Horrocks Farm Market (Lansing)
7420 Saginaw HighwayJ and I first moved to Michigan in 2008. J had gotten a job in Lansing and I was disgruntled enough at my job that I decided to move with her. We had only been dating a few months but I think we saw where this was going.
I didn’t work for quite a while after moving to Lansing. I was able to pick up freelance work and made enough money to cover bills and have a little extra for spending.
Saturday’s were our shopping days. J worked second shift so most days were us sleeping in late, lounging around until lunch time then she’d head off to work in the afternoon. I’d do some small runs to the nearby Meijer but our big shopping trips were always on Saturday’s.
We lived on the Lansing/Holt border but we liked to do our shopping in Delta Township. We’d first go to Horrocks then whatever we couldn’t get there, we’d go to Walmart and finish up.
We moved to Kalamazoo about a year and a half later and our shopping habits changed. There was no Horrocks in Kalamazoo. There was one in Battle Creek but it was too far for a weekly shopping trip. We just started shopping at Meijer.
Needless to say, we really missed Horrocks.
We don’t get back to Delta Township anymore so it has been years since I’ve been there. When I meet colleagues for work trips to Detroit, we always meet at the carpool lot on Grand River Avenue in Grand Ledge so I drive by this Horrocks quite a bit.
I had to go to Detroit two days earlier this week and had to meet a colleague at that carpool lot both days.
Wednesday morning, we didn’t have to meet until 11:30 AM. I had to get up to get B to school and the longer I laid around the house, the more I wanted to go back to sleep. I couldn’t do that so I decided to just get up and head to Lansing with the idea of getting lunch before I met my colleague.
I didn’t know what I was going to eat until I got to Saginaw Highway. I figured I’d go check out Horrocks. If it’s anything like the new Battle Creek location, there would be something for me to grab.
Horrocks Farm Market in Delta Township is the OG Horrocks. It’s on the corner of Saginaw Highway and Canal Road just to the east of the I-96 interchange. The business has a long history in Lansing first getting started at the Lansing Farmer’s Market in the late 1960’s then moving to this spot out in Delta Township. The building is kind of landlocked but it’s undergone quite a bit of expansion over the years and quite a bit since I was last there 15 years ago.
Read more…Mark’s Diner
677 Romence RoadLast Friday was one of them early days. I had to be to work at 4 AM.
Usually when I do those really early morning shifts, I have to go to Grand Rapids. This time, I just had to go to Portage.
I met my co-workers down here and we had about three hours of work to do before the sun came up.
We wrapped up around 7:30 AM and then the plan was to finish my shift with my usual Kalamazoo colleague. We’d work on things until noon and then I’d clock out and he’d finish the day by himself.
I had a couple of hours until he came in though. I texted J to see if she wanted me to come home for a while and get B to school. When I work early in the morning, she starts her day working from home to get him to school. She said she was good and I didn’t need to come home.
I figured I might as well just go to breakfast then.
I was still in Portage near the mall. There’s a breakfast spot over there that I haven’t been to yet and since I had the time, now was the time to knock that place off the list.
Mark’s Diner is on Romence Road and Village Shoppes Boulevard in Portage. It’s a stand alone building in the Shoppes at Romence Village across the street from the entrance to the Crossroads Mall. The restaurant is one of the old EMA Enterprises restaurants that operated under the Michelle’s name. Like all the other former EMA restaurants (Butler’s, Roxies, etc.) the restaurant was sold to a former employee and rebranded.
The OCB
5581 S. 9th StreetI know it’s not Friday but I was hungry and there’s a new pizza place I really wanted to try.
I texted J as I was about to leave work last Thursday to see if she had any dinner plans. She said no so I asked if it would be ok if I brought home pizza on a Thursday night.
I get a little excited when new pizza places open in Kalamazoo. There really isn’t a place that I love and that we order from every week. We have places that we like but there just isn’t anything like our favorite Chicago pizza place.
This new place that opened is The OCB on 9th Street and Cracker Barrel Drive in Texas Township. The restaurant location is already known to most people in the area. It’s the old Cracker Barrel Restaurant right off the I-94 interchange. The address is 9th Street but you have to turn on to Cracker Barrel Drive and go past the two hotels to get to it. Obviously, there has been a lot that has happened at this site. After that night in 2016, Cracker Barrel tried to forge on but a salmonella issue shut them down for good in 2018. The site has sat pretty vacant since then briefly becoming a storage facility until The OCB opened up a couple of months ago.
Read more…The Southern Cafe (St. Charles)
1590 E. Main StreetJ and I don’t get a lot of times to ourselves. Our lives pretty much running from ice rink to ice rink right now and all of our vacation time goes to traveling for competitions.
A co-worker of mine got married this past weekend in St. Charles, IL. We were invited to the wedding and we decided to go as it would be something good for just the two of us.
The reception was the Hotel Baker in downtown St. Charles. The price of a night at that boutique hotel was well out of our price range so we stayed at the Quality Inn a mile or so down the road.
