City Limits was a recommendation from an avid reader and one of my girlfriend’s interns. We were sitting around after spending all day being a tourist in our own town debating about what to do for dinner. I didn’t really feel like cooking, so we decided to go out. We hopped in my truck and headed down Cedar Street to Mason. City Limits sits just on the other side of 127 inside the Mason Bowling Center. The parking lot looked pretty full when we pulled up. Then it hit me. Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals had just started.
We went inside and there was a hostess station at the door, but no one was there. We didn’t know if we should wait or just sit down. Finally a waitress noticed us and told us to sit wherever we would like. The dining area is divided into a smoking and non-smoking space. The non-smoking is down a couple stairs into a big, open room filled with tables, dart boards, and, of course, big screen TV’s. We chose a booth along the wall near one of the huge projection TV’s. I wasn’t super interested in watching the game, but that didn’t matter. You can’t look up without seeing a TV somewhere.
It must have just been our luck that particular day. Everyplace we ate we had a wait. It took five to ten minutes before our waitress finally noticed us sitting there. Once she did, she brought menus and got drink orders. Saturday night is a margarita special, so my girlfriend got a strawberry margarita. I wasn’t in the mood for alcohol so I just got a Pepsi. The menu was full of the traditional sports bar fare. There were burgers, pizza, salads, and chicken sandwiches on the menu, but the interesting thing was the grinders.
When I lived near Kankakee, IL, we always used to go to a pizza place called Mancino’s Pizza & Grinders (I’m still trying to figure out if the Mancino’s here in Lansing are the same thing), so we had Grinders all the time growing up. My girlfriend had never heard the term before and was a little surprised when I got my sandwich. I went with the half pizza grinder. The seven inch sandwich was topped with pepperoni, ham, banana peppers (according to the menu anyway. I didn’t taste or see them on the sandwich), mozzerella cheese and pizza sauce. It’s like a little mini-pizza in sandwich form. It was delicious. I almost wish I got the full sandwich because when I was done, I wanted to keep eating. It’s not quite the same as Mancino’s, but this one had a unique flavor with the ham. For an extra buck, I added fries to my sandwich. They were just typical fries…nothing special.
My girlfriend got the Southern Fried Chicken Salad with Buffalo Chicken tenders. Again, they have the option of a half or full salad. She asked the waitress what the size of the half was, but didn’t get a really good answer, so she ordered the full salad just to be safe. The salad came with a bed of fresh lettuce, jack cheddar cheese, tomatoes, red onions, bacon and buffalo chicken tenders. The chicken was hot and there was a lot of it. Almost enough to make that a meal on it’s own. She passed a few pieces of the chicken over to me and it really tasted like a boneless chicken wing. She said the chicken was as hot as she likes buffalo wings and any hotter would have ruined the salad. Her only complaint was the red onions. They were stronger than she likes, but that’s a personal preference when it comes to onions. Neither of us are big onion fans and there’s always the hope they won’t overpower the other ingredients. With all the chicken, she probably finished about half the salad.
City Limits is a great space. Yes, it’s a sports bar, but the design allows it to be a family friendly atmosphere as well. The table next to us was a family with four kids. They had a couple pizzas and all eyes were glued to the TV’s. My girlfriend said her eyes got really dry from the smoke, but I didn’t notice it until we were leaving. I think someone opened the door to the bowling alley a little too long and a huge cloud of smoke rolled in, but she said it was there the whole time. We both LOVED the food. My sandwich was delicious and something you can’t get at a lot of places. We both left stuffed and only paid around $20. Even with the crowd for the Red Wings game, our server was there when we needed her after the initial wait.
Mid-Michigan Dining 
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