The Lodge
10336 Blue Star Highway When it gets nice out, we would prefer not to sit around the house.
That was the case a couple of weeks ago. I took the kids to Grand Rapids Comic Con at the Kalamazoo County Expo Center on Saturday morning. By mid afternoon, J was wanting to go somewhere we could take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather.
We decided on South Haven. It was a little to cold (for us) to get in the water yet but there’s a place both J and I have been wanting to eat at. We figured after that, we could go play at the playground on South Beach and dip our toes in the water.
We picked The Lodge for dinner. This restaurant is just outside of South Haven city limits on Blue Star Highway to the west of M-140. The restaurant used to be called the Curve Inn because it sits on the curve between M-140 and Kalamazoo Street.
Read more…Kalamazoo County Expo Center
2900 Lake StreetEvery year, I have a friend in Grand Rapids who says to me, “You should come to Comic-Con.” Every year, I tell him I don’t think it’s worth my time. I’m not in to comics and it’s fairly expensive to just go and look around for a few hours. Add in the hour drive, and I’ve always politely declined.
This year, Grand Rapids Comic Con ran in to a little bit of an issue with their spring show. Their venue closed.
The show as supposed to be at the DeltaPlex in Walker, but that venue was sold last year and is now a warehouse. The only venue they could find was in Kalamazoo, so they dubbed this year’s spring show a “Road Trip.”
With the show being in Kalamazoo this year, I had less of an excuse to say no. I aske the kids if they wanted to go and both enthusiastically said yes. I messaged my buddy and told him we were in.
The show was held at the Kalamazoo County Expo Center. The 90,000 square foot convention center is part of the Kalamazoo County Fairgrounds on Lake Street in Kalamazoo Township. The Expo center is inside the gate so you enter off Lake Street and the road takes you back to a large parking lot. We got there pretty early in the day and it was a good thing we did. By the time we left around 1:00, they were parking cars behind the building in the grass lots used for the fair.
Read more…Casa Real
232 W. Allegan StreetWe ended up in Allegan on Friday. I wasn’t planning on going to Allegan but there we were.
I saw a taco truck as we were driving through town on our way to our job site. It was closed and I was thinking, “dang, I want tacos.” I didn’t catch the name of the truck so I couldn’t look it up to see when it/if it was going to open that day.
I spent most of the day just wanting tacos. I kept thinking about that food truck but as we got ready to leave the area, we were getting a little crunched on time. We still had to get back to Kalamazoo and still had work to do so taking a chance on a food truck seemed like a bad idea.
I had a back up plan up though.
Casa Real in Otsego is on the way home and they have online ordering. As we sat on a dusty dirt road in rural Allegan County, I had just enough data that I was able to get an order put in that would be ready when we got back to Otsego.
Casa Real is just to the west of downtown Otsego on West Allegan Street/M-89 near north street. The restaurant is hard to miss. It’s a large stand alone building with a large parking lot. There are a number of signs right on M-89 so you don’t miss it. There’s a small patio right off the building and a giant chicken greets you as you walk up to the doors.
Read more…Brewery Outre
567 Ranson StreetWe finished off J’s birthday afternoon with a couple of beers.
The kids go to theater camp at The Civic over Spring Break. Over the course of a week, they learn a show then do a performance for parents on Friday.
J and I had several things we wanted to do including going out for lunch then going somewhere else and grabbing a drink or two at some place we wouldn’t take the kids.
We went to Battle Creek for lunch then did a little shopping. We got done earlier than we thought and by the time we got back to Kalamazoo, we still had two hours before the performance.
We didn’t want to sit at a bar for two hours so we went home and relaxed for a little bit.
We knew there was a brewery that opened at 3:00 that we had never been to and that doesn’t have a kitchen. That’s usually the places we try to hit without the kids. Their performance was at 4:30 so it gave us just enough time to get a couple of beers then head over to The Civic.
Brewery Outre has been open for about a year on Ransom Street at the roundabout with Harrison. The brewery takes up a lower level retail space in the Harrison Circle Apartment Building which was just built a few years ago in the new Rivers Edge District on Kalamazoo’s Northside
Read more…Horrocks Farm Market (Battle Creek)
5801 Beckley Road- Battle Creek, MI 49015
- (269) 966-3200
- Website
I’ve told the story so many times about how we found Horrcks Farm Market when we first moved to Lansing 15 years ago. We would shop there weekly. I wasn’t working full time when we moved here while J was working nights. She’d get an hour lunch break and since she worked close to where we lived, a lot of times, I would make dinner and she’d come home for a little bit. Horrocks made cooking dinner every night easy and pretty cheap.
Horrocks was really the thing we knew we were going to miss when we moved from Lansing to Kalamazoo.
There has been a Horrocks in Battle Creek as long as we’ve lived in Michigan. It was in an old Sears store on Capitol Avenue and Fountain Street near downtown Battle Creek. We would stop there occassionaly when we were in Battle Creek but it just wasn’t the same as the Lansing store. It was a little harder to find things and it was kind of cramped which made taking your time and finding what you want was a little more difficult.
There has been rumors for a couple of years now that Horrocks was going to move in to a bigger space. Those rumors lingered for a while but late last month, those rumors finally came true.
The new location for Horrocks in Battle Creek is at the Lakeview Square Mall right off the I-94/M-66 interchange on Beckley Road. The market takes over a large anchor store on the east side of the property that used to be a JC Penny.
