Mid-Michigan Dining

• 123 Kalamazoo Street
• Lansing, MI 48933
• (517) 485-0955
• Website
• Menu

Soup to Nutz Bistro & Custom Catering on Kalamazoo Street in Lansing.

I guess you could say the third time really is the charm.  J and I have tried to eat at Soup to Nutz a couple times in the past only to run into problems.  The first time was on a Saturday after waiting in line for tickets to see Obama speak.  We didn’t realize they weren’t open on Saturday.  The second was during the week.  We wanted to go for breakfast, but we got there at 9:30 and they don’t open until 10:30.  When we got back, we found they don’t do brunch during the week.  At that point, we gave up.  The only day they do brunch is Sunday and we spend most Sunday’s on the couch watching NASCAR. 

After we went to Golden Harvest this past Sunday, a commentor suggested we try Soup to Nutz.  That got me looking at their website again.  I looked at brunch first, but then I got curious about lunch.  J and I are really lunch people and their menu looked perfect.  J got up early to get her taxes done and when she got home, she suggested heading downtown for lunch.

Soup to Nutz Bistro is located on Kalamazoo Street near Washington Square.  There are actually two entrances which can be a little confusing.  The sign is actually above the catering side of the business.  If you go in there, you’re basically walking in to the kitchen.  The other door is the one that enters the dining room.  There’s no sign marking it as an entrance, but you can see tables and others dining as well as a special board in the window. 

We made it downtown just after 12:30 on a Wednesday afternoon.  There are probably 11 tables in the indoor dining room.  At the time we walked in, over half were full.  There’s an outdoor patio that has more tables, but I don’t think that area was open.  We took a seat at one of the four tops along the wall.  The dining room is really cute.  The tables are all large wood tables.  It’s more like something you would find in your own dining room.  There are paintings on the wall that complete the decor. 

Soup to Nutz Bistro & Custom Catering in Downtown Lansing.

After sitting down, a waitress brought over menus and took drink orders.  We both ordered pops which are served out of the can.  They have both Pepsi and Coke which is a good idea if they’re going to serve it that way.  We were given a few more minutes to look over the menu, but I don’t think either of us really needed it.

I went with the Cubano.  As you can probably guess, it’s a Cuban sandwich.  The bread is a pressed crusty sub bun.  Between the two slices of bread were thick cuts of ham, swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard.  The sandwich comes with choice of carrot cranberry slaw or dijon potato salad.  Neither sounded good to me, so I let J pick.  She got the carrot cranberry slaw and really liked it.  The sandwich was delicious.  It wasn’t huge, but there was a lot of ham and it was deli sliced ham.  This stuff was a little thicker and made for a really tastey sandwich.  The balance of the condiments was perfect.  There wasn’t too much mustard or too many pickles.  It was perfect.  The sandwich was really, really good.  The sandwich was served on a antique looking glass plate.

J got my second choice, the Gemilli and Cheese with crumbled bacon.  Gemilli is a corkscrew pasta, so basically, this is a mac ‘n cheese dish.  The cheeses used were cheddar, Parmesan and feta with a garlicky crumb topping and bacon.  Her meal came with choice of a side salad or a side Caesar.  She chose the salad which was a little disappointing.  It was just some iceburg lettuce with a cherry tomato and two slices of cucumbers.  She chose the sweet and sour poppy seed dressing that she said tasted really onion-y.  She loved the gemilli and cheese.  It was rich and creamy and really cheesey.  She got the bacon added on top and they put a lot of crispy bacon pieces on top.  She called it the second best mac ‘n cheese dish she’s ever had right behind Roast’s.

The bill for our meals was just over seventeen dollars.  That’s insane.  I would have expected to pay more at a small bistro like this, but we got gourmet quality food for diner prices.  We still need to get to Soup to Nutz for their Sunday brunch, but lunch was really good and really worth the trip.  It’s another one of those places that I’m sorry it took so long for us to make time for.  If you’re downtown and you got an hour or so for lunch, Soup to Nutz is a great choice.

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Runs With Spatula did a brunch review you can read HERE