On The Roll
Food TruckI am just all about the food trucks lately. It’s hard not to get excited about food trucks on Friday in Kalamazoo. Lunchtime Live is still my favorite part of the week.
I’m not in the office every Friday during lunch time so when I am, I make it a point to at least walk over to Bronson Park just to see who is there and if there is anything I just have to have.
On The Roll is a food truck out of Battle Creek that J and I have been looking for at events for a couple months now. The 100% veteran owned and operated truck specializes in garlic bread rolls filled with specialty pasta…..and barbecue. I was there for the BBQ.
Read more…Eli’s Doces
Food TruckLet’s just keep this food truck thing going, huh?
We had a great kid-free taco truck meal from Juancho’s Traveling Tacos while enjoying drinks from Gull Lake Distilling Company but we also knew there was a Food Truck Rally going on at Fleischer Field in Oshtemo Township.
We didn’t really need any more food food…but we can always go for more dessert.
We pulled in to Fleischer Field about a half hour before the rally was scheduled to end. There were a few food trucks there but we went straight to the churro tent.
Eli’s Doces is a small operation based in Battle Creek but can be found at food truck events in the Kalamazoo area as well. They do one thing…churros.
Read more…Juancho’s Traveling Tacos
Food TruckA few days without kids and what do we do? Go out for drinks and get tacos from a food truck.
We dropped the kids off at my parents on Monday of last week with plans to pick them up on Saturday and take a short extended weekend trip to Chicago. Our original plan was to drop them off on Tuesday so J and I both took the day off. J had something come up Tuesday morning that changed our plans but we kept the day off to just kind of relax.
We got in to the usual “what do you want for dinner?” conversation early. We had some places that we would have liked to have gone to without kids but it seemed none of them were open on Tuesday so we kept looking.
J had been to Gull Lake Distilling Company with some friends a few months ago and really liked the place. They went for a hike, picked up breakfast from a place on Gull Road then met at GLDC for drinks. I had never been so I suggested we do that if they had a food truck that night.
They did have a food truck and it was tacos…so we finally answered that question, “what do you want for dinner tonight?”
Juancho’s Traveling Tacos is a taco cart based out of Kalamazoo. They’re not really a food truck in the way you think of food trucks nowadays. They’re a cart that operates out of a van. At Gull Lake Distilling Company, they pull right up to the outside fence so they’re in the parking lot and you’re inside the amazing outdoor beer garden.
Read more…Gull Lake Distilling Company
92 E. Michigan AvenueFive nights without kids. What are we going to do?
Grandma and Papa like to take the kids for a week each summer. I grew up about an hour south of Chicago and my parents still live there so they don’t get a lot of time with our kids…let alone time without J and I around.
Last summer was a bust due to COVID. We still got together at parks in Berrien County and felt safe enough to do some weekends at our house and at the lake in Three Rivers but those were always short visits. Grandma was bummed but she accepted it and was really looking forward to having them stay with her this year.
Our original plan was to drop the kids off Tuesday. We didn’t want to drive in holiday traffic back to Chicago on Monday. Our plans changed so we asked if we could come a day early. We actually wove our way through the backroads in Indiana after a quick stop at Potato Creek State Park for a quick hike.
Monday night we took a detour in to J’s old neighborhood in Oak Lawn to get pizza from Palermo’s 95th….. the best pizza place in Chicago.
We still had vacation days scheduled for Tuesday and while we both had some things to do, it was a pretty lazy day.
We started talking about dinner. I didn’t have a ton of great ideas and a lot of places we wanted to try were closed.
I did finally come up with one we had been talking about forever but were unsure how family friendly of a place it would be. We didn’t have the kids so it didn’t matter. We could grab some drinks and enjoy not fighting with someone about taking “one more bite.”
Gull Lake Distilling Company is on East Michigan Avenue near the weird six corners intersection near the center of town. The place is a little hard to find if you don’t know where to look. The front facing part of the building is actually Pizza King which has been there for quite a while. The distillery entrance is in the back of the building. You actually go through a fence gate to park where you’re still not quite sure if you’re in the right place at first.
Read more…True North Ice Cream
403 S. Kalamazoo AvenueJ loves to get me out of the house to go hiking and one of the best ways to do that is for us to take a “destination” hike. That allows me to find someplace to eat and, with any luck, find some ice cream treats for the kids.
Our destination for this hike was Coldwater. We met some friends for a sweaty four mile hike along the Sauk River on the Linear Park Trail. We got a pretty tasty lunch at The Willows Bar & Grill then said goodbye to our friends even though we were all heading the same direction back to Kalamazoo.
I had promised the kids ice cream if they were good on the hike and at lunch and, as they have been lately, they were good so ice cream was in our future.
There are options for ice cream in Coldwater but I’ve been hearing about a place in Marshall that makes their own ice cream and has quickly become pretty popular….so we headed back to Marshall.
True North Ice Cream is on South Kalamazoo Avenue near the intersection with Spruce Street. The small red building is hard to miss as you’re heading out of town (or in to I guess). It was an ice cream shop called Side Tracks for quite a while before True North moved in in April of this year.
Read more…Willows Bar & Grill
716 Chicago StreetI have I mentioned we’ve really got in to hiking? Like once or twice maybe? Yeah. We’ve really gotten in to hiking.
Looking at the weather forecast last Friday, the weekend looked like a total washout. The radar showed rain pretty much all day for Kalamazoo.
J woke me up a little after 9:00 AM and asked if I’d be up for a destination hike. Through the fogginess of getting woke up, I said, “Sure, whatever.”
Her plan to get around the rain was to go south. The radar looked pretty clear over Coldwater until about 3:00 giving us plenty of time to hike.
