Greco’s Pizza
5380 Division Avenue SouthMy plans never work out the way they’re supposed to.
L had an ice skating competition in Dearborn this past weekend. Our plan was to get up Saturday morning and drive over. Then, we got the schedule. Her first event was at 7:30 AM. There was no way we were going to make her get up at 4 AM to get to Dearborn.
We found a reasonably priced hotel not too far from the ice arena. Our plan then was to drive over Friday night after I got off work. Well…..I was forced to work in Grand Rapids which means an hour commute home…meaning we wouldn’t even leave Kalamazoo until sometime around 8:00. That’s still way too late.
J decided she was just going to take L by herself. We hate dragging B to these things anyway because they’re long days. J’s parents came up to our house to watch B until I was able to get home while J and L left for Dearborn when L got home from school around 4:30.
That mean I was on my own for dinner. I never actually made it in to the office near downtown. My work site was kind of the southeast side of town.
For years I have passed small pizza places in this part of Grand Rapids/Kentwood but I’ve never ordered from them. Now seemed like a good time to pick one.
I did a Google search and looked at pictures. Which place I had the kind of pizza that I liked and which offered online ordering?
I chose Greco’s Pizza on South Division and Kellogg Woods Drive/54th Street. The pizza place is in a strip mall on the northwest corner of the intersection accessible from both Kellogg Woods Drive and Division Street.
Read more…StrEATs Taco Kitchen
14 S. Elm StreetI don’t eat out in Zeeland very often. Even when I worked in Grand Rapids, I’d find myself in the area quite a bit but Zeeland’s downtown is just far enough of the I-196 BL that I never really went looking for food.
A colleague and I were in Zeeland last week on an assignment. It wasn’t going to take long but we had to make the trip from our Kalamazoo office because there was no one available in the Grand Rapids office. Little road trips are fun every now and then.
We did what we needed to do and were finished around lunch time. We ran in to a former colleague and she pointed us towards Frank’s for lunch. I looked it up and it appeared to be a sit down service restaurant which we really didn’t have time for.
I always have some place to eat when I travel somewhere and this trip was no different. I found a taco place which I assumed would be pretty quick and not far from where we were at.
StrEATs Taco Kitchen (their stylizing, not mine) is on Elm Street just south of East Main in downtown Zeeland. The restaurant is owned by the property management company that owns the building. According to a Holland Sentinel article, they knew the property would make a good restaurant location and since no one else was interested, they opened it themselves. Just using Goggle street view, it appears the building has been empty for a while.
Read more…Wharton Center for the Performing Arts
750 E. Shaw Lane- East Lansing, MI 48824
- (517) 432-2000
- Website
It was finally time to cash in L’s Christmas present.
L became obsessed with the musical Hamilton a few years ago. J and I had went to see it at the PrivateBank Theatre in Chicago then listened to the soundtrack quite often in the car on road trips after that. L’s becoming somewhat of a history buff as she gets older and has went all in on the life of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler.
We took her to see Hamilton for the first time a couple of years ago when it was at DeVos Performance Hall in Grand Rapids. Our seats weren’t very good. I had actually gotten tickets in the very last row of the balcony thinking we were going to bring B and I would need an escape route if he couldn’t sit through it.
The seats didn’t matter. L loved it. She bought a dress and wore it around the house proclaiming she was Elizabeth Schuyler while she sang the soundtrack all day long.
The obsession has tapered off a bit but she still really likes the show and when we found out it was going back on tour after the pandemic subsided a little bit, she asked if we could go.
J and I like it enough we didn’t mind seeing it a third time. I was going to buy cheap tickets again but J’s mom stepped in. When J was young, her uncle would always buy theater tickets for her and they were always the expensive seats up front. Nana wanted to give L that experience.
We chose to go to the show in East Lansing at the Wharton Center for Performing Arts. The East Lansing run of the show was later in the spring than the second run in Grand Rapids so we were hoping that if the pandemic was still raging in the winter, it would subdue a little bit by April.
The Wharton Center for Performing Arts is on the campus on Michigan State University. The theater is technically on Shaw Lane at Bogue Street but the parking ramp entrance is actually on Wilson Road on the back side of the building. We skipped the parking ramp all together (which was charging $10) and parked just down the street at Fee Hall. Because it was a weekend, there were no parking restrictions and we it was just a short walk past the IM Fields to the theater.
Crunchy’s
254 W. Grand River AvenueWe created a monster.
J and I have always been theater fans. J did a number of shows in high school while I was more of a jock and, at that time, couldn’t admit that I liked musical theater.
I had to take a class my freshman year of high school on music theory. The teacher was a big fan of Cats. We did a whole month breaking down the music and lyrics then she took us to see a performance at the Chicago Theatre. I fell in love with the show. J hates it and refuses to go see it with me again (I drug her to one performance at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts many years ago).
J and I have seen a number of shows over the years but there’s only one we’ve seen more than once. Hamilton.
