Chuck Lager’s American Tavern (Glenview)
2601 Navy BoulevardI played a lot of sports growing up. Mostly baseball and then basketball for my school. My parents rarely missed a game. My dad would work extra shifts on non-game nights then use his vacation days on game days if he couldn’t get there after working his factory shift. I do a lot of the same with my kids now. All of my vacation days this year have gone to sports. But it was because my parents were always there for my games and I knew how much that meant to me.
My dad stopped working about 20 years ago due to a medical condition. My mom, pushing 70 is still working two jobs. Not because she has to but because she can’t just sit at home. She works in the service industry and needs that social interaction.
I moved away from my hometown right out of college. I ended up in Peoria, IL for about five years. It was only 90 minutes away from home so I was home a lot more often.
I met J there and after a few months of dating, she got a job in Lansing. I moved with her and we’ve been in Michigan ever since. 15 years now.
We don’t see my parents as much as I’d like to. We don’t go to my hometown much. My mom is usually working weekends and there are no hotels close. My brother and my’s childhood bedrooms aren’t big enough or set up for the four of us.
My parents still put in a helluva an effort to see their grand kids. They’ll take daytrips up here to watch them play sports. My brother still lives about five miles from them and his girls go the same school he and I did so my parents get to see them play sports almost every night. They feel like it’s not fair to our kids that they don’t get to see them play even though we live almost three hours away.
My mom and dad have traveled many times to watch L (and now B) figure skate. They went to Evanston, IL for synchro last winter. They came up at the beginning of the season to watch L skate in East Lansing. They took a day trip to Pleasant Prairie, WI to watch her skate there. They came to Kalamazoo in July for our competition.
At the competition in Wisconsin, there was a lot of talk about “Nationals.” L had a pretty good score there and it got her into the Top 6 in her individual competition. That didn’t hold up to the end of the year but she still qualified for Solo Dance Finals in her shadow event.
We told my parents that Nationals were going to be in Chicago. We didn’t know exactly where but they said as soon as we find out when and where to let them know. My mom was going to take the day off to watch L skate.
That skate ended up being on a Friday morning at the Glenview Community Ice Center in Glenview, IL north of Chicago. She didn’t skate until 11:30, so my parents got up Friday morning and made the trip up I-294 to watch her.
She and her partner finished fifth in their event….just missing the podium. Once she got done and we took lots of pictures with her partner and her coach, my mom asked about lunch. They wanted to eat and get back on the road before Friday afternoon rush hour.
L didn’t want to leave the rink and J just wanted to grab something quick and come back. My parents didn’t care but since I had them there, I thought sitting down for lunch would be better. I hate the idea of just grabbing lunch and shoving them off since they made the effort to come watch her.
There are a lot of options around the ice rink to eat. It’s Chicago. There’s food everywhere. I had a couple ideas for a sit down place and I wanted some place safe. I like trying local and finding hidden gems but my parents can be creatures of habit so chains are a safer bet. I can end up making us both happy by finding chain restaurants that we don’t have around here.
I picked Chuck Lager’s American Tavern in The Glen Town Center. The restaurant is on the corner of Patriot Boulevard and Navy Boulevard across from Gallery Park in Glenview. This is a really interesting development. The Glen Town Center is a 12,000 acre master planned community on the site of the former Glenview Naval Air Station. The development has everything a downtown commercial district would have. There’s living options, a ton of shopping, and a wide variety of food on the redeveloped land. The airstrips were all removed but the air control tower remains part of the landscape.
Read more…Joe Donut (Glenview Community Ice Center)
1851 Landwehr RoadThere are a lot of early mornings on figure skating competition days. L usually has a practice before 8:00 and depending on how far the drive is, we may leave Kalamazoo at 5 AM to get to the rink.
Those early mornings almost always include a Starbucks stop. J gets herself a coffee while L gets a Refresher. They also grab breakfast to eat in the car as L really likes just a plain bagel and cream cheese.
We didn’t *have* to be at the rink at 8 AM for the National Solo Dance finals. L’s event wasn’t until 11:30 and there was no morning practice ice for her. We didn’t *have to be at the rink at 8 AM…..but we were.
We made the morning Starbucks run for drinks but L didn’t want her bagel. She saw donuts at the rink the day before and asked if we could get one of those instead.
Joe Donut is a local donut shop and burger joint. Weird combination but that way you hit all day parts. There are locations in Glenview, Mt Prospect, Niles, Buffalo Grove, Itasca, and Deerfield. Glenview has a full restaurant but they also have a small shop inside the Glenview Community Ice Center on the first floor near the main rink opened for a few hours in the morning selling just their donuts and some drinks.