Read more…Simply Sensational Berries
80 W. Michigan Avenue, Suite BYou gotta have sweets on your birthday, right?
J and I both had the day off for her birthday a couple of weeks ago. The kids were doing a Spring Break camp at The Civic and Friday is show day. I would never have been able to skip out of work to catch the show and J had the week off for Spring Break anyway.
We had the day to ourselves so I let J pick where she wanted to go for lunch. I threw out a couple of options but she ended choosing New Holland Brewing in Battle Creek. The restaurant was opening that day so we got there early to make sure we could still get a table.
I told her as we were talking to the restaurant that I had an idea for dessert. There is a bakery right down the street and it was a nice enough day, we headed down for a treat after a delicious lunch.
Simply Sensational Berries is on West Michigan Avenue north of McCamly Street in downtown Battle Creek. The small restaurant is part of the street level retail space below the city owned Michigan Avenue Parking Ramp.
Read more…New Holland Brewing (Battle Creek)
64 W. Michigan AvenueHow about a brewery opening on J’s birthday? That just works out well.
J was off on Friday because of Spring Break. I was off on Friday because I took a vacation day. The kids do a theater camp at the Civic Auditorium every year and on Friday, they perform the show they learned that week. I can’t get off work in time to get there so I just take a vacation day. It works well when it’s around J’s birthday. Then she and I can go to lunch and do things without the kids.
Even though it’s her birthday, J asks me one day last week, “Where are we going for lunch?” I told her wherever she wanted. She didn’t really commit to anywhere so I gave her some newer places that have opened that we haven’t been to. When she saw New Holland on that list, she committed to that without hesitation.
New Holland Brewing officially opened their Battle Creek pub on Friday. The building is a former JC Penny department store on the corner of Michigan Avenue and McCamly Street in downtown Battle Creek. We ended up parking at the nearby Jackson Street Parking ramp about half a block away. The good thing with the city owned lots is that you get two hours of free parking during the day.
Read more…Firehouse Subs (Portage)
5311 S. Westnedge AvenueWhenever a new chain moves to town, I think, yeah, this is going to be a place I go to often.
It happens all the time. I’ll go there when it first opens, write a blog about it, go back a couple more times in the next month then something new comes along and dangles their shiny keys to get my attention.
That happened with Firehouse Subs. They opened a location near my house in Oshtemo Township way back in 2017. We ate there three or four times in the first few months after it opened. The sandwiches weren’t earth shattering good but they were tasty and filling.
After the first few months, I can’t tell you if I have even been back. Not because I don’t like the food. I do. It’s just because I never think of them when I’m hungry.
A few years later, during the pandemic, Firehouse Subs opened a second location in Portage. I drive by this location all the time and every time I think to myself, “I should stop for a sandwich.” But I never do.
I was in Portage late last week on a job assignment and I was already thinking of lunch on my drive down Westnedge towards the Portage business district. I was going to go out of my way and grab City Barbecue…but then I actually remembered Firehouse Subs was on my way and would be easy to get to on my drive back north on Westnedge.
Firehouse Subs is on Westnedge near Andy Avenue right off the exit for I-94. There are a lot of restaurants in this area. IHOP, Steak ‘n Shake, Grand Traverse Pie Company. So much to choose from. This Firehouse Subs opened in fall of 2020 and took up part of the space that used to be a BD’s Mongolian Grill.
Read more…Allegan Event
439 River StreetAlright….back to some Southwest Michigan blogs. Pretty sure I say that every time I travel. Travel blogs are fun for me and since it’s my blog, I blog about what I like.
I got home from New York pretty late Friday evening. I got to see everyone before bed time which is what I was shooting for so that’s good. I was exhausted though and J let me sleep in pretty late Saturday morning.
I had expected to spend Saturday with my family after being gone for four days…but of course, someone called in sick and no one else ever answers their phones. I got called in to work Saturday despite the fact I already had 50 hours for the week.
Sunday I was determined to do something fun with the kids. L has been asking to go to Allegan Event for a while. It’s been a few years since we’ve been there and B doesn’t even remember it. I told to J promise her we’d take them on Sunday while I was at work Saturday night.
Allegan Event is such a cool place. If you’ve ever seen the ropes courses (there’s one at Airway Lanes), it’s likely been built by the company that owns Allegan Event. They have four locations of their own with this one in Allegan on River Street near their manufacturing facitily.
Read more…Sheetz (Brookville, PA)
300 W. Main StreetMy drive home from New York City was an eat in the car trip.
I had stopped at a Wawa in New Jersey for breakfast. By the time lunch rolled around, I decided to fill up my tank again and grab something to eat.
I wasn’t going to stop at just any gas station though. I was looking for a Sheetz. It’s another gas station chain I had never grabbed food from and another one that I heard people go crazy for.
The drive on I-80 through Pennsylvania is long and kind of boring. There really isn’t much you pass. It’s a lot of hills through the Poconos and some pretty scenery for a while but eventually, it all just starts to look the same and you don’t pass through any big cities to break up the monotony.
I made it to Brookville, PA before I decided to pull off. That’s on the west side of the state just north of Punxsutawney. I saw the highway sign for the gas station I was looking for and I just needed to get out of the car and stretch a little bit.
The Sheetz in Brookville is just south of I-80 on West Main Street with the intersection of Allegheny Boulevard. The exit is on the west edge of the city so you’re really not going in to town. There are some other chain fast food places in the area but that’s about it. The gas station takes up a large portion of the corner on the northwest side of the road.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 