Roxie’s Breakfast & Lunch (Vicksburg)
343 W. Prairie StreetJ and I have been married for 14 years. Our anniversary was last Tuesday.
Anniversary’s have kind of taken a back seat to life. We’re extremely busy right now with kids activities. J’s running pretty much every night from volleyball to ice skating to soccer with the kids. My work schedule means I’m usually getting home after everything is over or I’m meeting them at the rink to take one kid home while the other kid finishes their time at the rink.
I hate that J and I don’t get time alone anymore. Even when we do, we’re so exhausted or worried about spending money we need for the kids’ activities that we end up not doing much.
We didn’t have plans for our anniversary. The weekend before L had a birthday party she was going to that would take up most of the afternoon on Saturday and Sunday is a day we spend about six hours at Wings West. The weekend after, I worked at the WMU football game all day on Saturday then had to pick up a nightshift at work on Sunday…so no time then either. We have to get grocery shopping and laundry done in those short windows we’re not running around town.
I have time off that I have to use though, so I decided to use it and surprise J.
I snuck out of the house through a back door so I wouldn’t set off the doorbell alarm or the garage door alarm on her phone and headed towards Vicksburg Tuesday morning where she works. When I got close to town, I texted to ask if she was busy. I told her I took the day off and I was in Vicksburg so if she was free, we could sneak away for a half hour or so and get lunch.
I ended up meeting her at Roxie’s Breakfast & Lunch on West Prairie Street near South Boulevard Street across from Sunset Lake. The rather large building used to be a Michelle’s Restaurant and before that a Chevy Dealership. The people that own Roxie’s worked for the owner’s of Michelle’s and ended up buying two of their restaurants (Gull Road and Vicksburg) and creating Roxie’s.
Read more…Middle Eastern Appetite
2625 W. Michigan AvenueFriday night is usually pizza night but sometimes, my schedule doesn’t work out.
B is playing AYSO soccer again this fall. We assumed he’d be playing Saturday mornings but he’s playing mostly Friday nights. That really messes with J and my’s schedule.
I work Friday nights in the fall and J has a couple of Friday’s she has to work too. Her parents have been really helpful getting B to those Friday night games when we can’t make it.
On the nights that I stay in Kalamazoo for my extra Friday night shift, I’ve been trying to get to the AYSO fields in between my regular shift and when my night shift starts. I can usually get there for about half of his game.
When I do that, I don’t have time for dinner in between shifts so dinner gets pushed to after the extra shift is over.
The most recent week I did this, I wanted to do something other than pizza. Grabbing a pizza at 10:30 on a Friday night is an easy way to eat but I’ll end up eating 3/4 of it then going to bed.
I went for something completely different…kind of.
I picked Middle Eastern Appetite on the corner of West Michigan Avenue and Howard Street near Western Michigan University’s campus. This small three storefront building has been many things over the years. When I first moved to Kalamazoo 14 years ago, it was a Jimmy Johns, a BoRics, and a 7-Eleven. The last time I was in the space that is now Middle Eastern Appetite it was Mitten Dogs and More back in 2019.
Read more…Charley Biggs Chicken n’ Sauce (Kalamazoo)
1405 Portage StreetIt’s just me finding more gas station chicken places.
I’ve seen this one coming for months. I stop at the gas station that it’s located in fairly regularly. I kept asking when the chicken was coming. They kept saying “soon.” I had given up on it ever happening…but then I stopped in last week and smelled the chicken as soon as I walked in the door.
Charley Biggs is located inside the Dylan Quick Mart on the corner of Stockbridge and Portage Street in Kalamazoo’s Edison Neighborhood. The gas station has been there forever but the addition of chicken inside is new.
1851 Landwehr RoadThis is the last post from our trip to Chicago. Back to Southwest Michigan restaurants very soon.
We spent a lot of time at the Glenview Community Ice Center for US Figure Skating’s National Solo Dance Finals. L qualified for one of the events after competing all year in Preliminary Shadow Dance.
L’s event was Friday morning but that didn’t stop us from being there literally all weekend.
We got to Glenview around 10 on Thursday morning. L had practice times at 5:00 PM and 8:00 PM but she wanted to watch the other skaters in our club skate. We had someone in every event but 2.
We were all really pumped when we got to the rink and found a bar upstairs. The menu looked fantastic and we all knew we were going to needs drinks by the time it got to the later events in the evening.
North Branch Pizza & Burger Company actually has a restaurant just down the street from the ice rink on West Lake Street. We passed it on our way to and from our hotel everyday.
They also have a restaurant inside the ice rink on the second floor. It’s pretty much only open on weekends when there are events going on in the ice center but they knew there would be a lot of people at the Center for this competition and they found a way to get open for dinner time the first two nights as well as lunch time on Saturday.
North Branch Pizza & Burger Company is on the second floor of the Glenview Community Ice Center. It’s all the way down the hallway from the stairs leading up to the seating areas from the main entrance. The restaurant is separated from the rest of the facility by a short half wall and has large windows overlooking Rink A, the main rink in the facility and where the actual competition was taking place. There is also some seating along the opposite wall that looks into the Studio Rink which is used for Pee-Wee hockey and other events that don’t need a full sheet of ice.
Read more…Kong Dog (Glenview)
1749 Milwaukee AvenueOur last day in Chicago for the US Figure Skating National Solo Dance finals was an early one. Not because L was competing but because she wanted to get to the rink to watch her friends skate.
We got up around 7:30. J and L wanted to go to the rink but we didn’t have to check out of the hotel until noon. I was going to take full advantage of that.
I went back to the hotel and went back to sleep for a few hours. I got up around 11:00, checked out then headed over to the Glenview Community Ice Center to watch another 9 hours of figure skating.
L was asking about lunch when I got there. She didn’t want anything I would have gotten, but she wanted a smoothie. There was a Tropical Smoothie not to far away that I had already made several runs to over the three days we were there.
I was leaving anyway so I asked J if she was hungry. I had been wanting to stop at a Korean Corn Dog placed we passed every time we went back to our hotel. It wasn’t far from the rink or the smoothie place. I didn’t want a huge lunch so I thought this was a good time to try it.
Kong Dog is a small chain of Korean Corn Dog places that opened it’s first restaurant on the corner of Milwaukee Avenue and West Lake Street in the northern Chicago suburb of Glenview. This was originally a restaurant named Eggsum Holycow but they went viral on TikTok for their corn dog creations and have since renamed and expanded to 22 stores in Illinois, Indiana, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
Read more…Gene & Jude’s
2720 N. River RoadOne of my co-workers grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago near O’Hare. We travel together occasionally for big jobs and whenever we fly through Chicago, he always says we should have just drove to O’Hare and caught our flight there instead of flying out of Grand Rapids.
It would be a lot more inconvenient, but he raves about a hot dog place not too far from O’Hare. One he grew up going to and one that he tells anyone and everyone about when he finds out people are going to Chicago.
I don’t really like hot dogs, but I told him I was going to be in that area so I would give it a shot just to see what all of the hype is about.
Gene & Jude’s is on North River Road just north of Grand Avenue in River Grove, IL. The very small counter service, carry out hot dog stand has been on this spot since the mid-1950’s after moving from the Polk and Western in the City. Whenever lists are compiled of the best hot dog stands in the city….and the country, Gene & Jude’s is always near the top of the list.
Read more…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…
SW Michigan Dining 