The Hook Lakeside Grill
201 S. Huron AvenueThe days are typically pretty long when I travel for work and they don’t allow for a lot of breaks. This trip is no different.
We’re working on Mackinac Island but staying in Mackinaw City. That means early mornings to catch the ferry, a lot of walking, and late nights catching the last ferry off the Island to get back to the hotel.
We got back to the hotel around 7:30 our first full day in town. Co-worker was tired and was just going to eat a sandwich he had in his hotel room for dinner. I was pretty exhausted too but wanted a cold beer and a decent sandwich so I dropped my work gear off in my room and walked back to a restaurant we passed on our walk from the ferry docks.
The Hook Lakeside Grill is an interesting looking place. The restaurant is on Huron Street a little bit south of downtown Mackinaw City. The restaurant is on stilts right on the Straits of Mackinaw near the Icebreaker musuem. The elevation makes the restaurant “lakeside” so you can get a good view of the water…something you wouldn’t get if the restaurant were at street level.
Read more…Breakers
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967 Straits HighwayI feel like I just took a work trip. Yeah..that’s cause I did. I was just in Upstate New York a few weeks ago and now I was going to spend a week in Mackinaw City. I feel really bad leaving J and the kids for that long but these trips are an aspect of my job I really like. It’s really, really unusual for trips like this to happen back to back. Usually it’s several months between trips.
I headed up to Mackinaw City on Sunday to start work on Monday morning. I got a pretty late start because I decided to sign us all up for the Kids ROAR at the Sherman Lake YMCA Camp. It was a blast…we got super muddy and had a great time.
We got home around 2:00 after stopping at McDonalds in Galesburg for the kids. I played Switch with B for a few minutes, took a shower, gave him a bath, then got my car loaded up to head north around 3:30.
It was always my plan to stop and get a pizza along the way. I had a place scoped out about a half hour from Mackinaw City but was kind of worried about time. I had back ups in Gaylord if I needed it but traffic was pretty light and I made pretty good time heading towards the Mighty Mac.
Breakers is the restaurant I chose to stop at. This road side tavern sits right Mullet Lake on Straits Highway just south of Topinabee in Mullett Township. The business has been there since the 1940’s but it became Breakers in 2005 switching focus to burgers and craft beer.
Read more…Figgs Fast Food
559 Hamblin AvenueI’ve been using The Carryout Club on Facebook quite a bit to find new places in Battle Creek but I still have a few places that I’ve found on my own and have meaning to get to.
I had a little bit of extra time in town a few weeks ago. I was assigned to a job in the afternoon that we got done pretty early. My co-worker just met me in Battle Creek because he had to go somewhere after work so I was on my own when we got done.
We finished up work around 4:00. I didn’t have time for lunch but I was ok with it. I knew a place I have been meaning to go to for several years and I was finally in town and free when they were open.
Figgs Fast Food doesn’t look like much. It’s a small cinder block building on the corner of Hamblin Avenue and Angell Street west of downtown. The building is really small and the parking lot is full of potholes but I’ve heard so many good things about this place, I wasn’t going to be deterred by the looks.
Anchor Bar (Buffalo)
1047 Main StreetOur trip to Upstate New York was really quick. We drove in on Tuesday, worked a little bit, checked out the National Baseball Hall of Fame, worked all day Wednesday, then drove home Thursday.
I had a lot I wanted to pack in this trip even though we had a couple of long work days. I accomplished one of those things on Tuesday with a quick run through the Baseball Hall of Fame. The other major goal was to find the place that invented the chicken wing.
Buffalo wings are (hopefully) obviously named after the City of Buffalo. We were passing through Buffalo on our way to and from Utica where we were staying. We didn’t have time on the way there to stop but we had really no place to hurry to on our way home.
We stopped at a Service Center about an hour and a half from Buffalo to use the bathroom. Co-worker asked if I wanted Tim Horton’s. I said no, I was planning on stopping in Buffalo for lunch. We hadn’t had time to sit down and have an actual meal on the company dime so he thought that sounded like a good idea.
We have a couple of co-workers that worked in Buffalo for a few years so my co-worker sent them a text asking for lunch recommendations. He didn’t realize that I already had plans. Our Buffalo source basically told us one thing. “Anywhere but the Anchor Bar.”
Ha. That was my plan on all along. We were going to the Original Anchor Bar.
Buffalo wings were invented at the Anchor Bar in downtown Buffalo on the corner of Main and North Street. The story goes Teressa Bellissimo threw the wing parts, usually reserved for soup back in those days, in to the deep fryer and coated them in a “secret sauce” for her son’s friends back in 1964. The wings took off and almost 50 years, we’re eating millions of pounds of wings every year. The building has expanded quite a bit since that day in 1964 but if you pick this Anchor Bar location, you’re walking in to the original.
Read more…New York Pizzeria
75 Chestnut StreetGetting sent to Upstate New York for work was incredibly exciting. It was really only about a day and a half but we had time to quickly go through the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum…something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little kid.
We were staying in Utica which is about an hour from Cooperstown and we had some work to do once we got back to the hotel. Before we left the Museum, I asked my co-worker if he was up for pizza. I had seen a place on our way in to town…and they had online ordering, so I figured we could do something quick and easy for dinner avoiding having to search for something once we got back to the hotel.
New York Pizzeria is on Chestnut Street at the corner with Delaware Street south of downtown Cooperstown. The building looks pretty new and looking at Google street views seems to confirm that. It appears they took over another business on the corner and turned that in to parking for the two story pizza restaurant that sits there now. The restaurant has a pretty unique look with a dining room with large windows that open up and an outdoor patio tucked in to a space next to the building.
