Kwik Trip (Pleasant Prairie/120th Avenue)
10215 120th Avenue- Pleasant Prairie, WI 53158
- (269) 857-4105
- Website
Road trip!
It’s been a few weeks but I was on the road for work again. This time it was a quick three day trip to northeastern Wisconsin. A co-worker and I left Saturday morning and we got home early evening on Monday.
We wanted to get to our hotel in Appleton before we had to start work around 4:30 CT on Saturday. We left fairly early but still, stopping for lunch sounded like a gamble.
As we neared the Wisconsin border with Illinois, he started talking about a gas station chain prevalent in Wisconsin. He kept saying he didn’t want to oversell it but I already knew about it. My wife and daughter have been talking non-stop about it since their trip to Wisconsin Rapids last summer for an ice skating camp.
We crossed in to Wisconsin around noon and sure enough, the first exit we hit, there was this Kwik Trip everyone keeps telling me about. I had to use the bathroom anyway…plus I needed more Pepsi.
The first (of many) Kwik Trips we stopped at on this trip was on 120th Avenue in Pleasant Prairie, WI. The gas station is right off I-94 at the exit with 104th Street. The roadside stop looks like any other gas station when you pull in to the parking…but when you go inside..completely different story.
Pizza Perfect (Sprinkle Road)
The two week winter break the kids get from school is brutal. Don’t get me wrong, when I was their age, I would have done just about anything to get that long of a break. We literally had Christmas Eve until Jan. 2. Didn’t matter where it fell on the calendar.
Besides the boredom, child care was a bit of a challenge the second week. I used vacation the week between Christmas and New Year’s but we both had to work some of the days the second week.
I ended up working on New Year’s Day so I could get Wednesday off. That was J’s first day back in the office that week so I worked out a way to stay home. J was able to work from home Thursday and Friday but really needed to be there Wednesday.
She also took advantage of me being home by hitting the bar after work for a drink with a couple of co-workers. That meant I had to take L to skating practice.
That’s not really a big deal. I like watching her skate and don’t get a chance to see her practice often. That night, club ice happened to be at Wings Event Center. That’s a further drive for us and since I wanted to stay, I grabbed B’s iPad so he’d have something to do.
J showed up at the rink for the last hour because she was volunteering. I could go home at any time after that but I stayed for a while and watched her work on a couple of new dances.
B and I eventually did leave because I was getting hungry. We always pass a pizza place on the way to WEC so I put in an order to pick up on our way home
Pizza Perfect is inside the Ridderman Oil BP on Sprinkle Road just south of the second roundabout if you’re heading south on Sprinkle. This is the second Pizza Perfect location. The other one is also in a Ridderman Oil BP on D Avenue just to the east of the US-131 Interchange.
Read more…Wayback Burgers (Lansing)
5021 W. Saginaw Highway Nothing more fun that working a holiday, amirite?
To be fair, I volunteered for this one. The Kalamazoo County schools winter break is kind of dumb this year. They’re still off the week after New Year’s. I took the week between Christmas and New Year’s off so I was home with the kids. J was off Monday, Tuesday the next week but really needed to go in to the office at least one day before working from home the other two.
An opportunity came up to work New Year’s Day. I didn’t really want to do it in the middle of my vacation but it was a way for me to take Wednesday off without having to use a vacation day so J could go to work.
I had to be in Lansing super early. I was there by about 6:30 and finished up work around 2:00. I hadn’t eaten all day so I decided to take the long way back to I-69. Instead of using I-469, I took Saginaw Highway from downtown.
It has been quite a while since I’ve been in that part of town by the Lansing Mall. I assumed there had to be some new food spots since the last time I was there.
I was about to give up when I noticed a burger joint. I couldn’t whip across two lanes to get there to I went up to the Meijer gas station, got gas, then headed back east to grab a burger.
Wayback Burgers is a fast casual burger chain originally known as Jake’s Wayback Burger. There are over 150 locations worldwide but this location on Saginaw Highway near Elmwood Drive in an unincorporated part of Eaton County’s Delta Township known as Waverly is the only location in Michigan.
Read more…Tupelo Honey Southern Kitchen & Bar (Grand Rapids)
140 Ottawa Avenue NW, Suite 100Shhh. Don’t actually tell anybody but I get kinda bored when I have too much time off work. For the first time in several years, I had a whole week off plus the weekends.