We wanted to get up Sunday and morning and get back on the road home. With the time change, it made it about a four drive.
But first, we needed breakfast.
Right across the street from our hotel was The Southern Cafe. This kind of upscale brunch spot is in a shopping plaza on the corner of East Main Street and Tyler Road. There was clearly some kind of major overhaul to this plaza in 2020. In a previous life, this space was a Geno’s East and it looked nothing like The Southern Cafe does today.
Read more…Beef Shack (St. Charles)
2015 W. Main StreetSeptember has been rough. I’ve had something going on literally every weekend.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel though..albiet a small one as I only have the first weekend in October totally free too.
The final weekend in September was a wedding weekend. A colleague of mine was getting married in the Chicago area. It was also J and I’s anniversary weekend. We didn’t really do much for our anniversary because we knew we were going to be traveling for this wedding.
We dropped the kids of at J’s parents in St. Joseph County around 11:00 AM on Saturday then J and I headed for Illinois. It was about a three hour trip to St. Charles, IL where the wedding was going to be.
The wedding was at the gorgeous Hotel Baker right along the Fox River in downtown St. Charles. We looked in to just staying there but the $500/night room was well out of our price range. We stayed at the Quality Inn about a mile up the road for a lot less.
J and I are not ceremony people. It is really rare for us to go to an actual wedding ceremony. We’re not church people anyway and we always feel that the ceremony is for a more intimate crowd. As friends of the couple, we join the celebration at the reception.
We got to St. Charles around 2:00 PM. We got checked in to our hotel then decided to go out for lunch. Wedding food doesn’t really do much for either of us. We’ll eat it but it’s not usually enough…especially if we want to have a few drinks. We’re old now. Gotta make sure we’re not drinking on an empty stomach.
J asked if there was a Portillo’s close. There was one not too far away but closer by, there was another place that would serve the same purpose.
We headed through downtown St. Charles to find the Beef Shack on the corner of West Main Street and South Randall Street. We had a pretty rough time trying to get in to the business at the very busy, high traffic intersection. Coming from the or the north, there’s no way to get in to the business on the corner due to concrete separators in the traffic lanes. You have to do a U-Turn at some point. I went through the light and did a U-Turn at the next light to get to where we were going.
Read more…Buffalo Wild Wings (Battle Creek)
5775 Beckley Road #655I know. Friday night is pizza night. J and the kids still got Little Caesars but I was in Battle Creek working an overtime shift.
I didn’t have any time between my normal shift and my overtime shift to eat. I had to get out to Pennfield Township and I was already running late so I skipped it knowing I could grab something when I was done.
I’ve said it time and time again, I hate that pizza places close at 9 PM any night of the week but especially on Friday nights. I wasn’t in the mood for one of the chains and all the good places in Battle Creek were closed by the time I got done with work around 9:30.
That meant I was going to have to find something that wasn’t pizza and I had a couple of ideas.
I picked Buffalo Wild Wings because they have a deal for 20 wings and a large fry for $20. That and I just happened to be close to the one on the east side of Battle Creek.
The Buffalo Wild Wings in Battle Creek is located in the Lakeview Square Mall on Beckley Road near M-66. The restaurant is on the Beckley Road side near the entrance where the food court used to be on the west side of the property. The mall is kind of in an odd state right now. There aren’t a lot of stores anymore but there are still a couple of big ones (Horrocks, Barnes & Noble, Dunhams) and some big restaurants. There’s an Applebees right next to the Buffalo Wild Wings and Olive Garden and Texas Roadhouse just opened in the parking lot.
The Toasted Pickle (Grand Rapids)
820 Michigan Street NEI had a long work day in Grand Rapids at the end of last week. I knew it was going to be long but it turned out to be much longer than I had hoped for.
I got to Grand Rapids around 1:00 expecting that I was working the night shift. I had to help with a project a colleague usually does but he was on vacation this week. There are only a couple of us that know how this project works and two of the three were actually on vacation so that meant I had to do it.
I got to to work on then had to work with a different colleague on a project. That was why I was really scheduled to be in Grand Rapids that night. We finished up what we needed to do then an unexpected thing came up and that took up a big chunk of our night. When that was wrapped up, I still had to stay and finish up the special project…so yeah..long day.
Luckily enough, I thought I had some downtown so I left the building to go pick up dinner. There was a sandwich place that just opened in Grand Rapids not too long ago that I really wanted to get to.
The Toasted Pickle opened it’s Grand Rapids location last month on Michigan Street NE east of Eastern Avenue. This small building is a former Hot ‘n Now location that has been a couple of things since that chain went under. The last time I was in the building was way back in 2013 when the building was converted from the Hot ‘n Now to Donk’s Mexican Joint. That restaurant lasted a couple of years before it became a Thai food place. This is the third Toasted Pickle location. The other two are in Rockford and Grand Haven.
