Serious Dogs
55 South 20th StreetI have definitely been paying more attention to Battle Creek lately. For years, I had a hard time finding new places or unique places. I found a Facebook group that opened my eyes to so many great places in Calhoun County.
I was in Battle Creek last week and spent most of the day in town. There was no going to back to Kalamazoo until our workday was over so I went looking for lunch.
I picked the place with online ordering. Serious Dogs wasn’t too far away from where I was from and I’m always about the ease of not talking to anyone.
Serious Dogs is on South 20th Street south of Territorial Road. This is a street in Battle Creek I don’t think I’ve ever been on…at least not in this area…nothing looked familiar despite the building being between Territorial and Columbia.
The restaurant sits pretty close to the road and has a very distinct look to it. I would have guessed the place used to be a Mexican restaurant but it was a place called Weezers Bar & Grill for several years before Serious Dogs moved in.
Read more…Gibby’s on the Lake
23510 Island Hills DriveHoliday celebrations are getting close to getting back to normal.
Mother’s Day 2020 was really our first “holiday” where we had to improvise. We ended up at J’s parents, fully masked and outside for about 20 minutes just to say “Happy Mother’s Day.”
2021 we were really hoping to do things a little more traditionally. We’re still hesitant to go to restaurants because the kids aren’t and won’t be vaccinated for a while. We thought we had found a place we could enjoy a meal outside….that is, until the rain got in the way.
Gibby’s on the Lake is at the Island Hills Golf Course just outside of Centreville on Shimmell Road south east of the Village. The restaurant is in the club house which is a pretty far drive on Island Hills Drive once you turn off Shimmell Road. When my in-laws moved to this area a few years ago, the building that’s now Gibby’s on the Lake was Cassandra’s at Island Hills. They had eaten there a few times but J and I never did. Also, if the name sounds somewhat familiar, Gibby’s in Mendon is one of my in-laws favorite eateries in the area.
Read more…Riviera Theatre & Bar
48 N. Main StreetTwo meals in one day? What’s the special occasion?
I worked late in St. Joseph County one day last week and J told me to grab something for dinner on my way home. I had eaten a kind of late lunch at Meeks Mill Cafe in Constantine but figured I was near Three Rivers and could stop at one of the places that have been on my list for quite a while.
I drove in to Three Rivers with tacos on my mind but I found the taco truck everyone can’t stop talking about and there were A LOT of people waiting for tacos. No worries…I have options.
I headed towards downtown to find a place to park and see if the pizza place I’ve been itching to get to was open. It was so I called in my order then hit up a gas station for a couple of Pepsi’s while I was waiting for it to cook.
Riviera Theatre & Bar is more of a theatre than a pizza joint. The Riveiera was built in the 1920’s by the Fitzpatrick-McElroy Company out of Chicago. A few years after it was built, the theater was leased to Butterfield Theatres….the owners of the State Theatre in Kalamazoo (among others). The Riviera is in downtown Three Rivers on North Main Street just south of Portage Avenue.
Read more…Meeks Mill Cafe
138 E. Water StreetI spend a lot of time in St. Joseph County now that my in-laws moved to the Centreville/Sturgis area. I love finding new places to eat down that way because in the 11 years I’ve been writing this blog, we haven’t had much reason to go to St. Joseph County.
The Constantine/White Pigeon area is part of the county I never really get to though. We’ve gone out of our way a time or two to a restaurant but we just don’t go that far south on US-131 often.
I was in Constantine for work last week and wanted to make sure I found some place for lunch. My co-worker was all about Piper’s Grinders Galore but I had already eaten there and wanted to find some place else.
There are a couple of sit down diners/restaurants in Constantine but finding an online menu for them is really much harder than it should be in 2021. I did finally find a menu for the diner so that’s where I called in an order to.
Meek’s Mill Cafe is right off the US-131 Business Loop, or Washington Street, in downtown Constantine on East Water Street. The building is one of those old brick buildings that populate small town downtown areas across the country. The building stands out among the others in the area with a mural of what I can only assume is Meek’s Mill on the side. Fun fact, the village of Constantine was originally known as Meeks Mill after William Meeks who built the first grist mill in town. There’s a story in that mural of how the town came to be.
Read more…The Farmhouse Deli & Pantry
100 Blue Star HighwayBack in March, we took a trip to Saugatuck to celebrate J’s birthday. We rented a cabin with some friends and went on several hikes around the area.
In an unusual move for us, we didn’t eat out much. We mostly snacked for lunch and cooked a couple of the nights for dinner. The only night we went out, we went to Guardian Brewing Company, which I had already wrote a blog for.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t do my homework and look for restaurants though.
I was in the Saugatuck area last week for work so I started diving in to my archive looking for some place to grab dinner. A little sandwich shop in Douglas got the nod.
The Farmhouse Deli & Pantry is on Blue Star Highway in Douglas just south of Center Street where you would turn to head out to Oval Beach. The shop is a small multi-tenant building with a few other storefronts.
Read more…Carvers
435 Ionia Avenue SWMeat is the best. Good meat is even better. I’ve always been one that is willing to pay a little extra when I want something high quality…but on the other end of the spectrum, I’m also willing to eat super cheap when I just want something quick and easy.
I worked an overnight shift in Grand Rapids late last week and hung around the office doing some other tasks until about lunch time. I glanced at my watch around 11 AM and realized I had been there way to long and wanted to get home. I packed my stuff up and started heading south when I decided I really needed food.
