Smitty’s Pizza
113 E. Chicago StreetWe’ve had a busy couple of weeks. I’ve worked quite a bit of overtime and the kids have had a lot of extra ice skating. We’ve been on the road a lot.
The kids both decided to join the synchronized skating teams at the club this year and the first competition was a weekend deal at Wings Event Center.
J and L picked up some volunteers shifts at the competition but B was still a little too young to help out. The original plan was for him and I to stay home but I got offered an overtime shift. The work was in Coldwater so I came up the plan to drop B off at J’s parents near Sturgis, go do the job in Coldwater, then come back and pick him up.
The job took about three hours which is what I was expecting. When I was done, I looked up pizza places along the way back to J’s parents. There were a couple options in Colon but it was actually one in Bronson that caught my attention.
I picked Smitty’s Pizza in downtown Bronson. The old bar/restaurant sits on Chicago Street which is also US-12. The building is pretty typical for a small town downtown. There are a row of turn of the century buildings all built touching each other along one side of the street. Smitty’s Pizza is one of four storefronts in the large building between a hardware store and an antique shop.
Read more…Circle K (Sprinkle Road)
4914 S. Sprinkle RoadLiving in Michigan for the past decade, it’s hard to fathom that I grew up in an area of Illinois without an ice rink. We used to play roller hockey in the street or at a nearby basketball court but I didn’t actually get a chance to ice skate on an actual rink until I was in college. A friend of mine tried to clear off the pond at her house but that never really worked.
My kids, however, have the opportunity to skate. We live pretty close to Wings West and we signed them up for Learn to Skate a few years ago to see if they liked it.
Spoiler alert….they loved it.
L joined the club last spring and B has been working his way through Learn to Skate in hopes of joining the club sooner rather than later.
While they love the individual performing aspect of figure skating, both kids wanted to give Synchronized Skating a try this year. Turns out, they love that too.
The first synchro competition of the year was a couple of weeks ago and it just happened to be the competition our club hosts at Wings Event Center. Both kids’ teams competed on Sunday morning but that doesn’t mean we didn’t spend a lot of time at the rink leading up to competition day.
J has gotten pretty active in volunteering for the club. She lent her time all weekend for several hours to help out with the event. The Kalamazoo Kick-Off Classic is the first big synchro event of the year and teams from all over the country come to Kalamazoo.
L was supposed to have practice for the upcoming Holiday Ice Revue on Friday night of the competition but the weather was really bad and her coach decided to cancel it. The Kick-Off Classic was still going though and J had volunteered for a couple of shifts that night. She really didn’t want to drive in the snowstorm to get there. I had taken the day off and was home so I offered to just take her over there and drop her off. L wanted to stay but B and I didn’t, so we went home.
We left Wings Event Center and headed to the Circle K. I told B we’d grab snacks and drinks then head home for a few hours until it was time to pick J and L up.
While we were at Circle K, I asked B if he wanted a pizza for a dinner.
The Circle K on the corner of Sprinkle Road and East N Avenue in Comstock Township is a much newer and nicer Circle K than the one it replaced a little further down the road on Sprinkle and Meredith. This new Circle K is more than a convenience store. They included a gas station and have a surprisingly good offering of hot food during the day.
Read more…JungleBird
155 W. Michigan AvenueDate night! Man, do we need more of these. Good news, too. I finally writing a blog post for a restaurant in Kalamazoo. It’s been a while.
J bought us tickets to go see Whose Live Anyway show at the State Theatre as a Father’s Day Present. I used to watch that show all the time going all the way back to the Clive Anderson days when Comedy Central aired the shows that orginated for the UK’s Channel 4 in the 90’s.
The show was on a Sunday night and we asked Nana and Grandpa if they’d watch the kids for us so we could go. The kids both had ice skating that night so J and I got them to the rink, got skates on, and got them going with their coaches before heading downtown for dinner.
We hadn’t really talked about it but we both had an idea of where we wanted to go for dinner. A new restaurant just opened in the Exchange Building.
JungleBird is a new restaurant from Mark Sellers. You might not know the name but you know his restaurants. His most well known creation is HopCat which he eventually sold off. He also is behind Max’s South Seas Hideaway and Stella’s in Grand Rapids.
