The Garden Grille & Bar (Kalamazoo)
303 N. Rose StreetLike I said in my last post, last week was wild.
The ice storm that came in Wednesday really screwed up my week….I know…it screwed up a lot of people’s weeks….so I’m not complaining too much.
I worked my normal shift on Wednesday then work asked me if I could work what is essentially an overnight shift on Thursday. They wanted someone close to the office downtown so they told me to get a room at the Radisson and charge it to the company. Worst case scenario, I could walk to the office.
The Radisson was full by the time I went to book but the Hilton Home 2 Suites had some rooms. It was only a block away from the Radisson and was cheaper so I booked there.
I finished my work day around 6:30 then headed for the hotel. I ended up just taking my car with me and paying for it to be in the ramp because I didn’t want to find it iced over at 2:30 in the morning. I checked in and realized I hadn’t eaten all day. There wasn’t much that stayed open downtown so I was pretty limited in my options.
The Home 2 Suites and the Hilton Garden Inn are connected to each other and connected to the parking garage across Rose Street via skywalk. I walked through the Hilton Garden Inn to get to my car and realized they have a bar right inside the door off Rose Street. I saw people eating so assumed they had food. I saw an opening at the bar and grabbed the seat before someone else could.
The Garden Grille & Bar is Hilton’s pub they put inside some Hilton Garden Inn’s. The Kalamazoo Hilton Garden Inn is fairly new. It’s on the corner of Rose and Kalamazoo in downtown. The hotel went in to the Rose Street Market which was originally the Kalamazoo Masonic Temple. The Hilton Garden Inn opened in the building in Spring of 2021.
Read more…Detroit Wing Company (East Lansing)
437 E. Grand River AvenueMonday started a wild week of work for me last week. A lot of overtime. Working in the rain. Switching shifts. Coming home to no power. I’m happy last week is over.
Monday night I was sent to East Lansing right away when my shift started. I actually left a little bit early and was going to pick up a sandwich on the way.
I stopped at Mr. Corned Beef in Frandor but there was a sign on the door the business was under new ownership and closed temporarily. I was bummed but I decided to just go start my shift and I’d worry about food at dinner time.
I was near downtown East Lansing when dinner time rolled around so I had a lot of options. The co-workers I was with all went to Chipotle. I can get Chipotle anytime in Kalamazoo so I wanted something different. I pulled up Google maps to see what was around me.
I settled on Detroit Wing Company. Eating wings out my car was going to be a challenge but it was a challenge I was up to.
The East Lansing location of Detroit Wing Company is on Grand River Avenue near Division Street across from the Michigan State University campus. The restaurant is one of three first floor storefronts in the building where The State News is produced. This spot was most recently a Blaze Pizza before DWC moved in.
Read more…Pete’s Grill & Tavern
2588 84th Street SWOur kids have never really been brand name kids. J and I really aren’t either, I wear what fits and what’s comfortable. I was a little more into brands when I was younger but it’s not a thing for me anymore.
I mentioned a few posts ago L has gotten in to Lululemon because some of her friends are in to Lululemon. She’s not being pressured, she just likes it.
B is having a little bit of the opposite problem. He doesn’t really care about brands either. Unfortunately, some of the boys in his class must have the type of dad’s that are really, really in to “shoe culture.” B’s had to deal with some crap from kids because he doesn’t wear Nike’s.
He finally asked for a pair of Nike’s so the kids will leave him alone. We’ve told him to just walk away but some other adults have said the kids can be persistent no matter how many times they get a talking to.
We don’t have a problem buying him Nike’s or any other shoe to brand if that’s what he wants. It’s just really disheartening that he wants a new pair of shoes just so some other kids will leave him alone.
We decided to go check out the Nike Factory Store at the Tanger Outlets in Byron Center. They didn’t really have much in his size so we decided to keep walking around. We ended up at the Puma Outlet and he found a pair he really liked. He said he wouldn’t care if the kids kept making fun of him because Puma is a brand name and he really likes them. We got him what he wanted and he hasn’t complained about kids making fun of his shoes so it must have worked.
We were thinking we could probably just get lunch at Five Lakes Brew Pub there at the Outlet mall, but pretty sure everyone else had the same idea. We put our name in for a table but we were hungry and after stopping in a few more stores, we just decided to bail and go somewhere else.
J saw a billboard for Pete’s Grill & Tavern on US-131 on our way to the mall. She asked where it was and I said further down 84th Street in Byron Center. When Five Lakes seemed to be out for lunch, I suggested that place she saw the billboard for.
Pete’s Grill & Tavern is on 84th Street and Merton Avenue SW in unincorporated Byron Center. The restaurant has been a staple in this community for well over 50 years. It’s part of the 4GR8Food brand which owns a lot of great restaurants in the Greater Grand Rapids area including Bagel Beanery, Beltline Bar, Grand Coney Diner, Sundance, and many more.