The first time J and I saw Hamilton was during the initial height of it’s popularity. I was fortunate enough to snag a couple of last row tickets from the box office for a performance at The PrivateBank Theatre in Chicago. We really lucked out on this one. A few weeks after I got the tickets, it was announced Wayne Brady would play the roll of Aaron Burr. It was a really cool thing to see.
We bought the soundtrack after that and played it….often. So often in fact that L started listening to it and fell in love with the show before ever seeing it. We took her to see it for the first time when it came to Grand Rapids in 2020 right before the world shut down at DeVos Performance Hall. She’s been obsessed ever since.
The musical is back on tour this year and J’s mom decided she wanted to get L good seats….like really good seats, for Christmas. We chose the East Lansing performance because it would be later in the spring and hopefully COVID worries would subside by then.
L spent the night at one of her friend’s house the night before the show. We picked her up at 10 AM after they ate breakfast and started heading towards East Lansing. We were going to be pretty early so I suggested we do lunch before heading to the Wharton Center.
We were in East Lansing last month for an ice skating competition. We tried to go to Crunchy’s for lunch but it was during the NCAA tournament and the place was packed. We didn’t have that much time so we ended up going to The Pizza House instead.
We had more time and it was a pretty quite Sunday so we thought we’d give Crunchy’s another try.
Crunchy’s is pretty synonymous with East Lansing and Michigan State University. It was one of the first “college bars” we visited when we moved to Lansing in 2008.
The restaurant is on Grand River Avenue and Valley Court right in front of Valley Court Park just to the west of downtown East Lansing. The Spartan green building isn’t hard to find but parking can be tricky during the busy hours. There’s a lot right next to the building but it fills up fast and there are warnings all around not to park at another business.
Read more…Brick and Brine
100 W. Michigan AvenueI love my kids and wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world…but sometimes it’s just nice to go to a meal without them.
We didn’t eat out for close to a year and a half during the pandemic. Once everyone was vaccinated, we slowly worked our way back in to our normal routine. We’re eating in restaurants again which we enjoy, but can be a lot when dealing with kids who would rather be at home playing video games.
We kind of got lucky last weekend. L had her first sleepover for a friend’s birthday. We assumed we’d still have B but J’s mom offered to take him for the night. We were picking L up from her friend’s house then heading to East Lansing to see Hamilton for the third time. J’s mom was planning on watching B for us and figured it’d be easier if she just took him on Saturday night.
That left just J and I. We absolutely knew we had to get out for dinner. There are a couple of dinner only fancier places that we’ve been wanting to get to.
We picked the new restaurant from Greenleaf Hospitality.
Brick and Brine is in the Radisson Plaza Hotel in downtown Kalamazoo on the corner of Michigan and Rose. The restaurant is on the Kalamazoo Mall side of the hotel behind Old Burdick’s. It takes the space that was formally occupied by Zazio’s.
Read more…Crafted Copper
4520 Stadium DriveDate night. That never happens.
I don’t have any family in the area and J’s parents spend winters in Florida. Getting a night where just J and I can go out is incredibly rare.
L was invited to her first sleepover this past weekend. We figured we would still have B at home but J’s parents just got back from Florida and offered to take him for the night. We were picking L up from here sleepover on Sunday and heading to East Lansing to see Hamilton for the third time. B was going to stay with Nana and Grandpa on Sunday anyway so they offered to just take him for the night.
What the heck are J and I going to do with a Saturday night with no kids?
We’ve been wanting to go to Brick and Brine downtown but didn’t want to deal with a wait. J asked me to make a reservation. The only reservation they had left was 9:00. That’s late for us. I assumed we’d be asleep by 9:00.
J told me to just make it and we’d find some place for drinks beforehand.
J’s suggestion was a couple of places downtown but then I threw out something a little closer to home. Some place we drive by pretty much every day
Crafted Copper opened up at the end of last year on Stadium Drive at Drake Road in the University Commons shopping center. The small space has been a couple of bars in it’s recent history. Mallory’s Irish Pub was the most recent occupant. Before that, Craft Draft 2 Go…which had some problems. Prior to that, this was a RadioShack location.
Read more…Rollup Ice Cream and Tea (Comstock Township)
5907 Gull Road My daughter is at the age where I’m trying to expose her to as many sports as I can. I’m never going to push her in to anything but I want her to try things to see if she likes it.
Right now, ice skating is all she wants to talk about. She was just getting good at soccer but she’s over that. Softball is just starting up. There’s still some interest there but I think that will probably fade as the season moves on.
She’s pretty tall for her age. She’s head and shoulders above almost everyone in her class…including the boys. I was that way too. I was tall until my sophomore year of high school then everyone else caught up.
We tried to talk her in to play basketball last winter but she had no interest. About two weeks after signups ended, all of a sudden she wanted to play.
I haven’t had the chance to introduce her to volleyball yet. I loved playing volleyball growing up despite there never being any boys teams for me to play on.