Read more…National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
25 Main Street- Cooperstown, NY 13326
- (888) 425-533
- Website
Man..the places work takes me.
A colleague and I were in Upstate New York for three very quick, very busy days recently. We made the 10+ hour drive one day, worked a 15 hour day the next, then headed the 10+ hours back to Michigan. It was a whirlwind trip but we did get to do one thing I’ve had on my bucket list forever (well…two, but we’ll get to that in another blog post.)
We knew we weren’t going to have a lot of time on the day we actually had to work so once we got to Utica where our hotel was, we took the hour trip south to Cooperstown. Every kid growing up dreams of getting in to Cooperstown one day and since my playing days are long over, at least seeing the Baseball Hall of Fame has been something I’ve wanted to do.
The trip to Cooperstown is wild. Our hotel is in Utica and from there, it’s all two lane roads and not a single one of them is straight. It’s only about 35 miles but because you’re constantly slowing down for curves, hills, etc., it takes almost an hour. The drive there in the daylight was scary enough but the drive back in the dark was kind of terrifying. There are no street lights anywhere..including at intersections so it’s really hard to see where you’re going.
Cooperstown itself is hard to describe. It’s a village of less than 2,000 people. It would be like dropping the Hall of Fame in Dowagiac here in Southwest Michigan.
We got to Cooperstown around 4:30 and looked for a place to park. There are no lots near the museum that we could find..just street parking. There are some shuttle lots on the edge of town but it wasn’t super busy on the day we were there so we found a parking spot a few blocks from the museum.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum sits on Main Street in downtown Cooperstown right at the intersection with Fair Street. The building is kind of out of place in this small downtown. The three stories and half a block foot print are much bigger than anything else on the street.
South Side Grubz
2245 W. Columbia Avenue, Suite 107Another Battle Creek post. Another opportunity for me to talk about The Carryout Club on Facebook. Yet again, this blog post would never have happened if I hadn’t seen several posts on The Carryout Club talking this place up.
I worked a double shift in Battle Creek a couple of weeks ago. Part of the day was spent working with a colleague, but the evening part of the shift I was solo.
I parted ways with colleague right around 6:00. I had about an hour until my next assignment so I decided to grab some dinner. Thanks to EatsBC.com, I was reminded of a place I had seen on the Facebook group many times.
South Side Grubz is, wait for it….on the south side of Battle Creek. The small shop is in a corner strip mall at the intersection of Columbia Avenue and Helmer Road. The space has been a restaurant for quite a while with most recenty being Lil Chef Cafe.
Read more…Bone Yard Cafe
112 W. North Street- Kalamazoo, MI 49007
- (269) 350-5344
- No Known Website
- Menu
Food trucks and BBQ. It’s a pretty popular combination. I walked over to Lunchtime Live in Bronson Park last week and five of the seven trucks parked along South Street were BBQ. All of them had long lines.
For some reason, BBQ and food trucks just go together. I wasn’t surprised when I was driving down Rose Street a few weeks ago and saw a food truck parked at the corner of Rose and North was serving up BBQ. This truck is a little different than most trucks in the area though.
Bone Yard Cafe is on the corner of Rose and North in Kalamazoo’s Northside Neighborhood. The truck is permanently parked on a piece of property on that corner owned by the family that owns the food truck. They’ve turned that piece of property in to a little outdoor cafe with the smokers and grills hidden behind the truck and tables set up in the courtyard in front of it.
Read more…The Icarus Grill
5775 Beckley Road #649There’s a Facebook group in Battle Creek that has really opened my eyes to some place to eat in Calhoun County. It was started during the pandemic’s early days and it’s called The Carryout Club. The goal was simple. Support local businesses during the shutdown.
The shutdown is over but restaurants are still struggling. This Facebook group continues to post pictures and provides a place for local restaurants to showcase their specialties.
I’ve always had a little bit of a harder time finding places to eat in Battle Creek. This Facebook group has opened my eyes to several new places. I just don’t get over there enough to get to everything I want.
I worked a long day last Friday and between morning and evening parts of my shift, I was in Battle Creek. There’s a number of places I’ve been wanting to try but I was out by the mall…and there’s a restaurant there that I’ve been reading a lot about.
The Icarus Grill is inside the Lakeview Square Mall. I haven’t been in this mall in years so I didn’t really know where to go. I assumed it would be near the other food options so I parked near Buffalo Wild Wings and entered the mall through those doors on the south side off Beckley Road.
Read more…Cosmic Candy Company
168 S. Hancock StreetAlright, one more stop on the way home. Actually two..but one more for food.
We left Sleeping Bears Dunes after a fantastic lunch with some friends at St. Ambrose Cellars. J had one more stop she wanted to make on the way.
We went a little out of our way to find the Arcadia Scenic Turnout. We called this our afternoon hike and climbed to the top of the stairs of this overlook to find even more amazing views of Lake Michigan.
This was a little out of our way and we really weren’t in a hurry to get home. As we were leaving, J asked if there was any ice cream along the way. There’s always ice cream along the way…it was just how far out of our way did we want to go.
I decided Pentwater wasn’t too far out of the way and there’s a pretty big candy shop there that would have something for everyone.
Cosmic Candy Company is in downtown Pentwater between 1st and 2nd Streets. I actually missed the building the first time we drove by. The building has a big overhang out front. The sign was up against the building so I didn’t see it while driving. J noticed it so I went around the block and found a parallel parking spot right across the street.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 