Boondock’s Pizza
111 N. Main StreetEvery so often, there will be a pizza place in the middle of nowhere that people rave about. I travel around Southwest Michigan quite a bit so I’m always scheming ways to go to these place. If the locals and/or semi-locals are raving about, it’s worth finding a way.
I was coming home from Lansing one day last week and I realized I finally found my opportunity to stop at a place in Bellevue. I think I’ve only been in Bellevue twice in the twelve years I’ve lived in Kalamazoo so it’s not someplace that I drive through or near very often.
The pizza place in Bellevue is Boondock’s Pizza. I keep reading rave reviews from a the Battle Creek based Facebook group The Carryout Club. The pictures look like the kind of pizza I really like so I was excited to put in an order.
Boondock’s Pizza is on Main Street in downtown Bellevue between Capital Avenue and Jackson Street…which is pretty much all downtown is. The pizzeria is a small one story brick building connected to the building next to it. The building has been some sort of pizza place for several years.
Read more…Pita Way (Portage)
6405 S. Westnedge AvenueJ and I don’t overlap work schedules very often.
One Monday a month, she has to work nights. I work nights on Monday too. Most of the year, it’s not really an issue. J’s parents will watch the kids for a few hours until J gets home.
J’s parents go to Florida for the winter.
There’s three months that we don’t have someone to watch the kids. A lot of times, I can volunteer to work a weekend and ask for the Monday off in return. This month, there was no OT opportunity though so I just used a vacation day.
Monday night’s L skates at Wings Event Center. I don’t get to watch her work with her coach all that often so I did enjoy being able to sit there for the whole hour and see what she’s working on for the upcoming competition season.
She skates a little later on Monday nights so we weren’t even leaving Wings Event Center until about 7:45. I was hungry and I assumed the kids were too so I put in an order to pick up on the way home.
The kids always hate it but I wanted to try something new. A new pita place opened in Portage not too long ago and I thought it’d be worth a try.
Pita Way is a small, Michigan based chain with about 20 locations…most of which are on the East side of the state. The Portage location is in a new strip mall on Westnedge Avenue near Gladys Street in front of the Dick’s Sporting Goods and right next to the new City Barbecue.
Read more…Potbelly Sandwich Works (Cranbrook Village)
980 W. Eisenhower ParkwayNeither of our kids have every really been “brand” people. We’ve always bought their clothes and there’s never really been any asking for certain brands. That’s starting to change.
L is almost in middle school now and she hangs out with a lot of older girls at figure skating. Leggings are popular amongst figure skaters and when it comes to leggings, you probably know which brand I’m talking about.
We were in Detroit last weekend to see Beetlejuice: The Musical at the Detroit Opera House. We, of course, had to find something for lunch before the show so we walked down to The Brass Rail Pizza Bar. On our way to the restaurant from the parking garage, we passed a Lululemon store on Woodward Avenue. We had some time after lunch before the show so we told L we’d go back and look.
We ended up letting her buy a coat there with some of her Christmas money. Of course, she wanted pretty much everything in the store. J came up with a better idea than paying full price.
L is really tall for her age. Most people peg her as a high schooler and not an elementary school student. That works to our advantage with clothes. She’s actually the same size as a lot of college women. Ann Arbor was on our way home from Detroit so J came up with the idea to stop at Plato’s Closest in Ann Arbor to see what they had.
Her idea worked. L got a couple pairs of leggings and a couple shirts for less than what a pair of leggings cost new from the store.
So, here we were, in Ann Arbor at about 7:00. It was going to bed time by the time we got back to Kalamazoo so I suggested we should just eat in Ann Arbor before heading home.
The Plato’s Closest in Ann Arbor is near the Briarwood Mall just off I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Road. I know there would be some chains in the area that we could quickly grab something to eat and head home.
One of those chains was Potbelly Sandwich Works. The restaurant is actually in the Cranbrook Village shopping center where the Plato’s Closet is on the corner of Eisenhower Parkway and Ann Arbor-Saline Road just to the northeast of the I-94 interchange. We don’t have Potbelly locations in Kalamazoo so I figured we were still doing something we couldn’t get back home even though it’s a chain restaurant.
Detroit Opera House
1526 Broadway Street- Detroit, MI 48226
- (313) 237-7464
- Website
Can I just say how much I love that my kids love theater?
I grew up in a small, rural town in the 90’s. I played basketball and baseball, therefore, I was a jock. I wasn’t allowed to like theater. You could get away with it if you were super popular but I wasn’t. I was an athlete so that was that. I used to always go to my high school’s play productions but I would sit in the back and not let a lot of people know I was there. I usually had an excuse that I was there to watch a girl but secretly, I always kind of wished I had gotten involved.