JungleBird is in The Exchange Building on Michigan Avenue near the intersection with Rose Street in downtown Kalamazoo. The restaurant is on the first floor of the multi-use commercial building facing Michigan Avenue. There’s an outside entrance from Michigan Avenue but there is also access to the restaurant from the lobby of The Exchange. The building does have it’s own parking garage but I never see the “Lot Full” light go off so you’re best to try to find something on the street in the area. If you’re there after normal business hours, the courthouse parking is usually pretty empty and a short half block walk to the the restaurant.
Read more…Saylor’s Front Street Pizzeria
128 S. Front StreetGetting a little closer to home but still on the road….Hey! At least I’m back in “Southwest Michigan” with this one.
My Friday night overtime shifts have come to an end for the year. I had one more that took me down to Edwardsburg for an assignment about two weeks ago.
My plan on this assignment was to order a pizza from a place in Edwardsburg but when I called, they told me there was an hour and forty minute wait. Yeah…couldn’t do that.
Luckily, I was just outside of Decatur when I made that call so I pulled off to the side of the road and looked for pizza places in Dowagiac.
I found Saylor’s Front Street Pizzeria in downtown Dowagiac and gave them a call. The wait was only 15-20 minutes which was right about perfect.
Saylor’s Front Street Pizzeria is on Front Street at the intersection with Beeson Street. I was driving through at about dinner time on Friday night so all of the angled parking on Front Street was full. There was a lot off Beeson Street that was easy to get to and pretty empty so I parked there and walked back to the pizza shop.
Read more…Toarmina’s Pizza & Burrito Joint (Ann Arbor South)
1200 Packard StreetAlright. I’m getting closer to Kalamazoo…but not really.
I had an overnight trip to Detroit a few weeks ago. We worked all day Tuesday, well in to the night then worked all day Wednesday as well.
We got done around 4:00 Wednesday afternoon. My co-worker drove himself to Detroit so I wouldn’t have to go back to Grand Rapids and drop him off. He had already left before I was completely done so I didn’t have go through the awkward dance of asking him if he wanted to grab dinner before heading home knowing we’re both people who would rather do things by themselves.
I decided to get out of Detroit before settling on dinner. Our last stop of the day was Belle Isle. As soon as I got done, I packed up the car and started heading west.
I made the decision to wait until I got back to Ann Arbor before pulling off for gas and food. I was kind thinking Zingerman’s Deli since it’s been several years since I last stopped there but I also kind of felt I was hungrier than a sandwich. I was heading to a college town and college towns have the best pizza.
I picked Toarmina’s Pizza & Burrito Joint on the corner of Packard and Dewey Avenue not too far from the University of Michigan. I had actually tried stopping at Toarmina’s once several years ago after a U of M football game but that was just a dumb idea. Still, I remember people telling me it was the pizza stop near campus so now that I had some time, it was time to see if the hype was worth it. The building is a stand alone shop on a very odd angled intersection. There are a couple of parking spots out front but I found it easier just to find a spot on the neighborhood streets.
Read more…Iggy’s Eggies
34 W. Grand River AvenueI’m not a big “hotel breakfast” kind of guy. I love the idea and when I’m with my kids, I’ll usually just suffer through it, but let’s be honest, hotel breakfast is not good.
I was in Detroit for an overnight work trip a few weeks ago. I actually stayed at Motor City Casino because it was surprisingly the cheapest hotel downtown that night. My co-worker booked his room too late and ended up having to stay somewhere else so when I got up Wednesday morning, I was on my own for breakfast.
I didn’t even look at the Motor City options because I assumed they’d be too expensive and really not worth the price. I went looking for something else instead.
I happened to find the absolutely perfect breakfast joint. Quick service, delicious sandwiches, and lots of ways to customize.
Iggy’s Eggies is a walk up window on Grand River Avenue and Griswold Street in downtown Detroit. The restaurant is part of Lovers Only (which is not a pornography store…I swear…it’s a burger joint). The walk up window was added a few years ago to as a place to quickly grab something to eat.
Read more…Rocco’s Italian Deli
3627 Cass AvenueYeah…I’m still on the road. It has been a pretty hectic couple of months. I feel like I’ve spent more time in my car than I have at home.
I had an overnight trip to Detroit a few weeks ago. I needed to get downtown fairly early in the day and would work until well after midnight. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get away for lunch so I stopped on my way in to town to grab a sandwich.