We actually got some friends to tag along and hiked over 4 miles on the Linear Park trail that begins near Jaycee Park and kind of does it loop along the Sauk River up to Rotary Park on the Southwest side of Coldwater.
The hike took close to two hours and destination hikes always include a stop for lunch. We’re still hesitant eat ide a restaurant with the kids who can’t be vaccinated yet so it was up to me to find a spot with a large outdoor patio for the eight of us.
It actually didn’t take me long to find The Willows Bar & Grill sort of near where we were hiking. The red bar looking restaurant sits right on the channel between Cemetary Lake and South Lake on the far western side of Coldwater. The restaurant sits quite a ways off the main road on a road labeled Old Chicago Street.
Read more…Russo’s Pizzeria Bar & Grille (Hopkins)
100 E. Main StreetTraining on new computer systems is always a fun time. I recently had five days of training on a couple of new software systems in Grand Rapids. Some of those days I’d just work my entire shift in Grand Rapids. Some of those days I’d either start or end my shift in Kalamazoo and going to Grand Rapids just for the allotted training time.
Thursday was one of those days I spent the entire day in Grand Rapids. I actually had to go in early. Training started at 9 AM so I had to secure before camp care for the kids, drop them off right at 8:00 when extended care began, then rush to Grand Rapids to make training by 9 AM.
Our Grand Rapids office was short staffed due to the end of the week being more intense and specialized training so once I finished with my session around noon, they kept in Kent County to work with a different colleague.
Our assignment ended up keeping me in Grand Rapids until 7 PM….plus I still had the drive home. J took the kids to a friends house to play after camp so she told me to just grab something on my way home to feed myself for dinner.
Grand Rapids has a lot of options I haven’t tried yet but there are pizza places along the way I haven’t managed to order from in the 11 years I’ve worked for a Grand Rapids company.
I picked the one furthest off the highway since I knew I wasn’t in a hurry.
I put my pizza order in at Russo’s Pizzeria Bar & Grille in Hopkins. At the time, I didn’t know there were three other locations…one of those I actually passed on my way to Hopkins. The pizzeria was recommended to me and since Hopkins isn’t all that far off the highway, I decided to do it.
Russo’s Pizzeria Bar & Grille is on E. Main Street/128th Avenue and Water Street in downtown Hopkins. The restaurant is a pretty large building with white and blue metal siding. Older pictures show the place as a dull brick so I assume that’s still underneath.
Read more…Mac’s Place
113 N. Farmer StreetNew computer systems are always fun, right?
Our company is overhauling computers, software, etc. so that means days and days of training. I was asked if I wanted to do the training in Grand Rapids or in Kalamazoo. I chose Grand Rapids not thinking we were still in pandemic mode and it was going to be over Zoom. By the time I realized that, it was too late. I was committed to training in Grand Rapids.
I work a second shift on Monday nights and my training lined up with that. I started my day in Grand Rapids with a training session at 3:00 and headed back to Kalamazoo for the rest of my shift once I was done around 5:00.
I wasn’t in a super big hurry. My co-worker had already done some things that would make my night easier and he didn’t need me to rush back….which means…dinner time!
I’ve been seeing posts from a place in Otsego that looked really good. They open at 4 PM and most of the time when I drive through Otsego, it’s well before that. I figured I had time so I’d make a quick detour on my way back to Kalamazoo.
Mac’s Place opened in March of this year on Farmer Street just north of W. Allegan Street/M-89. The two story grey building isn’t marked very well with just a sign in the window so I actually missed it the first time I drove by. I went around the block and parked in the municipal lot on Farmer Street then went walking to find the shop.
Read more…Dig-In Cafe & Catering
111 W. Michigan AvenueNew computer systems are always fun. We’re upgrading at work to something new so that means a few weeks of training…while also doing our day-to-day jobs.
I started the process earlier this week. I had to drive to Grand Rapids for a morning training session then meet up with a co-worker afterwards so we could do what we always do.
Our job site that day was near Augusta. I had training from 9 AM to about 11 AM so he scheduled our meeting for 12:30. I wouldn’t be rushed and we’d still have plenty of time to do what we needed to do that day.
The drive from Grand Rapids to Augusta is just a little over and hour and I got out before 11. When I got to Plainwell, I decided I had time for lunch so I pulled over, looked up a place in Augusta, and called in an order.
Dig-In Cafe & Catering is the family diner and gathering spot in Augusta. The small restaurant is on West Michigan Avenue (M-96) just to the west of Webster Street and Augusta’s “downtown.”
Read more…Dairy Freeze
1443 M-89We had a pretty great Saturday outdoors…not at a lake…despite the fact it was pushing 90’s.
I got everyone to agree to a hike at the South Swan Creek Loop Trail in the Allegan State Game Area then we hit the Perrigo Splash Pad at Allegan’s Water Street Riverfront Park. While the kids were playing, J and I had some tasty beers and ordered lunch from Tantrick Brewing Company.
We gave the kids the ol’ five minute warning. B said he needed to use the bathroom and there are public restrooms on the riverfront not too far from the splash pad. He, of course, noticed others eating ice cream as we were walking and started getting really insistent than he wanted ice cream too.
Scoopt Ice Cream is a little further down and that’s where people were getting ice cream from. I was hot, tired and wanted to get back on the road towards Kalamazoo. I promised B we would stop somewhere and get ice cream after I had a few minutes in the air conditioning.
I made it back to Otsego and B was still asking about ice cream. I wasn’t lying to him. I was planning on stopping. I knew I’ve passed a small walk up ice cream stand between Plainwell and Otsego and that’s what I was looking for.
Dairy Freeze is on M-89 just outside of the Otsego city limits on the east side of town. The small brick building with a red roof is the last (or first…depending on what way you’re traveling) building in Otsego Township on the north side of the road before you hit the city limits.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 
