Skinny Kenny’s BBQ & Ice Cream (Oshtemo Township)
7000 Stadium Drive I’ve made no secret over the years how much I love BBQ.
When we first moved to Kalamazoo, there weren’t any really good options. The Rib Cage on North Street was the closest Kalamazoo had to a BBQ place for a few years after we moved here in 2009.
Several places have come and gone since then. Some little places on the northside of town like Beale Street BBQ or TNT-Little Brother’s BBQ. Some bigger places like Kelvin & Co. and Finley’s Grill and Smokehouse.
In addition to those brick and mortar places, a slew of BBQ food trucks have made their way through Kalamazoo. It’s always a good day at Lunchtime Live when Weller BBQ or Pig Out Take Out showed up.
There are a lot of restaurants who get in to the food truck business to supplement what they’re doing in their shops but it’s not very often a food truck goes the other way and opens a brick and mortar building…let alone two of them.
Skinny Kenny’s BBQ is the success story a lot of food truck operators strive for. The food truck business was already pretty popular. They moved in to an old diner on Red Arrow Highway mostly to use it as a catering kitchen but decided to have some retail as well. It was too popular. They outgrew the space. A second location was opened up in Portage followed by a move up Red Arrow Highway towards Kalamazoo.
Skinny Kenny’s BBQ and Ice Cream now calls the shopping center on Stadium Drive near 8th Street home. They closed the Mattawan location and moved in to this one. The space has been home to several restaurants over the years. It was Blackeye Espresso Cafe, Feed the World Cafe, and most recently, Chau Haus Schnitzel Station. The building is kind of oddly situated with the parking lot behind the building. It’s really hard to see what’s in those spaces as you’re driving by at 55 mph on Stadium. Signage isn’t great but they have a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubeman to get your attention. Once you get in the parking, there isn’t any signage yet for Skinny Kenny’s above the entrance. the “Coffee Bar” from Blackeye is still on the awning so that’s what you need to look for…..or just follow your nose.
Read more…Ty’s Joint
1301 Portage StreetI have been really bad lately at getting to Kalamazoo area restaurants. There haven’t been a ton of new places open but there are still some really good ones out there that I just haven’t gone too.
I had a couple of pretty easy work days earlier this week with my colleague working out of the Grand Rapids office. I had some work to do in Kalamazoo that I could do on my own so I wasn’t called up there to help out.
I had some work to do but it defintely wasn’t stuff that was going to take up my whole day. I worked for a couple of hours Tuesday morning and figured I would try to get away from downtown for lunch. Like I mentioned, there are still some places that I haven’t been to and it was time to change that.
Ty’s Joint actually opened in spring of last year so I’ve had more than enough time to stop in for a meal. I’ve been kicking the can down the road on this one and it was finally time to stop doing that.
Ty’s Joint is on the corner of Portage Street and Washington Street in the Edison Neighborhood. The corner building. This historic building has been so many different things since I’ve lived in Kalamazoo. When I first got here in 2009, it was an L.A. Insurance office with a gaudy white signage put up over the original brick walls and the windows were covered up. Thankfully, that white was eventually painted black and the windows were opened back up when the building became Pho on the Block in 2016.
Read more…Three Rivers Distilling Company
224 E. Wallace StreetI grew up about an hour south of Chicago. Obvisously, I moved away after college. There were no entry level jobs in my field in Chicago so moving was the only option.
I first moved to Peoria, IL in 2002. I worked there for five years and that’s where J and I met. When she got a job in Lansing in 2008, I moved with her. She got transferred to Kalamazoo in 2009 and we’ve been here ever since.
The rest of my family has stayed close to home. My parents still live in the same house they bought when I was in kindergarten 35 years ago. My brother lives about five miles away in a house my dad’s cousin’s dad built for his family.
We don’t get to see my family nearly as much as we’d like to. My mom has worked waitressing jobs since I was in high school so getting weekends off is a rarity. My brother’s family is deep in to sports with his two girls. Our kids are starting to get in to sports and extra curriculars as well tying us up most weekends.
My brother and I both played baseball growing up. We played on the same Little League (well, our town’s version of Little League…it wasn’t officially sanctioned), Pony League, high school and American Legion teams. I went on to play a couple of years of college baseball while he decided to hang up his cleats after high school instead of going to the local community college to try to keep playing.
Both of my nieces are getting in to travel softball now. My oldest niece plays first base just like her uncle did. In all the years they’ve been playing, I’ve been able to see them play maybe once or twice.
This past weekend, my oldest niece was playing in a tournament in Fort Wayne. I guess indoor dome tournaments are a thing in travel softball. Both of the girls played in one in Crown Point, IN a little while back. My oldest niece’s 14u team got to play in at the The Plex South in Fort Wayne over the weekend.