I was really excited about a sandwich shop that I saw some people talking about on Twitter on “National Sandwich Day.” It wasn’t too far from my final destination so I took a little detour to see what the hype was about.
Rocco’s Italian Deli is on Cass Avenue just north of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in Detroit’s Cass Corridor Neighborhood. The building is an old bicycle shop that was chopped up in to two storefronts a few years ago with Rocco’s taking the end space.
Read more…Matty’s Pizza
6800 Eastman Avenue - Midland, MI 48642
- (989) 835-7002
- Website
- No Online Menu
Every mall food court has a pizza place. When I was a teenager in the ’90’s, I always loved going to my local mall to not only check out the latest styles at The Buckle or Foot Locker but for the food court pizza.
We were in Midland a couple of weeks ago for a figure skating competition. As I explained in my last blog post, our plan was to have a team dinner at Old Chicago but Old Chicago gave away our reservation and wasn’t able to accommodate a large group without a reservation….which we had but they gave it to another group thinking it was us without ever asking for a name when the other group came in.
Anyway, we ended up at Midland Mall across the street because there was no way we were going to get in to any restaurant on a Saturday night with 25 people.
Going to the mall actually worked out really well. There was a wide variety of choice and plenty of room for our large group.
I actually ordered my meal from the BBQ stand but J and L were going for pizza so I asked them to pick me up a slice of that as well.
Matty’s Pizza is one of about half a dozen restaurants at the Midland Mall. The mall is on Eastman Drive near US-10 on the north side of Midland. The food court is pretty easy to find from the outside. If you take a right when you come in the main entrance, you can easily spot the food court with the “MENU” sign hanging above the door.
Olvera’s BBQ
6800 Eastman AvenueThe best laid plans, amirite?
We were in Midland for a figure skating competition a few weeks ago. It was the last individual competition of the year and almost all of L’s coach’s skaters made the trip over for this event. To celebrate a successful season, L’s coach wanted to go out for dinner with everyone after the competition.
J actually took the helm at finding a place for a large group. She called a few places and no one was willing to reserve space for 25 on a Saturday night…except for Old Chicago.
Our group started to arrive at Old Chicago at about 4:30…right when we told them they would be there…only to find they had given away our reservation to another group because they thought the other group was us.
We were kind of screwed. J called a few places but they all said it would be about an hour wait. It had been a long day at the ice rink and we still had a two and a half hour drive home so we didn’t want to wait.
One of the parents noticed the Midland Mall across the street. Mall’s still have food courts…right? They went over to see what the options were and since there were actually four or five options to choose from and plenty of seating, we chose to eat dinner in the mall food court like it was 1992.
The best thing about picking a mall food court is the options. Some in our group are vegetarians. Some are gluten free. Others, like me, are much more carnivorous.
I went off by myself and found the BBQ joint.
Olvera’s BBQ is one of several food options at the Midland Mall food court. The mall itself is on Eastman Drive near the interchange with Highway 10 on the north side of Midland. The food court entrance can be found from the outside if you take a right from the main entrance on to Mall Drive. The word “Menu” hangs above the entrance making it easier to find.
Read more…Molasses Smokehouse and Bar
201 E. Main StreetI have gotten a lot of window time lately. I spent another day driving but this time it wasn’t for work. It was for my daughter.
L had her last individual figure skating competition of the season a couple of weeks ago in Midland. It has been a really, really long time since either J or I had been to Midland and we forgot just how far away it is.
L’s first event wasn’t until 12:30 so we decided to get up in the morning and drive instead of getting a hotel room on Friday night. I wanted to pick up an overtime shift Friday anyway so this worked out best.
We got to Midland about 10:15. We got L checked in, found her coach, and set her up in a locker room so she could start getting dressed. There was no use for me at this time. L and J get in to a locker room and start getting her ready so I’m really there just to make a Walgreens run if they forgot something.
We had stopped at Starbucks back in Kalamazoo to get coffee and grab some breakfast sandwiches but I was already getting hungry by 11:00. We were planning a team dinner after the competition so I knew I wasn’t going to get to explore the way I typically like to. I asked J if it was OK if I ran to get something to eat before L’s first event.
I headed to downtown Midland to findn Molasses Smokehouse and Bar on Main Street near McDonald. The Kansas City style smokehouse opened in 2019 in a building that sat empty for several years after a coffee house moved out.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 