Chick-Fil-A (Westwood)
504 N. Drake RoadSeptember has been such a busy month. I haven’t had a single weekend that I’ve been home the whole weekend. We’re still busy skating and now that we have to go out to Wings Event Center, it makes our nights a little longer. The kids like skating at WEC better but Wings West is so much closer to home. It seems like we spend a lot of time on I-94 right now.
Long story short, I haven’t really grocery shopped much this month. We have been piecing together meals with what we have or eating way too much fast food…mostly Jimmy Johns.
There’s also not much food at home for me to take for lunch so I’ve been bad.
I was out on West Main early last week which gives me a lot of options to eat. I decided to go the cheaper route though and stopped at the Chick-Fil-A.
The Chick-Fil-A in the Westwood neighborhood is on the corner of Drake Road and West Main Street. We eat at this Chick-Fil-A all the time but I realized I’ve never been inside. We always do the drive thru which is super convenienent. It’s one of the newer designs with a double drive through and lots of space. This was the second Chick-Fil-A to open in Kalamazoo about four years ago. The first one in the area opened in Portage four years before that. There is now a third location set to open in Comstock Township on Gull Road in the near future.
Read more…Fat Belly Deli & Creamery
20751 8 Mile RoadMy Saturday work day on Mackinac Island was a little less hectic than Friday. We still had a lot to do but we were done by 4:00 PM and I was able to get packed up and down to the ferry docks to get on the 4:30 PM ferry back to the mainland.
I was heading home after a 10 hour work day. I could have stayed another night but I don’t see the point on staying in Mackinaw City just to get up and drive the next morning. I’d rather make the drive at night, sleep in my own bed, and sleep in on Sunday morning without having to worry about getting up and making a four hour drive.
I got back to the docks with my gear then headed back to the hotel I had stayed at the night before. I had left my car there so I didn’t have to pay Shepler’s obnoxious parking fees plus I still needed to get a receipt for my stay. The office was closed when I left at 6:30 AM and I needed that receipt for expense purposes.
My plan was to grab something to eat in Mackinaw City quickly and hit the road. That was my plan anyway.
I still don’t understand Mackinaw City. As long as the ferry’s are running, I don’t understand why businesses are closed. There’s a new sandwich shop downtown that has it’s hours listed as being open until 7:00 PM on Saturday’s but when I got there about 5:15, it was already closed up for the day. I thought I’d just keep it simple and walk to the Dairy Queen a few doors down but they have already closed for the season. I was annoyed at that point so I just got on the road. I figured I’d find something along the way.
I was looking out for billboards and roadside signs but nothing really piqued my interest. I got to a spot just north of Big Rapids and I figured I better pull off and figure this out.
I did a Google search for sandwiches near Big Rapids and came up with a spot a little bit further south that looked and sounded good.
Fat Belly Deli & Creamery is right off US-131 on 8 Mile Road near the Mecosta County town of Standwood. The small sandwich shop is inside the Davis Bridge EZ Mart on the corner of 8-Mile and Old State Road in Mecosta Township. The deli has been there close to ten years and before there, appears to have been a Mancino’s Pizza & Grinders shop. I don’t go this way very often and I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten off on this exit on the times that I have so this shop was completely new to me.
Read more…BC Pizza (St Ignace)
277 N. State StreetAnyone that has ever traveled with me will tell you what a “dad traveler” I am. I hate not being in control.
I hate flying because there is literally nothing I can do when things don’t go as planned. I’m the guy that shows up to the airport three hours early because I get so anxious. I really hate not being in control.
I get that same anxiousness when I travel to Mackinac Island. I hate being at the mercy of the ferries.
When we travel to the island for work, we don’t stay on the island. Even when you add in the absolutely ridiculous ferry tickets, it’s still several hundred dollars cheaper to stay in Mackinaw City. We typically take the first ferry of the day at 7:30 AM and try to get off the island on the 6:00 ferry.
Friday night we got stuck on the island a little bit later. Our job didn’t wrap up until 7:30 PM and the last ferry off the Island was at 8:00 PM. We had to get our stuff together then get down to the ferry docks or we were going to be stranded for the night.
We made it with about ten minutes to spare so we didn’t have to sleep on the beach.
My plan for the evening was pizza. I hadn’t eaten much all day so I was really hungry. When we got back to Mackinaw City, I got on my phone to order a pizza from BC Pizza in downtown Mackinaw City. The restaurant closes at 9:00 PM but they had already shut off online ordering at 8:20. I called the restaurant and they said they weren’t taking any more orders.
There are other options. There is Mama Mia’s Pizza which closes at 9:30 and Fox’s Pizza Den which is open until 11:00. I was kind of in the mood for BC Pizza at that point though and I still had one option.
There is another BC Pizza across the Mackinac Bridge in St. Ignace. It’s on North State Street and Central Hill right on the East Moran Bay. It’s a standalone building in what I guess you can consider downtown St. Ignace. There’s a pretty big parking lot out front and I realized I wasn’t the only one wanting pizza at 9:00 at night on a Friday when I pulled in.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 