Continental Pastries & Deli
928 Columbia Avenue Well…it’s been a while but I’m finally writing a blog about a place in Southwest Michigan again.
I was in Battle Creek earlier this week and had some time to kill. I was kind of driving around aimlessly looking for some place to eat….wondering if there was some place that I keep driving by or keep missing.
Nothing was coming to mind until I started driving down Columbia Avenue heading towards the airport. I remembered there’s a pastry shop that’s kind of hard to spot when you’re driving and not looking off to the side.
Continental Pastries & Deli is on Columbia Avenue near Woodrow Avenue just outside of the Lakeview Neighborhood on Battle Creek’s west side. The building is kind of long, narrow building. There is signage and parking on the Columbia Street side but there’s a lot more parking and a lot more building once you get in to the parking lot to the west.
Read more…Raise the Roost (George Ade Travel Plaza)
5100 Plaza Avenue We knew the drive home from Chicago wasn’t going to be an easy one. The sun was shining as we left Evanston and stayed that way pretty much all the way to Indiana. I’ve driven I-94 in snow storms many, many times while at work so I know how bad that lakeshore route can get. I made the decision to just add a little extra time to our trip and take the Indiana Toll Road all the way to US-131.
We hit blue skies and sunshine when we walked out of the Robert Crown Center in Evanston. It stayed that way pretty much until we got to South Bend. I kept looking at my map and the weather ahead of us and decided I should probably make a bathroom stop and grab something to eat before we got in to the really bad stuff.
The Indiana Toll Road has some really nice Travel Plazas about every 30-40 miles. They’re all 7Eleven gas stations and all have some food options. Some have a bigger food court while others just have a chicken joint.
We stopped at the George Ade Travel Plaza which is at Mile Marker 23 Eastbound. It’s just past the interchange with I-94. Usually when we take the Skyway through Chicago, we get on 94 to head home, but this time we stayed on the Toll Road.
I actually chose this one because I knew they had one of the chicken places…and you know how I feel about gas station chicken.
Raise the Roost is a chain of quick service chicken that’s part of the 7Eleven chain. All of the store’s are inside the bigger 7Eleven gas stations or Speedway’s (which is now owned by 7Eleven). I don’t know when this Travel Plaza was rebuilt but I remember at one time, this was a Hardees restaurant and I would occasionally go out of the way to get Hardees. On the Toll Road, the smaller stops all have Raise the Roost as their food options now.
Read more…Robert Crown Community Center
1801 Main Street- Evanston, IL 60202
- (847) 448-8258
- Website
Traveling to Chicago in January is always a crapshoot. We got the worst of it this past weekend.
L and B were both scheduled to skate with their synchronized skating teams at Synchro Illinois this past weekend.
B’s team was scheduled early morning on Saturday so it was decided parents would drive his team’s skaters and we’d all stay at the same hotel in Evanston.
We left Friday morning after school was cancelled not knowing how long it would take us to get there.
It wasn’t a bad trip. We ran into some snow and a lot of rain. We got to Evanston before 1 PM and the kids spent some time hanging out as a team and the parents had a little bit of bonding at a nearby pub.
L’s team was scheduled to take a charter bus Saturday before the sun came up and get to Evanston late morning. The bus driver refused to drive them. It was a whole thing but the unfortunate reality is three of our synchro teams didn’t make it to Evanston.
The two that did because they drove the night before had great skates and both finished second in their flights.
Synchro Illinois is an annual competition held at the Robert Crown Community Center in Evanston, IL. The public ice rink is on Main Street at the intersection with Dodge Avenue. The Center is fairly new having been completed in 2020. In addition to ice sheets, there are outdoor soccer and softball fields, a library branch, two full sized gyms and a daycare.
Read more…Rosati’s Pizza (Evanston)
1168 Dodge AvenueFriday night is always pizza night, right?
B’s synchronized skating team had a competition in Evanston, IL pretty early on Saturday morning so we got a team hotel Friday night. The coaches and team managers put together a pizza party for the kids Friday night. I’m sure there would have been enough leftovers if I wanted to grab a few slices (it was Giordano’s) but we’re in Chicago. I wanted a specific kind of pizza.
Just before J took B down to hang out with his team, I put in an order to Rosati’s Pizza.
