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.
J’s Mexican Grill
FOOD TRUCKAlright…here it is. The last blog from California on this trip. It was a fun, long eight days and I was ready to get home.
Our last full day in Los Angeles was our longest. It started at 4:30 AM and we got back to the hotel around 9:00 PM. We were able to sort of graze throughout the day at the job site but neither of us had really eaten. I desperately wanted to take a shower while co-worker went looking for food.
We passed food trucks parked on the corner of 7th and Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles pretty much every day. It wasn’t the same food truck but there was usually a taco truck of some kind parked there open well into the late night hours.
I took my shower then contemplated not getting food. I also love tacos and that ended up winning out. I got dressed then headed across the street to see what this food truck has to offer.
J’s Mexican Grill is a pretty large food truck with a pretty large menu for a food truck. The all black truck with green lettering was parked on the north side of 7th Street across from The Bloc. According to their Instagram page, it looks like there are three places they regularly park in and around Los Angeles.
Read more…Joey DTLA
700 W. 7th StreetIf you’ve noticed over the last few blogs, we hadn’t really eaten out at a decent sit down type of restaurants since our first night in LA. We didn’t have time or energy to put that kind of effort in to dinner most nights.
Our slowest work day was New Year’s Eve. We had a mid afternoon assignment just down the road from our hotel at USC then we came back to the hotel to finish up what we had to do for the evening.
I was hungry when we got back from USC though. We had plenty of time so I asked co-worker if he wanted to grab a really early New Year’s Eve dinner. I figured most places would have reservations seeing as it was the holiday so I wanted to go early.
We were just going to go to the restaurant in our hotel but when we got to the floor it was on, the doors were shut. I don’t know if they were closed for the holiday or we were too early and they weren’t open yet.
Co-Worker suggested we just go out to street level at our hotel. There’s a restaurant there and it didn’t look super busy when we drove in.
Joey DTLA is one of 30+ Joey Restaurants in the US and Canada. The chain is described as a “Western Canadian premium casual” group with headquarters in Vancouver. The US restaurants are in the Los Angeles area, Seattle, Miami, New York and Houston. This location in downtown Los Angeles is on the corner of 7th and Hope Street in The Bloc commercial complex.
Read more…Portillo’s (Buena Park)
8390 La Palma AvenueWhat happens when you send two guys from Illinois to California?
They find the Portillo’s.
We had a pretty large gap in our day where we didn’t need to be on the road around Los Angeles. We hung in the hotel for a while working on some things but then needed to go out to Glendale for an assignment.
That wrapped up around 3:30. Our next task was back in Anaheim so we headed across town to deal with that.
As we were sitting in the car waiting on something, I started looking for some place nearby to eat. I was shocked when a Chicago staple popped up not too far away.
Portillo’s of Buena Park is on La Palma Avenue near Dale Street in a very busy shopping center in the city of Buena Park. This is one of two Portillo’s locations in California. The other is about an hour away in Moreno Valley.
Read more…Joe’s Pizza (Downtown LA)
613 S. Spring StreetDay five in Los Angeles started to ease up on us a little bit.
We started Saturday morning with a trip out to Pasadena for an assignment then we had a pretty large gap in our day. We headed back to our hotel in Downtown Los Angeles to work on some stuff there in the comfort of a hotel room instead of trying to do all of our work in the car.
My co-worker had some things to do before I could do what I needed to do so I decided to take a walk. It was a nice day and I hadn’t really explored much of downtown LA to see what was around us.
I kind of started walking aimlessly but also kind of walking towards pizza.
I ended up about 3/4 mile from our hotel on Spring Street. There’s a pizza by the slice place and it was kind of lunch time, so I decided to stop in.
Joe’s Pizza is on a fairly busy part of Spring Street near 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles. The small downtown storefront is one of seven of the New York Style slice places in the Greater Los Angeles area. Are they related to the Joe’s Pizza in Greenwich Village and the Joe’s Pizza in Ann Arbor? Good question. There’s a lot of similarities but not really...I mean kinda, because it’s some family…er, ex-family drama…but no, they’re not part of the same group of restaurants.
SW Michigan Dining 