J had been off since the Friday before Christmas. I had been off since Christmas Eve. She had to go back to the office on Wednesday while I still had time off until Sunday. Our days off weren’t together so we really couldn’t travel or do anything since so much of our time off was taken up by holidays.
I needed to get out of the house. I needed to do something other than going to Wings West for an open skate…which we did a lot of over Winter Break.
I first asked J if we could go to Grand Rapids for the Great Lakes Invitational final between Ferris State and Western Michigan. She said yes but the kids kind of threw a fit. They’re not really sports people only want to go to games if there is going to be a ton of concession food. I would have enjoyed the game but not the constant badgering for more food so I reluctantly pulled back on that request.
My second idea still involved going to Grand Rapids but it involved ice skating. I proposed going to Rosa Parks Circle to skate. I’ve always wanted to go at night with the lights on and it was a decent night weather wise so I didn’t think I’d get much push back.
Rose Parks Circle was really cool to skate at night. It was pretty packed and my kids are kind of show offs so I spent most of the evening reminding them to control themselves because there was a lot of people there and a lot of new skaters. They pulled back and had a lot of fun. Both of them loved skating outdoors and it’s such a cool spot.
We skated for about an hour then called it a night. L asked if we were going to eat somewhere. She was hungry. I had a couple of ideas if they wanted to sit down for a meal and no one objected. If we were going to make a night of going to Grand Rapids, let’s make a night of it.
We walked about a little over a block to find Tupelo Honey Southern Kitchen & Bar. J was excited because she stayed in the Hyatt Place Hotel it’s part of when she was in Grand Rapids this summer but never got a chance to go down for a meal.
Tupelo Honey Southern Kitchen & Bar is a chain of scratch made southern foods with restaurants in 14 states. The original Tupelo Honey Cafe is in downtown Asheville, NC. The Grand Rapids location on Ottawa Avenue Northwest and Pearl Street Northwest inside the Hyatt Place is the only Michigan location.
Read more…Condado Tacos (Oshtemo Township)
1750 S. Drake Road, Suite EI finally get some time off this year.
It’s been a year. I’ve had to use the bulk of my vacation days one at a time. If the kids had an event in the evening, I would take the day off because there was no guarantee I could make it. If J was out of town, I had to take a day off because I can’t get to daycare before it closes. I didn’t get an actual vacation this year. The kids both played baseball/softball in the spring and that ate in to a lot of my vacation days. 6:00 games don’t work with my work schedule.
I had four days left and I decided to try to save them for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. The Christmas holiday being a Monday actually gave me a full week off. Unheard of.
We spent the first several days, starting with the Friday before Christmas hunkered down at home. J had done a lot of shopping in case we got stuck at home with the blizzard. We were never trapped here but we had enough food that we could actually eat at home and not go out for dinner.
I was starting to get a little antsy spending so much time at home not really doing much so by Tuesday night, I asked J if we could go out to eat. There’s a spot nearby we haven’t been to yet that we’ve both been wanting to try.
Condado Tacos opened in November on Drake Road in the Corner at Drake shopping center next to Costco. The restaurant takes up the corner spot with the big curved glass windows near Firehouse Subs and Nonla Burger. This is Condado’s seventh restaurant in Michigan including two in Grand Rapids.
Read more…Taco John’s (Wyoming)
1730 28th Street SWI have a weird relationship with fast food. I don’t really like most of it, but it seems to be a necessity a lot of times.
There are a few chains out there I really like. There are also a few chains that really bring back the nostalgia from my childhood.
My family was a chain restaurant family. We very, very rarely ventured outside of the comfort of the big chains. We ate at Arby’s a lot growing up..especially during their 5 for $5 roast beef promotions. We also ate at Ponderosa and Old Country Buffet more than I’d like to admit.
The 80’s and 90’s were a weird time. A couple of big chains ran promotions to get families in the door with school aged children…seriously, it’s no wonder I’m…..uh…big boned….now.
Pizza Hut‘s Book-It promotion was great but the one I always looked forward to was Taco John‘s Taco’s for A’s promotion. You’d literally bring in your report card and they’d give you a taco for every A on it.
I really like Taco John’s and always been bummed there isn’t one in Kalamazoo. There was one in Stevensville for a while but that one closed. Now, Meritage Hospitality is bringing Taco John’s back to West Michigan starting with a store in Wyoming.
