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…Wawa (Parsippany, NJ)
350 New RoadWelp, my New York adventure was over and it was time to drive home.
I drove to New York by myself and met my co-worker there. She had just returned from another long road trip and wanted an extra day to do some laundry and just relax. She found a late afternoon flight to Newark and opted for that instead of getting in the car with me early in the morning for an 11 drive to NYC.
She was supposed to come home with me but since our trip was cut a couple days short, she opted to stay in New York and fly home later. She had friends and family there and wanted to take advantage of being in the area.
That meant another 11 hour car ride solo. And I was perfectly fine with that. I found a bunch of pro wrestling podcasts with interviews of guys from the Attitude Era and listened to them the whole way home.
The last time I had filled up my tank was in Youngstown, OH on the way to New York. I had a little over 100 miles left in the tank and decided to get out of the city before I stopped.
My plan was to pull off at the first Wawa I saw so I could also grab something tasty for breakfast.
My GPS took me a little different route than when I came in. I ended up on I-95 to I-280 to I-80 instead of taking US-3 to US-46 to I-80.
The first Wawa I came across was just before I-280 got to I-80 in Parsippany, NJ. The gas station was right off the highway at the New Road exit. It was a little confusing to get in to though. Both entrances directly in to the gas station said “Do Not Enter.” I was from the eastbound lane. I went down the road a little bit to an office building to turn around but they had signs directing you through the parking into a back entrance for the Wawa/
Read more…Berlina Cafe
600 8th AvenueA lot of times when I travel for work, I really have to plan out my post work meal. In a lot of cities, there isn’t much open that I can grab quickly and head back to my hotel.
That’s not the case in New York City.
We got back to our hotel on 39th Street near 8th Avenue around 11:30 PM. We still had some work to do so we found a table in the breakfast area off the lobby. My coworker grabbed the laptop from me so she could do what she needed to do first. I asked if it’d be OK if I went and got something to eat while she was working.
I think I’ve mentioned this before. There. Are. So. Many. Options. for pizza in New York. I kept seeing people walking around with boxes from Joe’s Pizza on Broadway. I thought, that’s a pretty famous place. I should go there.
I started walking towards Broadway. It was only a ten minute walk but ultimately, I was exhausted and didn’t feel like walking that far at 11:30 at night. I turned around and headed back towards 8th Avenue where there were still plenty of options.
I ended up picking Berlina Cafe on the corner of 8th Avenue and 39th Street in Manhattan’s Garment District. The restaurant is the corner spot on the northeast corner. A couple of years ago, this spot was a Starbucks…now it’s a pizza joint also serving up sandwiches, burgers, salads, and breakfast.
Read more…Madison Square Garden
4 Pennsylvania Plaza- New York, NY 10001
- (212) 465-6741
- Website
I’m not gonna lie. When I found out part of my trip to New York would include going to Madison Square Garden, I was pumped.
I grew up during the 90’s when the Chicago Bulls were the best team in basketball. Being an hour from Chicago, everyone was a Bulls fan. Everyone loved Michael Jordan. That’s just the way things were in my small, rural farming community. We gathered at night in someone’s driveway or at the basketball courts at the city park and all pretended we were the Bulls.
The Bulls biggest rival during that era was the New York Knicks. We hated the Knicks. I remember throwing my walkman at the wall after the Knicks won Game 2 of the 1993 NBA Eastern Conference Finals at the Garden when John Starks dunked over Michael Jordan sealing a Knicks victory and giving the Knicks a 2-0 lead in the series (more on that later). It was well after my bedtime and I wasn’t supposed to be listening to the game…I gave myself away when the walkman bounced off the wall scaring the crap out of my parents who were sleeping right below me.
Everyone has a MSG story. We’ve all watched several events that have happened there. I’ve watched dozens of WWF/E matches on TV originating from the Garden…always wishing I was there in person…and I finally got my chance to check out “The World’s Most Famous Arena.”
The current Madison Square Garden is the fourth arena in New York City to bear this name. It stands between 7th and 8th Avenues in Manhattan between 31st and 33rd Streets. It stands above Penn Station in Midtown. When the Garden was built in the 1960’s, the above ground portions of Penn Station were demolished. The trains still run underneath the Garden and there are entrances right next to the arena entrances. There was so much foot traffic going to the trains and to the Moynihan Train Hall across the street, it was really hard to see who was there for the event at the Garden and who was just going home.
Lazzaro (8th Avenue)
520 8th AvenueOur second full day in New York was going to be pretty top heavy in to the evening. I pulled the black out curtain all the way down in my hotel room and slept until about 10:30
I finally got out of bed and got moving a little after 11. We didn’t have to be to our first job site until around 4:00 but I had some things I needed to do on my own. I was waiting for my co-worker to send me something so I could finish some preparations for our early evening assignment.
I got an e-mail from her around noon with what I needed. I looked at my weather app and saw it was going to start raining soon. I decided to go grab a sandwich before it rained then get started on my afternoon work.
We were walking back from a job assignment near Madison Square Garden the night before. There was a sign for a restaurant that caught my eye. I decided to walk back there for lunch.
Lazzaro is on 8th Avenue near West 36th Street in Manhattan’s Garment District. The restaurant is fairly new and is part of a larger development project in the building. This space used to be a restaurant called Roast Kitchen and the concept looks fairly similar to that restaurant. This is one of two Lazzaro’s in New York City. The other is in the Financial District on Trinity Place.
Read more…2 Bros Pizza (Times Square)
557 8th AvenueMore pizza.
Night 2 in New York City took a pause around 7:00. My colleague and I had a lot to do during the day and actually still had a few things to do once we got back to the hotel.
I finished up what I needed to do then headed out for dinner. I wanted to stop at a souvenir store to grab some shirts for my kids so I headed south on 8th Avenue from 39th Street because I saw a place to get crappy, overpriced t-shirts on my walk back to the hotel.
I got the souvenir’s out of the way and noticed a pizza place a little further down 8th Street. I was in the pizza mood again so I just kept walking. It wasn’t that far away and there were quite a few people crowded around it which made me think it was a good place to stop.
2 Bros Pizza is another one of those places that has several locations in New York City. The one I stopped at is on 8th Avenue and 38th Street. The website calls this their “Times Square” location but other businesses in the area call it the Garment District. There are 7 locations in all with one in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 