We had nothing really going on and Fort Wayne isn’t really that far of a drive. It was a nice day so we thought, what the heck, let’s drive to Fort Wayne to watch her play.
You should know me better than that though. I’m not gonna just drive to a city and only do one thing. We were going to make a day out of it. Lunch at a distillery followed by ice skating.
The distillery we picked was Three Rivers Distilling Company on Wallace Street between Clinton and Lafayette. The building is really easy to miss if you’re not looking out for it. It doesn’t really give off restaurant vibes but more like distillery vibes with an added restaurant. J noticed the sign before I did and I quickly turned in to the small parking lot and found a space to park.
Read more…Skinny Kenny’s BBQ (Portage)
6005 S. Westnedge AvenueIt’s been a while since I’ve done an actual Southwest Michigan blog post (with the exception of Crumbl Cookies). We’ve just been on the road a lot on weekends and I don’t eat out a lot during the week.
I’ve been wanting to get to the new Skinny Kenny’s BBQ in Portage for a while though. I was a big fan when they opened up a brick and mortar store in Mattawan but that one is kind of out there. I don’t go to Mattawan very often.
I tried on a Monday not too long ago…but Skinny Kenny’s is closed on Monday’s. I finally had a chance to drive to Portage from Downtown Kalamazoo on one of my lunch breaks. We were having a pretty slow day and I was really in the mood for BBQ.
Skinny Kenny’s BBQ in Portage is on the corner of Westnedge and Milham where the Schlotzky’s (or more recently Wings Heaven) used to be right next to a Little Caesars. There’s a pretty good size parking lot there but it’s a little hard to get in and out of if you have to cross traffic. It’s best to turn on Milham if you’re coming from the north and get in that way.
Read more…Wahlburgers (Grand Rapids)
10 Ionia Avenue NWOne of my favorite things about working a shift in Grand Rapids is lunch. I used to work in GR daily but got moved to the office in Kalamazoo almost five years ago. So many new places have popped up in Kalamazoo since the move.
I’ve been working a day or two in Grand Rapids every week the last couple of weeks due to some schedule shifting. The colleague I typically work with in Kalamazoo is filling in a few days a week in Grand Rapids for someone else. Instead of sending someone to work with me, I usually just get brought to Grand Rapids as well.
I was in Grand Rapids late last year and went to West Side Deli for lunch one day. On my way to Bridge Street Market, I drove past a building that didn’t exist when I worked up there. In that new building was a Wahlburgers. I knew there was one opening in Grand Rapids but totally forgot about it on my way to get a delicious roast beef sandwich.
Wahlburgers Grand Rapids location is on the corner of Ionia and Fulton in downtown Grand Rapids. The restaurant is part of the Residence Inn by Marriott building. There are a few street parking options on the street in the area but there is also a city owned lot and ramp right across the street to make things a little easier.
Read more…Pizzeria Due
619 N. Wabash AvenueThis is where our Chicago plans took a detour. If you’ve read the last few posts (Sugar Factory, Corey’s NYC Bagel Deli, JoJo’s Shake Bar), you’ll know we took a trip to Chicago for L’s birthday. We hit all these fun restaurants, did some shopping at Water Tower Place then expected to go skating at Maggie Daley Park. We got most of that in, but not the skating.
I had skating reservations for Saturday evening. We ate lunch at JoJo’s pretty early, did some shopping, then came back to the hotel to relax and swim. As we were about done swimming, L started not feeling well. The hope was she ate something that didn’t agree with her but that turned out to be not the case.
We told her to take a nap and see if she could sleep it off. We pushed it right up to 5:00 when our skating reservation began and realized we weren’t going to make it. I look at the schedule for the 8:00 session and there were still openings so I told her if she shook whatever was wrong, we’d go at 8:00.
L went back to sleep for a while but the rest of us were hungry. J suggested pizza. She beat me to it because there was pizza right down the street.
Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due were just a few blocks from our hotel. I know many of you have eaten at Uno Chicago Grill, but, ya’ll….that is not the real deal. The restaurant lost a little in translation when it was franchised. The two original locations, Uno and Due, did not. They’re just as they were when they invented Chicago Deep Dish pizza in the 1940’s.
For many years, the restaurant was just known as Pizzeria. When they got so popular they needed to open another restaurant, they differentiated between the two with the designations Uno and Due.
I chose to order from Pizzeria Due on this trip. I enjoy a good, authentic Chicago deep dish but my family is more of a Chicago thin and crispy type of people. Due offered the thin crust on it’s ordering platform while Uno did not.
Pizzeria Due is on the corner of Wabash and Ontario in Chicago’s River North Neighborhood. The restaurant is just a little over a block north of Pizzeria Uno on Wabash. The restaurant is interesting because it looks like a three story house right in the middle of downtown Chicago. No clue what the building was originally….I searched the interwebs for quite a while and there’s no mention of it anywhere. The building has been Pizzeria Due since 1955.