I haven’t been to the Downtown Market in quite some time and while Slows is always a draw for me there, I decided to go look around to see what other options there are now.
Thunderbolt Chicken Drive Thru
3905 W. Dickman RoadI always seem to have a hard time finding something to eat when I’m in Battle Creek. I know there are places…I just have a hard time finding them for some reason.
I recently stumbled on a Facebook Page called The Carryout Club and all of a sudden, there are dozens of restaurants in the Battle Creek area I can’t wait to try.
I was in Battle Creek for an assignment near the airport a few weeks ago. I had already made a plan when I left that morning on what I was going to do for lunch.
Thunderbolt Chicken Drive Thru is…well, a drive thru chicken sandwich restaurant. They’re located inside JB Whiskey’s on Dickman Road at Base Avenue. There is a little bit of signage you can see from the road but the actual chicken part of the restaurant is on the backside of the building. You need to turn in to the parking lot off Base Avenue before you really see it.
Read more…Que Buenos Fresh Mexican Grill (Portage)
5000 S. Sprinkle RoadPre-pandemic, we took our son to Comstock Early Learning Academy for preschool. We had tried a couple of others and they weren’t good fits but CELA seemed to really be working for him.
CELA is not close to our house. It’s on the other side of town actually…so that meant long car rides in the morning to get him to school after I got L to her preschool so she could get on the bus.
J and I both took different routes to get there but both of passed the corner of Sprinkle and Kilgore on our way. Everyday, B would point out the construction being done at the building on the corner that has been several restaurants over the years.
Our kids have picked up on the joke that every building being built or renovated in Kalamazoo is either a bank or a credit union and B carried on the joke every time we drove by….until we saw it was going to be a Mexican restaurant. From that point forward, he was obsessed with stopping their to pick up food. We kept telling him we would one night…then the pandemic started and school shut down.
That restaurant is the second location of Que Buenos Fresh Mexican Grill.
Que Buenos opened up in that building angled towards the corner of Kilgore and Sprinkle right on the Portage/Kalamazoo city line. The building has been quite a few things over the years but mostly pizza places. The last time I was in there was many years ago when it was a Cottage Inn…and I can’t find a blog post about it…and if I didn’t blog about it, did it really happen?
Read more…Kazoopy’s Pizza & Grinders (Oshtemo)
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8126 West Main StreetIf you’ve read this blog at all over the last ten years, you’d know Friday pizza night is a tratdition in our house. J’s family did it when she was little and now we’re doing it because everybody likes pizza.
We skip around from place to place. We’ll go a while really liking one delivery pizza place then get tired of it and move on.
One place that continues to stay in the rotation is Kazoopy’s Pizza & Grinders. Even with some order hiccups, double charges, and really long delivery times, we keep going back because the place is so good and they always make it right when something happens.
Kazoopy’s has had two locations for quite a while now. There’s one in Kalamazoo Township on West Main in an old Pizza Hut take out building and one in Oshtemo.
The Oshtemo location had been inside Dougherty’s Country Market for some time but recently, they made the move down the street to a new location.
Kazoopy’s Pizza & Grinders remodeled and moved in to a space near D & R Sports Center on West Main. The small brick building also houses an accounting firm. The space Kazoopy’s moved in to was last used by Barrett’s Smokehouse as their second location before they moved to Stadium Drive.
Read more…Captain Sundae (Holland South)
247 W. 40th StreetIce cream for dinner used to be a pretty popular mantra for one of my former co-workers. We did it on several occasions but our favorite spot was in Holland.
We decided to do a spring break staycation this year that coincided with a milestone birthday for J. We rented a house in Saugatuck and did a bunch of hikes.
Thursday we actually did three different trails in the morning. We found Fairview Nature Park on 138th Avenue near Holland, Husyer Farmer Park on 64th Street near Holland, and Rabbit River Preserve (which was a really nice, well maintained trail) on 135th Street near Hamilton. Needless to say, we were all pretty tired after those back-to-back-to-back hikes.
We spent the afternoon relaxing in the cabin’s hot tub and just generally lounging around. I cooked some burgers for dinner and it was a laid back evening.
The family we were with wanted to go in to Holland for the evening. It was kind of a cold, blustery day and we knew there wasn’t going to be a lot open in Downtown. Holland State Park was an option but J mentioned Tunnel Park. She had never been there so that’s what we decided to do.
The kids were not very happy about leaving again. They were exhausted and just wanted to watch a movie…so we bribed them with ice cream.
Remember that story from six paragraphs ago when I was talking about a former co-worker who loved ice cream for dinner. Well, our favorite place to get ice cream for dinner was always Captain Sundae on Holland’s northside on the way to Holland State Park.
I wanted to take everyone to Captain Sundae but wasn’t planning on going that way to Tunnel Park. We were coming from Saugatuck though so I knew we’d pass the one on the southwest side of town.
Captain Sundae has three locations in the Holland area. There’s the previously menitoned one on Douglas on the northside, one in Zeeland, and one on 40th Street near Washington Avenue near the I-196 Business loop interchange. We chose to stop at the one on 40th Street.
The 40th Street Captain Sundae sits not too far off a very busy Washington Avenue. The building is more of a traditional restaurant with both indoor and outdoor seating plus a drive thru. The other locations are more seasonal walk up locations.
Read more…