J hates this, but the first theater production I saw and what started my enjoyment of musicals was a touring production of Cats at the Chicago Theater when I was a freshman in high school. We had to take a music appreciation class for one quarter and we studied the musical because the teacher knew it was coming to Chicago and she wanted to take a group.
Until I started dating J, the only other time I actually went to the theater was a group outing in college to see Ragtime at what was then the Oriental Theater in Chicago.
L has been a musical theater fan for many years now. The first thing she saw was The Lion King at Miller Auditorium. Since then, she’s seen Hamilton twice and Six. Our goal this year is to start checking off the shows she wants to see.
One of the musical’s I’ve been wanting to see is Beetlejuice. Growing up in the 90’s I was obviously a huge fan of the movie. I started seeing clips on Tik Tok then dove more in to the music. I figured L would like it so I told her to check it out and she instantly took to three or four songs.
Beetlejuice closed on Broadway at the end of last year so I knew a US Tour was imminent. I found two Michigan stops. One in Detroit and one in East Lansing. The Detroit dates were better for us so I asked J if she wanted to go. She was in so we got tickets for the show at the Detroit Opera House.
The Detroit Opera House is a 101 year old theater on the corner of Broadway and Witherell Streets overlooking Grand Circus Park in downtown Detroit. The building was designed by C. Howard Crane who also designed The Fillmore Detroit and Fox Theater as well as the Detroit Symphony Hall. The building was originally built as the Capital Theater. The original use was for both films and live performances.
Brass Rail Pizza Bar
18 W. Adams Street Our kids definitely get the theater/performing thing from their mom. I was a jock in high school so I couldn’t really tell anyone that I liked musical theater (hey, it was the 90’s). Mom, on the other hand, was in every play her high school did.
Last month, we too the kids to see Six: The Musical at DeVos Performance Hall in Grand Rapids. That was L’s birthday present.
Around the same time we bought those tickets, I had seen that Beetlejuice: The Musical was closing on Broadway and going out on their first tour. There were two Michigan stops. One in Detroit and on in East Lansing.
The Detroit date worked better for our schedule so we decided to surprise L with tickets to that as well.
The show was this past Saturday at 2 PM and since we were driving to Detroit, you knew we were going to make a day out of it.
First stop, lunch.
We left Kalamazoo around 9:00 AM so we could get to Detroit, get parked, and walk to lunch without having to rush. I was eyeing Detroit Beer Company right across the street from the Detroit Opera House but I didn’t see much on the menu for J or the kids. If you know me, you know I always have a back up.
We ended up walking to Brass Rail Pizza Bar on Adams Street. The restaurant is just to the west of the intersection with Woodward Avenue across from Grand Circus Park. Brass Rail has been around since about 2017. Before that, the space was Rub BBQ Pub which was owned by the same people who turned the space in to Brass Rail.
ThunderBird River Ranch
701 E. Michigan AvenueWe used to spend almost every Saturday morning/afternoon at Arcadia Ales in downtown Kalamazoo. The BBQ was fantastic and the laid back atmosphere and cafeteria style ordering made it really easy to handle with kids. J and I could get some BBQ and a beer or two and we didn’t really have to worry about bothering other people because the place is so big.
Four years or so after opening, they changed to a full service restaurant. We kind of stopped going. It took longer to get meals and the laid backness of the place kind of went away. We’d still meet people for drinks on the patio but we stopped going as often as we used to.
Not long after that, Arcadia Ales went in to bankruptcy. The brewery closed and the building sat empty for quite a while.
The building is back now. It’s not the same as it’s glory days. It’s still a full service restaurant but the charm and character of the place is still there. We decided to head down on a Saturday afternoon for lunch.
ThunderBird River Ranch opened earlier this year on Michigan Avenue just to the east of Kings Highway. The outside of the place hasn’t really changed much. They’ve covered up the Arcadia logos which were prominent features of the building but that’s really the only thing.
Read more…San Francisco Neveria & Paleteria
2838 Portage StreetIt’s been a while since I’ve had tacos and I was really hungry for tacos.
I had kind of an odd day on Friday. My co-worker didn’t really need to leave the office but I did. I started to head towards Battle Creek but then realized I didn’t actually need to do that so I turned around.
I did have something I needed to do kind of in the Southside Neighborhood. That put me pretty close to Portage Road and there’s a taco place on Portage road I haven’t been to yet.
San Francisco Neveria & Paleteria is on Portage Road just before Portage Road splits in to Lovers Lane. The business has been a few Mexican restaurants in the past. It was Huarache Kzoo when we moved here in 2009 then a much more popular El Gallo Blanco. El Gallo Blanco closed a few years ago and a sign for a new Mexican place has been there almost since.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 