Mid-Michigan Dining

• 5001 W. Saginaw Hwy.
• Lansing, MI 48917
• (517) 321-0616
• No Known Website
• Menu (from East Lansing Location)

Reno's West Sports Bar and Pizzeria on W. Saginaw Hwy in Lansing

What a day!  Everything we tried to do just didn’t want to work out.  The day started off with us getting up super early (for us) to get tickets to Barack Obama’s speech on Monday.  We made it to Gone Wired Cafe at about 8:30 and the line was four blocks long.  We jumped in line thinking, “The Lansing Center holds 5,000 people, I bet there’s not more than a couple thousand in line.”  According to the LSJ, they only gave out 1,000 tickets, so by about the time we got within one block of the front door, they ran out of tickets.  Not a big deal to me, being from Illinois, I covered Obama’s Senate run, have interviewed the Senator many times, and worked for the campaign at his Presidential Announcement in Springfield, IL on the steps of the Old Capitol…oh yeah, and I’m a Republican and probably won’t be voting for him.  My girlfriend, on the other hand, was working in a different state during that election and has never seen Obama speak live, so I was hoping to get tickets so she could see him.  Didn’t work out.

After we left Gone Wired, we figured since we just blew two hours, we’d get some breakfast.  I’ve read on Runs With Spatula about Soup to Nuts Bistro more than once.  We headed back to Kalamazoo Street only to find Soup to Nutz closed on Saturdays.  Two strikes against us and it’s not even 11:00.

Since we were at that odd time of not quite breakfast, not quite lunch, we headed out to the Lansing Mall to do some shopping for a wedding next week in Chicago.  We finally caught a break.  My girlfriend found a great dress at 60% off.  After walking around the mall, we’re both starving.  We’ve drove by Reno’s West a few times and since it was close, we headed back down Saginaw. 

The building is huge and we couldn’t quite figure out where the entrance was at first.  There were cars parked on the other side of the parking lot, so we went around the building and parked near them.  We finally figured out the entrance is through the outdoor beer garden.  We stepped into the building and there was only a couple people playing pool and a guy sitting at the bar watching TV.

We showed ourselves to a table near the bar to make it easier on the waitress.  I wasn’t paying attention when we sat down and I ended up right in the sunlight.  My fault.  The waitress brought us our Cokes and some menus.  Grinders sounded good, but I wasn’t really in the mood.  There were a couple sandwiches that also stood out, but I went with my old standby, the Bacon Black ‘n Bleu Burger. 

The cajun seasoning always gets me on these things.  It adds no flavor.  It’s drowned out by the bleu cheese.  I don’t get why everyone does it when it doesn’t add any flavor.  The 1/2 lb black angus burger came on a standard bun with a couple strips of bacon and quite a lot of bleu cheese.  The sandwich is supposed to have camerlized onions, but I had them left off.  After I peeled the lettuce and tomato, I found a thin layer of mayo.  DON’T ADD MAYO TO A SANDWICH IF IT’S NOT ON YOUR MENU!!!  Can I say that clear enough?  I don’t like mayo.  It wasn’t on the menu so how am I supposed to ask to leave it off if it’s not on the menu.  Fourtunately, they didn’t slop it on, so the bleu cheese did cancel most of it out.  The sandwich came with a pickle spear and fresh cut fries.  They could have been cooked a little longer, but it wasn’t bad.

My girlfriend LOOOOOVES pretzel rolls.  At first, she was going to get some mini-bbq sandwiches, but she noticed the Turkey Pretzel Melt.  The sandwich came with a lot of really delicious smoked turkey topped with cheddar jack cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onions, and honey mustard on a grilled pretzel roll.  Again, the sandwich came with too much turkey which is good for me because then I get more meat.  The turkey and roll were both warm and like I already mentioned, she loves pretzel rolls.  She said the sandwich was like eating turkey stuffed between two warm pretzels from one of those stands at the mall.

The big disappointment for the day and our strike three was the service.  We were the only people in the building eating lunch and it took close to 40 minutes from the time we ordered to get our meal.  It’s one thing if it’s busy and the kitchen is slammed, but there was no one else there.  During that time, our waitress was MIA and never came back to ask for drink refills.  Once we were finished, we sat there as she sat at the bar reading the paper and flirting with an older gentlemen who was drinking beer and playing Keno.  She finally looked up and saw me looking her way and she came over with our check.

The bill was a little over $22.  Not worth the service.  The food was good, but not worth the wait.  Had this been a quick lunch so we could go home and take a nap, we would have been much happier with it, but it turned out to take over an hour and again, we were the only ones in the bar eating.  The space is awesome.  It’s has a great bar with a lot of Michigan beers and a huge selection of beers on tap.  The beer garden out front is awesome and would be a great place to hang out after the sun goes down, but the lax service during a downtime was disappointing.  Like I said, the food was good.  Not great and not worth the wait.  The service probaby turned us off to Reno’s West.