Premier Athletics ran a volleyball clinic last week to try to drum up interest in their spring season. I signed L up without really asking her. I just wanted her to give it a try.
The clinic was on Thursday night at Haven Reformed Church on Gull Road. The timing worked out where J could drop her off and I would go pick her up.
The clinic ran until 7:30 which gave me a little over an hour after I got off work. I was hungry and I don’t get out to that side of town very often so I started looking at my options.
I chose to go to Rollup Ice Cream and Tea. Not because I was going to eat ice cream for dinner. I mean, I’m an adult…I totally could have. But they also have some really delicious chicken sandwiches on their menu.
Rollup Ice Cream and Tea in Comstock Township is on Gull Road near 26th Street. It’s in the same shopping center with Penn Station Subs and Qdoba across from Meijer. Before Rollup moved in, the restaurant was a Peachwave.
Pastrami Joe’s (Marshall)
105 N. Jefferson StreetI always loved getting sent to work in downtown Battle Creek because of Pastrami Joe’s. They had the best sandwiches.
The Pastrami Joe’s in Battle Creek closed though. They had a hard time staying afloat during the pandemic because Kellogg employees weren’t working in the office. That really cut in to Pastrami Joe’s bottom line.
The restaurant eventually closed and now a Torti Taco is in the space on Michigan Avenue.
Pastrami Joe’s didn’t totally go away though. There was also a second location in Marshall and that one depends a lot on the lunch crowd from nearby Oaklawn Hospital so they were able to stay open.
Pastrami Joe’s is just off Michigan Avenue in downtown Marshall on Jefferson Street. The small brick building could be easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. There are street parking options up and down the block.
Bomba’s BBQ Tex Mex
2814 Portage StreetSometimes the quickest way to get from downtown Kalamazoo to Portage is to take Portage Street. I know a lot of people complain about the one way streets and the speed along many of Kalamazoo’s streets but there really isn’t a good way to get downtown.
Most cities have an Interstate that run through the heart of downtown. Not Kalamazoo….and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just takes a little longer to go from North to South and sometimes, the most obvious route isn’t the fastest.
I don’t know why but I seem to be going to the airport area a lot lately for work. There are a couple of ways I could get there but I’ve been taking Portage Street a lot.
Those trips up and down Portage Street kept bringing me by a restaurant in progress and mouth watered each and every time I drove by.
A few weeks ago, I finally saw that OPEN sign lit up.
Bomba’s BBQ Tex Mex isn’t new to the area. They’ve been a pretty successful food truck and they even opened up a drive thru joint in Lawton. They’ve made the move in to a brick and mortar restaurant by taking up a building on Portage Street just north of that weird Y intersection with Lovers Lane in Kalamazoo’s Milwood Neighborhood. The business is an old Wendy’s but between the demise of Wendy’s and now, it’s also been an East Egg and, most recently, Ramen and Rice.
Alebird Taphouse & Brewery
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2619 84th Street SWJust another weekend looking for a place to skate.
Kalamazoo hosted the USA Hockey 14u Tier II Nationals last weekend at Wings West and Wings Event Center. It brought in a lot of people and a lot of money to the area but also used up all the available ice in the city. L was itching to skate somewhere but as we leave winter behind, a lot of ice rinks close up leaving us fewer choices.
L and I both slept in a little late Saturday morning but when she got up, she wanted to skate. I started looking for someone who had an open skate sometime on Saturday and I could only come up with two places. The Garden Ice Arena in Stevensville and Walker Ice and Fitness Center in Walker. Neither were really close and both had noon open skates.
We quickly got everyone out the door and headed towards Walker. There was really no reason why I chose to go north instead of west. Both were about an hour drive.
Since we rushed out of the house, no one ate lunch. The Walker Ice and Fitness Center actually had a concession stand open so when we got there, J grabbed some slushies and popcorn to keep B happy since he no longer wants to skate with us.
L and I skated for about 45 minutes. She’s still breaking in new skates and is dealing with some blisters. A sore on her heel opened up and we didn’t have a bandage to cover it so she decided to just be done for the day. She got a little bit of practice in since she didn’t have any ice time at Wings West this week.
While L was skating I started looking for places to eat. I texted a co-worker who lives in Walker for ideas. He gave me all his favorite breweries…which I really want to meet him at for a beer sometime, but none of them had food. Yeah, we could bring food in but I was looking for a place that wouldn’t take that much work since everyone was going to be pretty hungry.
On our way up US-131, I noticed a sign for a brewery in Byron Center. I assumed since they had a highway sign they also had food.
Alebird Taphouse and Brewery is on 84th Street in what I guess you could call downtown Byron Center. The restaurant is in a historic building that served as a hotel that supported the local railroad station. The building has been several restaurants over the years but became a brewery in 2019. The building underwent some pretty extension exterior restoration in 2018 and they added a patio area to what used to be a parking lot on the west side of the building.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 