Taco John’s opened up earlier this month on 28th Street near Burlingame in Wyoming. The site is where Main Street Pub in Wyoming used to be but that building was torn down and a new design Taco John’s was built in it’s place.
Read more…The Wing Hut
2913 Howard StreetMy late shift is usually only on Monday’s. I like this schedule. I work nights on Monday’s which sucks but I also get to take a nap after I get the kids to school. Weekends are usually pretty hectic and I don’t always get a ton of sleep. Monday mornings are my recovery day.
I got a bonus nap day on Thursday a couple weeks ago. They needed me for a night shift and while I didn’t really want to do it, we didn’t have anything going on that I needed to be present for so I only put up a little bit of a fight before giving in.
I got the kids to school then headed back to bed. Of course, I got a constant barrage of texts from work that I tried to ignore but they kept dinging and I kept waking me up making me even more cranky than I already was about having to work a night shift.
I eventually gave up and got out of bed. I didn’t really have anything I needed to get done at home so I got myself ready for work then decided to go get lunch before heading in to the office.
I’m trying to get to some newer places in town that I’ve been neglecting. One of those places is The Wing Hut near Western Michigan University.
The Wing Hut is on Howard Street in the Campus Pointe Shopping Center. The small restaurant is snuggled between The Den Party Store and Insomnia Cookies where The Pita Pit used to be. The restaurant is kind of a sister restaurant to Ty’s Joint in Washington Square. Same family and a lot of the same food but the restaurants have their own uniqueness.
Read more…Greg’s Gourmet Dishes
806 Riverview Drive, Suite 4Seems like the traveling for work has calmed down some. It kinda sucks because I really like traveling for work but also kinda great because I’m home. Before I got married, I was leaning towards a career that would have me on the road every weekend. That wasn’t something I wanted with a family I know some people do it, but that wasn’t the life I wanted. Getting some weekend trips with the rare weeklong out of town assignment keeps me home most of the time but gives me a chance to do things I like to do.
There have been a lot out of town posts on the blog recently. As I’ve explained many, many times, I use this blog as a journal. It’s fun to go back and read posts over the years and see what was going on in our lives and how I worked it into a blog about food.
Now that I’m back in town, I’ve got some Kalamazoo area restaurants that I need to get to.
I had some time on my lunch break last week so I could actually order food and go pick it up. My lunch breaks, far too often, are spent at City Centre Market or Jimmy Johns.
Greg’s Gourmet Dishes is a place I’ve been wanting to get to for a while. The restaurant is on Riverview Drive next to the 13 1/2 Party Store on the corner with Bridge Street. This location has been many things over the last several years. TNT-Lil’ Brothers BBQ, Burger Bros., and most recently, Burger Boss. Greg’s Gourmet Dishes opened in October.
Squealers Barbeque (Indianapolis)
5515 W. 86th StreetOur big work day in Indianapolis was going to be long one…but we were going to get a late start.
I was up around 8:30 after a decent night’s sleep in another hotel. I actually wanted to run downtown to do some things on my own before I clocked in for the day and I figured I had enough time to do so.
I got back to my hotel in northwest Indianapolis right around 11:00. As I’ve mentioned in my previous two blog posts, there were a ton of food options around where we were staying. There was also a place claiming to be the best BBQ in Indianapolis. I had to see for myself if it is as good as they say it is.
Squealers Barbeque has two Indianapolis locations. The one closest to me was the location on West 86th on Indianapolis’ northwest side. The restaurant was the second Squealers location, opened in 2004, after the original was opened in Mooresville in 2001. This building is a stand alone restaurant on 86th near Zionsville Road east of the I-465 interchange.
Read more…Monical’s Pizza (Indianapolis)
6010 W. 86th StreetI’ve said it many times. Friday night is pizza night no matter where I am.
I had to spend a couple of nights in Indianapolis a few weeks ago for a job assignment. My colleague and I got to Indianapolis Friday afternoon, completed a couple of tasks then called it a night. She was meeting up with her parents who were also in town for dinner. I went looking for pizza.
Our hotel was in a pretty commercialized spot in northwest Indianapolis. I had plenty of pizza options to choose from but one jumped out at me right away. An old childhood favorite I just don’t get to have anymore.
The Monical’s Pizza Indianapolis location is on 86th Street near the I-465 interchange. The restaurant is part of the Traders Point Mall which is more like a series of strip malls with a couple of anchor stores. The restaurant is near the back of the property closer to the AMC theater than 86th Street.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 