Raising Cane’s (East Lansing)
301 E. Grand River AvenueI keep getting sent to Lansing for work.
I had to meet a colleague at the Capitol last week just after lunch time. I had nothing else to do in the morning so I headed over a little early. I figured I could grab lunch and I had a place I’ve been wanting to hit up for quite a while.
Raising Cane’s East Lansing location is, for the time being, the only Michigan location. The restaurant is on the corner of Grand River Avenue and M.A.C Avenue in downtown East Lansing. The restaurant is right across the street from Michigan State University on the bottom floor of a mixed use three story building. I was first in this space many, many years ago when it was Cosi.
Fletcher’s Pub (Texas Township)
There’s always a plan. And there’s always a monkey wrench that gets thrown in to that plan.
J and L flew to Wichita for a figure skating competition leaving me and B at home. I work too late at night to pick B up from daycare so I always have to come up with something else.
My mom offered to come up from Illinois for two days so she would be here when he got home from school and I would take two days off from work.
Then we got a snow day. My mom wasn’t planning on leaving until Tuesday morning so she wasn’t going to make for me to go to work. I ended up taking a PTO day to stay home with B because J and L had to get to Detroit to catch a flight.
I texted my mom and told her not to rush. It was still icy out so I told her to take some time and just come later in the afternoon. I would still need her Wednesday so I didn’t have to take another PTO day.
She got to town around 2:00. We hung out at home for a while then I got hungry. I figured since I was home, we may as well go out to eat.
I knew I wanted to go to a pub but nothing was really sticking out to me. I thought about University Roadhouse because it was close to home and that, in turn, gave me another idea.
I picked Fletcher’s Pub in Texas Township. It’s still pretty close to home and it’s a little bit more of a relaxed atmosphere than University Roadhouse.
Fletcher’s Pub is part of the Houz Restaurant Group which also operates the Main Street Pubs, Old Goat Tavern, and University Roadhouse. There are two Fletcher’s Pub locations. One is on Oakland Drive in Kalamazoo. The other is in Texas Corners on Q Avenue near South 8th Street. The pub used to be just down the street where Louie’s Corner Bar is now. They moved to this location a few years back when this little shopping plaza was built. Fletcher’s takes up the space furthest from the road.
Jersey Giant Subs (Stadium Drive)
3321 Stadium Drive #BNew location. New blog.
You’ve all read this story many times. I have a soft spot for Jersey Giant Subs. They’re so freakin’ delicious and so filling. Sometimes it’s one meal. Sometimes it’s two. It just depends on the day.
I’ve had it pretty easy at work the last couple of weeks. I’ve traveled a little bit and I’ve worked alone a little bit. When I work alone, my day is typically easier …not always but it was during this stretch.
I had a few tasks to complete in the morning late last week. I went back out to Oshtemo then to Portage then back towards Kalamazoo. I was hungry for a sandwich and didn’t want Jimmy Johns so I went a little out of my way and came back to Kalamazoo via US-131 and Stadium Drive.
This brought me right past the newest Jersey Giant Subs location. True, there has been a JGS in this area for a few years but it moved down the street in to a new store front.
The new Stadium Drive location of Jersey Giant Subs is just down the street from the old one. It’s in the small shopping center with Jet’s Pizza between Los Amigos and Sweetwater’s on Stadium Drive at Adios Drive in the Oakland/Winchell Neighborhood. This space was not a restaurant prior to Jersey Giant moving in. It was actually a AAA Insurance office.
Wingstop (Oshtemo Township)
5021 W. Main StreetI’ve mentioned how expense figure skating is, right? A couple times?
I’ve been trying to pick up some extra work so we’re not stretched quite as thin. I’ve found something I can do a couple of times a month on weekends and that gives us a little extra padding when it comes time to pay for competitions and ice time.
I had to work last Saturday evening. It’s only a few hours but pays pretty well for what I do.
Saturday was kind of a lazy day. We were out pretty late Friday night and everyone slept in on Saturday. J had to run some errands before I went to work in the early evening and she brought home Chick-Fil-A for lunch. When I got done for the night around 10:00, I was pretty hungry and craving wings.
Lucky for me, there’s a couple of Wingstops in the Kalamazoo area now.
I chose the Oshtemo Township Wingstop location. It’s on the corner of West Main and Drake in the West Century Center. The small storefront is on the southside of the parking lot in the space that used to be Let’s Swirl Froyo.
Read more…Mi Pi Pizzaria
1070 Arcadia LoopI finally get a day where I stick to Kalamazoo. It’s been a while that I haven’t left town for work.
I had to run over to FedEx Office near Western Michigan University to pick up some stuff for J. I decided to run over on my lunch break while I had a little bit of free time.
I was hungry…I mean, it was lunch time…so I planned on getting lunch while I was out.
There’s not a lot of quick things to pick up between WMU and downtown but there are a couple of new places in the new Student Center to grab lunch.
The Student Center is on Arcadia Loop right at the roundabout that ends Michigan Avenue by Sangren Hall.
Read more…Bigfoot Burrito
205 W. Monroe StreetI had a pretty slow day at work and didn’t really have an assignment, so I decided to go for a drive. If it was a typical sunny summer afternoon, that would have been a great idea.
It’s not summer and it’s not typical. We’re in the middle of a deep freeze and the roads are crap.
I decided to take a drive to South Haven anyway.
It was a quick trip to South Haven…well, quick once I got there. I just wanted to go get some pictures of the lake and the frozen lighthouse. I had been seeing it on social media and wanted to see it for myself.
It was after lunch time by the time I started home. I could have picked up something in South Haven but there’s a place I was going to pass in Bangor that I’ve been wanting to try.
Bigfoot Burrito is right in downtown Bangor. It’s on Monroe Street/M-43 right on the corner with Railroad Street. The building has been a lot of different restaurants over the years. The last time I was in the building it was Smokin’ D’s The Smokehouse. I feel like there was a restaurant in between but I never stopped there and can’t for the life of me think of what it could have been.
Read more…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…
SW Michigan Dining 