Read more…Pequod’s Pizza (Morton Grove)
8520 Fernald AvenueYou all watch The Bear, right? If not, you should.
The show is about a chef dealing with family trauma coming back to Chicago and taking over his brother’s beef joint after the brother takes his own life. Somehow, it’s considered a comedy at award shows…but it’s really not. The show is a pretty intense look at a chef dealing with personal demons while trying to save his brother’s legacy.
Season 1 of the show was all about taking over the restaurant. Season 2 was about transforming The Beef into a Michelin Star rated high end restaurant…with a walk up window for Italian beef.
During the transformation process, Carmy (the protagonist of the series) sends staff left over from the Italian beef restaurant to train with other restaurants and chefs transforming them in to the high end restaurant staff he needs.
One of those people, Richie, who Carmy exclusively calls “Cousin,” is sent to a restaurant in Chicago to learn how to run the front of house.
During the end of his run, when he’s working the floor, he overhears a customer talk about how they’ve been in Chicago for an extended stay and haven’t had any Chicago style pizza. Cousin’s training during the week has focused on the customer experience. He puts in an order for a pizza from Pequod’s Pizza in Lincoln Park, brings it back to the restaurant, and the chef puts his own twist on the pizza before serving it to the guests. It was a quick, but impactful moment in the series.
And Pequod’s Pizza is a real Chicago pizza joint.
I told J when we were in the Chicago area for L’s figure skating competition that I was going to be “that guy” and pick up a Pequod’s Pizza. I’ve had a lot of Chicago pizza and I have….opinions, but I’ve never been to Pequod’s.
Lucky enough for me, I didn’t have to go in the city. There is a second location in Morton Grove.
L had two practice sessions on the night before her competition at the US Figure Skating National Solo Dance Finals. One was at 5:30. The other was a little after 8. There was time in between. J told me to try to time it to get pizza back to the rink so she could eat in between her practice sessions.
Pequod’s Pizza in Morton Grove is on Fernald Avenue just north of Lincoln Avenue. The restaurant almost sits entirely within a residential neighborhood. Fernald Avenue isn’t a major street. The building has the look and feel of a neighborhood dive bar. I didn’t get a chance to actually go inside but just looking at pictures online, they pack the tables in to a small bar area. It’s the kind of place I wish we had more time and were able to actually sit down and eat. It’s a unique looking atmosphere for such a big name pizza joint.
Read more…Paradise Pup
I told J when we started making plans for US Figure Skating’s National Solo Dance Finals that I had a list of restaurants in the area I wanted to go to. She didn’t have to go, but I was going to sneak away from the rink for a while to go search out food.
L could really care less about my food adventures. A lot of the other skaters and their families were just Door Dashing Chick-Fil-A or Potillo’s right to the rink. I hate when we travel and eat at national chains out of convenience. If I get anything out of L’s figure skating (other than being super happy watching her compete) it’s traveling and finding new places to eat.
We got to Glenview around 10:00 Thursday morning. L didn’t skate until a practice session around 5:30 that night but she and J wanted to watch some of the other skaters in our club compete.
I watched the first event we were there for and when it was over, I sent J a menu and said I was going to grab lunch. If she or L wanted anything, they could text me and I’d bring it back. L, of course, didn’t want anything. She just wanted Tropical Smoothie. There was one of those nearby so I ran and got her a smoothie THEN when and got myself lunch.
I headed out to Des Plaines for a classic Chicago hot dog stand that has become pretty famous over the years.
Paradise Pup is on River Road between Riverview Avenue and Kennicott Court on the east side of Des Plaines. The restaurant kind of sits in the parking lot for for an auto repair shop that surrounds it. For as popular as this place is, there’s not a lot of parking. A few spots behind the restaurant and a few spots along the back of the building in a lot that appears to be shared with the repair shop.
Read more…Glenview Community Ice Center
1851 Landwehr Road- Glenview, IL 60026
- (847) 724-2800
- Website
Road trip time. We spent last weekend in Chicago for the US Figure Skating National Solo Dance Finals. L had been working towards this all year. She made it a goal after the skaters in our club got to go to Los Angeles last year for the National Finals that she was going to be part of the team that qualified this year.
The competition was in Chicago this year….more specifically, Glenview, IL. A suburb on the north side of the city. We didn’t get the big trip to a City she’s never been to but she did earn the chance to compete against some of the best ice dancers in the country.
The competition was at the Glenview Community Ice Center near the corner of Landwehr Road and West Lake Avenue in Glenview. This massive ice complex is part of the Glenview Park District, has 2 1/2 rinks, and sits next to the campus of Glenbrook South High School.
Read more…Tienda Y Taqueria Del Ray
105 Sheldon StreetYou know how I have to stop at every taco place I pass…..right?
I was in Dowagiac a couple of days last week. The first day we didn’t really have time for lunch but on day 2, there was a little more down time. I never pass up a “taco” sign when I see it and I saw one on our way in to town.