Rosati’s Pizza is a chain of Chicago style pizza restaurants based in Chicago. Well…there are two different chains using the Rosati’s name. Like a few other Chicago pizza places, a family dispute is behind the split.
The Evanston location is part of the original Rosati’s chain. The store is on Dodge Avenue is a shopping plaza at the corner of Dempster Street. The building is kind of an out building to a larger strip mall. It’s on the Dodge Street side of the shopping plaza along with several other take out food places.
Read more…Edzo’s Burger Shop
1571 Sherman AvenueSorry. Still not back in Kalamazoo.
We had to go to Illinois for a skating competition. I’m not going to get in to but it turned in to a whole thing. J, B, and I drove Friday (in the snow storm) to get there. We had a team hotel Friday night and B skated Saturday morning. L stayed at a friend’s house in Kalamazoo and was supposed to get on a charter bus Saturday morning and meet us over there…but the charter bus cancelled leaving three of our teams stranded in Kalamazoo.
The weekend started with a snow day so we were able to get out of the house pretty early. B but wasn’t feeling well. Missing the competition wasn’t an option. We loaded him up and planned on getting him to the hotel hoping things would get better.
We got to the hotel and wanted to get him in before he saw any of his teammates. That didn’t happen either. As soon as we walked in the door, half his team was in the lobby. We made excuses about why he couldn’t come hang out went to the room hoping we could get him to relax.
He eventually said he was hungry. So was I. We weren’t going to bring him to a restaurant and I happened to find a burger shop just down the street from our hotel.
Edzo’s Burger Shop is on Sherman Avenue and Orrington Avenue just south of Davis Street in what I believe is downtown Evanston, IL….at least it felt like a downtown area…it’s a high density commerical district if it’s not actually the “downtown.” The burger shop shares an entrance with an Italian restaurant. Edzo’s takes the signage though and it’s easy to find with the large yellow awning hanging off the building.
Tasty Twist
1137 E. Grand River AvenueSo, I thought I was going to bribe the boy to eat lunch by offering him ice cream. I hate doing that, but also, we were heading to Michigan State University so I wanted to go to the MSU Dairy Store.
It didn’t work. He still didn’t eat his lunch, but J and I still wanted to go to the Dairy Store, so we went to the Dairy Store.
Great idea….if it wasn’t winter break. The Dairy Store was temporarily closed. Now we had promised everyone ice cream so we had to find something else.
It’s January in Michigan. How many ice cream places are actually open?
There’s at least one in East Lansing.
We headed towards Tasty Twist on Grand River Avenue near Stoddard Avenue across the street from MSU’s main campus. The small ice cream shop shares a building with a Korean take out place. It’s right next to the pretty popular with college kids Bell’s Greek Pizza. It’s a little bit of a dated building but it’s easy to spot with a large blue awning with the white Tasty Twist lettering right above the door.
Read more…Cask & Company Kitchen & Bar
3415 E. Saginaw StreetBack to back days in Lansing is not something that happens often anymore.
I was in Lansing on Thursday for work. Friday, I was bringing L over for a figure skating lesson. There’s a former Olympian that she does dance work with every summer at a camp in Wisconsin Rapids. He also coaches in Lansing but doesn’t have a lot of time for skaters that aren’t full time students. As most of his students are Michigan State University skaters, he had some openings over winter break and offered some slots to the Kalamazoo skaters he works with at that camp.
I don’t ever go to the camp in Wisconsin so I’ve never seen her skate with this coach. I needed to take some time off after my trip to Los Angeles so I made sure I was off this Friday to watch her skate.
J was off to so we decided to all go to Lansing. L skated Friday morning in Kalamazoo so we let her relax a little bit before her afternoon lesson in East Lansing. We figured if we were going as a family, we may as well stop somewhere for lunch once we got to town.
There’s not a ton of places I really want to get to Lansing and not a ton of places that I really remember fondly from our time living there. It’s always kind of struggle trying to find some place to eat.
I do have a short list though so I offered up a couple of places to J and let her pick.
She picked Cask & Company Kitchen & Bar on Saginaw Street at that weird intersection where it crosses with Grand River Avenue. The restaurant is in a small shopping plaza on the north side of the road. It’s kind of a partner restaurant to Front 43 Neighborhood Pub. Before it was an upscale pub, this space was XIAO which was marketed as a Chinese grill and lounge.
