Reviews

Tim Hortons

24 04 2008

5625 S. Cedar
Lansing, MI 48911
(517) 882-3536
Website
Menu

So, Tim Hortons is the first chain restaurant I’ve eaten at since moving to Michigan. It’s a chain I had never heard of before coming here, so we decided to stop in for a quick lunch one day after a morning of shopping. The chain is based in Canada getting their start in Ontario in 1964. In 2000, they opened their 2000th store in Toronto, ON. In the US, their stores are mostly in the northern and eastern part of the country….closest to Canada.

Tim Hortons is a coffee shop and bakery that serves a few sanwiches and soups. When you walk in, your senses are assaulted (in a good way) by baked goods in glass cases right up front. Since we were there for lunch, we somehow managed to not give in to desire and just got sandwiches.

I got the turkey bacon club on white and my girlfriend got the same, but on wheat bread. The bread takes a quick ride through the toaster oven then is piled with turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mustard. My g/f and I had totally different takes on the sandwich. The bread was good. The turkey was good and you could smell the bacon. We both agreed there. The mustard was a big point of difference for us. I thought the neon yellow mustard was way too tangy and I really didn’t like it. I ended up taking off the bottom piece of bread on both sides of the sandwich and eating the remianing half like an open faced sandwich. My g/f totally disagreed with me and loved the mustard and thought that it made the sandwich stand out. I’m kind of glad we both got the same thing just so you can see how different people view the same thing.

We grabbed our sandwiches to go so we wouldn’t be tempted by the sweet treats just inches from us. The total for two sandwiches was $8 and it only took about 5 minutes from the time we walked in the door.

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: Chains, Lansing, Restaurant, Reviews
Categories : Chains, Lansing, Michigan, Reviews

Stillwater Grill

22 04 2008

3544 Meridian Crossing
Okemos, MI 48864
(517) 349-1500
Website
Menu

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.