Tienda Y Taqueria Del Ray is on the corner of Sheldon Street and North Front Street (US-51) on the north side of Dowagiac. The small grocery store and restaurant isn’t much more than a metal building that sits back off the busy highway. At one point, it was a gym, but there’s a big gap in the Google Street view to know what happened in between.
Read more…Chicago Beef Joint
822 Ottawa Avenue NWYou know if you open a place called “Chicago Beef Joint” that I’m going to make it my mission to get there, right?
I’ve written extensively about Chicago Italian beef. It’s by far my favorite of the Chicago foods. Deep dish pizza? Meh. Chicago Dogs? *shrug.* Italian beef? I will walk through a blinding snow storm just to get this ultimate Chicago food stuff.
Chicago Beef Joint just opened up a few weeks ago on Ottawa Avenue NW north of Newberry Street and across the street from the Garage Bar & Grill. The restaurant, which looks kind of like a modular home, takes the place of Sandy Point Beach House which was owned by the same group that put Chicago Beef Joint together in just about six months.
Read more…Two Fellas Grill (Gull Road)
5585 Gull Road #106I’ve mentioned it a lot recently but I work a lot of Friday nights in the fall. It always amazes me how hard it is to find something to eat when I get off work around 10:00 on this Friday nights.
I know it was 25 years ago, but when I was in high school, we’d always go out for pizza after football games. I’m working the same time as high school football games right now and it’s nuts to me that almost every pizza place closes at or before 9:00 on Friday nights.
A lot of times, I try to get my pizza before the overtime shift starts. I wasn’t able to do that a couple of weeks ago. B was starting AYSO soccer and J also had to work a rare Friday night shift. I got out of work a little early on the regular part of my shift then headed to the AYSO fields to watch B. J’s parents were getting him there and taking him home until J could get back home, but I wanted one of us to be there for at least part of the game and help him get to the right field and find his coach.
That means, I couldn’t eat before my overtime shift.
My shift ended around 10:00 that night, just like it usually does. I was near Richland to finish things up so I knew I’d be heading back towards Kalamazoo on Gull Road. I was curious to see what was open along that stretch and found a familiar late night stop in a new location.
Two Fellas Grill on Gull Road is an additional location of the popular late night eatery with it’s main location near WMU’s campus. The Gull Road location is in a strip mall on the northside of Gull Road near Lake Crest Drive. This space was previously Szechuan Oriental Cuisine.
Read more…The Wing Hut (Portage)
6650 S. Westnedge AvenueLife is crazy right now. Both kids are still doing figure skating and they’ve each added another sport. B is playing soccer. L is playing volleyball. It’s a lot of running for J after work.
One night last week, we also through a middle school open house in to the mix….on a night that I had to work a double shift.
We made plans for J’s parents to help us out. J would grab L from the rink and head to the open house. J’s parents would pick B up from his after school program and get him to the rink. I would try to sneak out of work for a little bit to grab B from the rink, take him to L’s middle school, then go back and work my evening shift. It was quite the juggling act.
I knew I wasn’t going to have time for dinner during all this so I made sure to grab lunch later in the day so I could skip dinner until I got home around 10:00.
I was in Portage for a job assignment and that was going to work to my advantage. There are ton of great places to eat along Westnedge.
I ended up heading to Crossroads Mall. I had heard there were some new options at the food court. I haven’t been to the mall in forever so I didn’t know what was actually still there. I passed up my usual spots on Westnedge to take a quick walk through the mall.
The Wing Hut opened it’s second location inside the Crossroads Mall a few months ago. They’ve had a pretty good run at their store on Howard Street near WMU and that store remains open. This new location is in the food court at the mall. It’s one of the first places you see if you come in through the food court. They moved in to the spot that used to be Paulie’s Cheesesteak.
Read more…Panderia y Antojitos Guatemaltecos
2500 Nazareth RoadI ended up on the east side of town a couple of weeks ago just kind of driving aimlessly. I don’t get out to the Gull Road side of Kalamazoo very often and I’m always kind of surprised when I do. I end up stumbling on something new. I’m pretty in tune with new restaurants on the west side or in downtown Kalamazoo…and even in Portage…but when new places open on the east side, it takes me a little longer to find them.
I needed gas so I stopped at the Speedway at the corner of Gull Road and Nazareth. There’s a restaurant right behind this Speedway that I have stopped at a few times. It was a Chicken Coop for a while then it became Taste of Soul by Dips. I was surprised to see it has now become something else.
Panderia y Antojitos Guatemaltecos is in the old Chicken Coop building on Nazareth Road just south of the intersection with Gull Road. The building is now a shade of light blue which makes it pop from Gull Road. It’s hard to miss that building while you’re sitting at the light and not wonder what it is.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 