Read more…Jose’s Cuban Sandwich & Deli (Lansing)
401 S. Pennsylvania AvenueI feel like I’ve been on the road constantly lately. Someone at worked asked me late last week how I’m not exhausted. Trust me, I am.
I was in Lansing for an assignment the week I got back from Los Angeles. I was meeting a co-worker from Grand Rapids then heading back to Kalamazoo so I figured I would have a little bit of time to grab a sandwich or something before heading home.
Our task was done just before noon. We figured out a plan for finishing our respective parts of the job in our own offices so neither of us had to drive anymore than we needed to.
When we separated for the day, I headed to grab something to eat before hoping on 496 to head back to Kalamazoo.
I found Jose’s Cuban Sandwich & Deli on S. Pennyslvania Avenue and East Kalamazoo Street. The small deli is inside the Marathon Station on the corner just north of I-494. This is one of two locations in Mid-Michigan. The other is in Williamston on Grand River Drive and is a standalone restaurant instead of taking up counter space in a gas station as this one does.
Ski’s Sub Shop
96 Monroe Center NW #105I did not waste anytime going back to work after my trip to Los Angeles. My boss offered to let me take a few days off but I didn’t want to lose the overtime. I did, however, want Friday off. My daughter had some things during the day I wanted to go to and since I would have the hours, that was the day I wanted off. It felt weird to take Wednesday off, work Thursday, take Friday off.
I headed up to the main office in Grand Rapids Wednesday morning because my usual co-worker in Kalamazoo was still on his two week vacation to California. We had a meeting with the new boss that I was interested in and they needed me up there anyway.
I got some free time around lunch time and I was really hungry. I didn’t want to eat a vending machine sandwich so I clocked out for my break and headed to get gas so I didn’t have to do it on my way home.
Just before Christmas I saw an article in Mlive about a sub shop in downtown Grand Rapids. I knew it was there..I had just never been there. Mlive featured it in their Michigan’s Best Local Eats series. I figured that was my sign to go to this shop I have walked by for 13 years and never stopped at.
Ski’s Sub Shop is in the Founders Building in downtown Grand Rapids on Monroe Center NW just to the east side of Ottawa Avenue. The shop has been downtown since the late 1970’s, in it’s current spot since 1986 and claims to have the “Best Lunch Deal in Downtown Grand Rapids.”
Shake Shack (DFW Airport, Terminal C)
2400 Aviation DriveI’m a such a dad when it comes to flying.
After an eight day trip to Los Angeles, it was time to fly home. Our flight out of LAX was scheduled for a little after 9:00.
We had to return a rental car and I have a lot of extra bags I have to take for work so I wanted to get to the airport early. I always have such mixed experiences when flying for work and I stress out a little bit.
We checked out of our hotel in downtown Los Angeles around 4:45 AM. I picked up the car from the valet and we headed to the rental car lot. There was no traffic and checking the car back in took about 10 minutes. There was a shuttle waiting for us so we hoped on and took it to the American Airlines terminal.
We got inside and I went to the ticket counter to check my extra bags. There was no line. Got it done in less than 10 minutes.
Headed up the escalator for the TSA Checkpoint…there were four people in front of me. Got through in less than ten minutes.
It wasn’t even 6:00 AM yet….so yeah, we had some time to kill. That went way too smoothly for checking in a LAX.
I walked around the terminal, got a drink, and picked up some souvenirs for the kids. I looked at a few places to eat but didn’t really want breakfast. I figured I’d get something to eat when we got to our layover.
Our connection back to Grand Rapids was Dallas-Fort Worth. We had about an hour and a half layover and we were in early. We had to go from Terminal B to Terminal C so we found the Skylink and got to our gate.
Neither one of us knew what we wanted so we started walking. We got all the way back to the beginning of Concourse C and knew we had to make a decision at that point.
We passed a Shake Shack near Gate 6 so we headed back there.
The Shake Shack at DFW opened in early 2019 making it the 6th location in the Dallas area. The restaurant is part of a little food court that also has a Dickey’s BBQ Pit and an Einstein Bros. Bagels. It looks a lot like a mall food court as you just walk up to the order counter that is built in to the wall. It’s not like some of the other restaurants at DFW that have entrances that take you in to the restaurant.
SW Michigan Dining 