Read more…JoJo’s Shake Bar (River North)
23 W. Hubbard StreetMore ice cream! I mean, this was a celebration weekend and we were kind of going all out.
When we were in Chicago in July, we were looking for some kind of dessert after a meal at Centennial Crafted Beer + Eatery. I just did a Google search in the area and found a “shake bar.” I figured that’d be fun so we headed that way.
It would have been fun but it started raining really hard on us and there was quite a line outside. I didn’t realize it was a full service restaurant at the time. I just wanted shakes for the kids.
We passed on it that night but when we made plans to go back for L’s birthday in January, I snatched up reservations to make sure we’d get a chance at it this time.
JoJo’s Shake Bar has a couple of locations in Chicago. There’s soon to be one in Naperville and there’s a location in Water Tower Place that just does all the deserts.
The main JoJo’s location is in the River North neighborhood in Chicago on West Hubbard Street between State and Dearborn. The restaurant got started as JoJo’s Milk Bar in 2019. The name was changed to Shake Bar after Milk Bar, a bakery in New York, sued.
Read more…Corey’s NYC Bagel Deli (River North)
515 N. Dearborn StreetWe were really trying to make L’s birthday weekend special. All she wanted to do was a trip to downtown Chicago. She wanted to eat at Sugar Factory (we did that Friday night), get Starbucks for breakfast, and ice skate at Maggie Daley Park.
We woke up Saturday morning fairly early. The hotel we were staying in is connected to Weber Grill and that’s where they did their breakfast. Breakfast is not included with the stay so we didn’t even walk in to see what it was.
L wanted Starbucks but she doesn’t really love Starbucks breakfast selection. There was a Starbucks right across the street (and around the corner and down the block) so that wasn’t going to be a problem. I wanted to take her some place else to grab something for breakfast though.
L’s favorite breakfast is just a bagel. A plain bagel with cream cheese. As I was looking at Google maps to see what was around us, I saw a place with “bagel” right in the name.
Corey’s NYC Bagel Deli is a small New York Style bagel shop on Dearborn Street near West Grand Avenue in Chicago’s River North Neighborhood. The shop is pretty unassuming with just a sign jutting of the side of the building to let you now you’re heading in the right direction.
Read more…Sugar Factory (Chicago)
55 E Grand AvenueWe pretty much let the kids decide what they want to do for their birthday’s. Most of the time they pick friends parties but occasionally, they’ll want to do an experience trip. We did Great Wolf Lodge a few years ago for L’s birthday but that was probably the last time we did something.
We took an extended weekend trip to Chicago this past July and L loved it. She had been begging to go to New York City or Tokyo because those are the cities she sees in media and just thought they looked cool. She never knew Chicago is actually a big city and has the feel of city life that she was wanting to see.
We picked a pretty busy weekend in July when we went last year and I didn’t realize just how fast restaurants would fill up. We had a few in mind to eat at but we couldn’t get reservations the day before. They were already booked up.
L decided she wanted to go to Chicago for her birthday weekend and were really happy to oblige. I booked a hotel and started right away making reservations for all the places she wanted to eat at.
The big one we absolutely had to do was Sugar Factory. J and I tried to walk in to the place on a Thursday night when we were there in July with no luck. We also tried reservations for any time on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday…again with no luck. This time, I booked a couple of months out to make sure we got to do what L wanted to do for her birthday.
Sugar Factory has two locations in the Chicago area. There is one in Rosemont near O’Hare International Airport, but we were downtown so we booked at the River North location on the corner of Grand Avenue and Rush Street. The space is part of the Nordstrom building and has been everything from a Cosi to a wine bar in the last decade.
Read more…Crumbl Cookies (Oshtemo Township)
5097 Century Avenue, Suite BIt’s taken a while but a lot of the things promised to us when the homes and trees were cleared off Century Avenue so a Costco could be built are taking shape.
For such a long time, we had Costco, a bunch of empty storefronts, and multiple banks. We were promised food and shopping. It’s been slow going but there are actually quite a few food options and some pretty good shopping.
One store we’ve been patiently waiting for is Crumbl Cookies. The sign went up probably last spring on the storefront between MOD Pizza and Chowhound right off Century Drive but for the longest time, it was just an empty storefront. No was being done. Trust me. We checked every time we went to MOD.
Finaly, we saw a “Grand Opening” sign. J wasted no time stopping to get cookies one night and holy cow were they good. I wasn’t with her that night, so no blog….but L and I went ice skating this past weekend and once we got done, I asked if she wanted to stop and get cookies for J and B.
Crumbl Cookies is in the Corner@Drake shopping plaza on the corner of Drake Road and Stadium Drive. The building is on Century Avenue which cuts between Drake Road and Michigan Avenue. The deep, narrow storefront has pretty much been empty since the shopping center was built.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 