I ended up at Stillwater Grill on an interesting night. Every year, the Michigan State University football team plays a spring football game called the Green and White game. Each side drafts players and they play against each other. They also draft local media members to each side. The winners get steaks. The losers get beans. A friend of mine who anchors sports at one of the Lansing TV stations invited me along to meet a friend of his.
SInce I wasn’t part of the bet, I ordered off the menu. My friend was on the losing team and had a meal of baked beans. He also ordered the hot spinach artichoke dip to go along with his beans. The dip comes seved on a platter of tortilla chips. It’s a pretty large portion and he tore through it like it was going out of style. He mentioned to one of the other guys sitting at our table that he really liked it when one of the other guys was eating theirs.
I went simple and just got the Stillwater Burger. I forgot to say “cheese” so it was my fault, but the burger was pretty good without it. It was a fresh angus beef patty served medium with a side of seasoned fries. The burger was actually more on the medium rare side than medium. That doesn’t bother me because I actually think there’s more flavor if the burger is a little pink, but most people are so paranoid about beef they probably would have sent it back. The fries were really salty. Almost too salty, but they were fresh cut fries and they were really crispy.
For dessert, they brought out a piece of cheesecake. The other guys at the table were at desert while we were eating dinner and they were all salivating over the cheesecake, so there’s no way we could turn it down. The cake met the hype. It was really good. Probably the best since the cheesecake I had at Jimmy’s on the Park in St. Louis (review here)
The atmosphere at Stillwater was a “somewhere between Applebees and a shirt and tie place” (my friends words). There’s a nice big horseshoe bar to the right when you walk in and a large dining to the left. The kitchen is semi-open as there are windows so you can see into the prep area, but they are high enough you can’t really see what the line cooks are doing. Another interesting feature is the ceramic giraffe that has a permanent seat at the bar.
My dinner and two pieces of cheesecake ran right around $20. The rest of the menu at Stillwater looks good and worth a second trip to try out one of their entree’s and a good alternative to the highly commercialized Okemos area.
Mid-Michigan Dining 
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