik Trip we spotted.
That first Kwik Trip happened to be the location on 31st Street and Green Bay Road/Wisconsin Highway 31 in Kenosha. The convenience store/gas station is in the parking lot of a Festival Foods. It’s near the very busy intersection of Green Bay Road and 38th Street which is a very heavy industrial corridor.
Angry Brothers Pub & Grill
6501 Washington AvenueWe spent two nights in Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee, IL but we actually needed to stay three nights in the area for a figure skating competition at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex in Pleasant Prairie, WI.
I didn’t want to pay Friday night prices at Great Wolf just to sleep there. Both kids competed on Saturday and we didn’t really want them going all out for the third day in a row at a water park.
The rates at Great Wolf weren’t awful. It was only a little more than most of the hotels in the area so it was worth it to let the kids have some fun for a few nights. We really don’t have the means or time to take a real vacation anymore with all the skating they do so we use this trip and the Traverse City trip as our summer “vacations.”
We still needed a hotel for the third night and I had some Marriott points. I had initially booked a Fairfield Inn in Pleasant Prairie not too far from the rink but as I started looking, I could get a hotel a little further away and only use half the points. The hotel was just for sleeping anyway so I booked in Racine.
My parents were also staying the night as they wanted to stick around and watch both kids on Saturday. They booked the same hotel as us.
L had just an alright day skating. She actually had a solid skate but she wasn’t happy with it and it affected her mood the rest of the day. When we got back to the hotel, it was decided she was going to spend the rest of the night in the room to cool down and refocus.
My parents were hungry though and so was I. My dad noticed a bowling alley right next to our hotel that had a restaurant. We looked up a menu online and it looked pretty good so B and I decided to walk over with them to get something to eat.
The restaurant inside The Lanes on 20 is Angry Brothers Pub & Grill. The restaurant is on the west side of the building located on Washington Avenue/Wisconsin Highway 20 near Meadow Lane in Racine. Well, the address is listed as Racine but it appears to be the Town of Mt. Pleasant. I’m not familiar enough with Wisconsin municipalities to know if this is like a Charter Township in Michigan or what the deal is. The building is right next to the Fairfield Inn on Washington Avenue which is where we stayed. There is a separate entrance for the restaurant so you never have to go in to the bowling alley if you don’t want to. It was easy to just walk between the two parking lots and find some tasty food.
Read more…Andy’s Drive-In
2929 Roosevelt RoadFriday at the Southport Summer Classic was a long day.
L’s events were really spread out. She skated at 8 AM and then not again until 4 PM. She also had a 7 AM practice and we had to be out of our hotel at Great Wolf Lodge so it’s not like we could go back and hang out for a while. We also couldn’t get in to our new hotel until 3:00 so we had a long day to kill.
This is one of the closer competitions for my parents who still live where I grew up near Kankakee, IL. They decided to come up Friday morning and stay through Saturday so they could watch both kids.
My parents, B, and I left the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex not long after L’s first event ended around 9:00 AM. I had an idea for lunch but they didn’t open until 11. We killed some time by going to the Mars Cheese Castle and Tenuta’s Deli to do a little shopping.
We finished up at Tenuta’s around 10:30. Still a little early but we were close the diner I wanted to eat at so we just drove over there and sat in the parking lot until it opened.
Andy’s Drive-In is one of several 60’s era drive-ins still operational in Kenosha. Andy’s is on the corner of Roosevelt Road and 30th Avenue in the middle of the city. The vintage red and white building has been on this corner since the mid-1960’s.
Read more…Jimano’s Pizzeria (Gurnee)
7010 W. Grand AvenueWater park can be exhausting!
B and I came back to Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee around noon. We had been up early to watch L compete at the Southport Summer Classic at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex in nearby Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.
L didn’t want to leave when she was done. She still wanted to watch her friends and teammates. J brought B and I back to the resort so he could swim.
B swam for a couple of hours then we went back to the room to chill for a while. We put Netflix on the TV and watched Minions thinking the girls would be home around dinner time.
They ended up staying pretty late so I suggested just picking up pizzas when they got back.
Great Wolf Lodge has a pizza place and it was really close to where our room was. I could have taken the easy way out and just ordered from Hungry as a Wolf, but we did that once in Traverse City and the pizzas were Little Ceasars $5 Hot ‘n Ready quality but way more than $5. Like I’ve said a lot in my blogs about our stay at Great Wolf Lodge, it was fine.
But Gurnee is close to Chicago and there is much better pizza.
I started looking on Google and found a couple of highly rated places nearby. I, of course, chose the one with online ordering.
Jimano’s Pizzeria is on Grand Avenue and Brookside in Gurnee just to the west of the Gurnee Mills Mall. The small pizzeria is located in a pretty generic shopping plaza that also, weirdly, has a Firestone Auto Center. This is one of nine Jimano’s locations. Most are in the northern Chicago suburbs but there is also one in nearby Pleasant Prairie and two in Colorado.
Read more…Buckets Incredible Craveables (Gurnee)
1700 Nations DriveB couldn’t wait to get back to Great Wolf Lodge.
We had to get up really early morning Thursday morning to get L to the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex. She had her first practice at 7:00 AM then her skates were at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM. It was an early day for us with an early out.
L wanted to stay and watch her friends so J took B and I back to the hotel. He had very little interest in hanging around and wanted to get back to the pools.
It was lunch time and I hadn’t really eaten much. We stopped at Kwik Trip on our way to the rink and grabbed some sandwiches and drinks but that was all I really had.
J wanted to get back to the rink and B wanted to swim. So lunch wasn’t an option.
That was fine. I figured I’d get B to the pool then just grab something there to hold me over until dinner time.
There are a few options for food inside the water park at Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee but I went with the the simpler one.
Buckets Incredible Craveables is a staple at Great Wolf Lodges. The one in Gurnee has access from both the waterpark side and the arcade side so you can grab something real quick without having to go in to the water park to do it. We have ordered from Buckets before when we stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City so I knew what I was in for when I walked up to the counter.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 