1224 Turner StreetIt’s milestone time. This post is #1000 on SW Michigan Dining. Ididn’t want #1000 to be just any post. I wanted it to be something special…so I have been pretty careful the last couple of weeks about where we were going to eat.
Earlier this week, a co-worker and I ended up in Lansing. I figured it would be fitting that post #1000 be a Lansing restaurant since that is where I started blogging about restaurants (although those posts don’t count towards this blog). Plus, there was a BBQ place I really, really wanted to go to.
Lucky for me, Co-Worker was on board with my restaurant suggestions. We didn’t have as much time as we had originally hoped, so after finishing our tasks for the day, she called in a carry-out order while I filled up the gas tank and stocked up on Pepsi.
The restaurant I couldn’t wait to get to is called Meat. It’s on Turner Street just off Grand River Avenue in a building that used to be Wild Rose Cafe in Lansing’s Old Town.
Meat is a meat lover’s paradise. Every single thing on the menu made my mouth water. From the slow smoked BBQ to made-to-order mac-n-cheese to “Meatwiches”…making a decision was damn near impossible.
C.W. and I made our way in to the restaurant about a half hour before closing time. The dining room goes with a southern roadhouse theme. A number of tables are actually picnic tables and there are 80′s rock record covers lining the walls.
Our meals were ready for us when I got there and since C.W. put the order in, she put the tab, which came to about $30 on her credit card. As much as I wanted to dig in right away, we had to get back to Grand Rapids, so we loaded everything in the car and I was tortured with the smell all the way back to West Michigan.
C.W., on the other hand, could eat while I was driving. She is not quite the meat eater I am, so I felt kind of guilty at first for dragging her to a place that celebrates the carnivorous lifestyle. It really wasn’t that big of a deal though. She ordered, and loved, the Made-To-Order Mac-N-Cheese. The meal comes with choice of two ingredients. She chose mushrooms and green peppers. When she pulled the tinfoil pan out of the bag, she thought she had the wrong box. The dish was huge. Probably enough to feed three people. When I picked it up, I thought about using it for curls….yeah, it was heavy. C.W. said the mac-n-cheese was delicious. She was a big fan of the the baked cheese crust and ate that up right away. When she was done for the night, she ended up with two Tupperware containers of leftovers. I haven’t talked to her in a couple days, but I’m sure she’s still working on it for lunch.
When I finally got to eat, I dove right in to the appetizer I ordered. Normally, I wouldn’t order an appetizer by myself and when I’m doing carry-out, but this place was the exception. There are a couple of loaded fry options and the one I couldn’t pass up was the Buffalo Fries. The thin, hand-cut fries are topped with buffalo sauce, a house-made bleu cheese dressing and bleu cheese crumbles. The large container of fries were just as good as they sound. The fries themselves were thinly cut and fried to a very deep golden brown and there was a large portion of bleu cheese crumbles on top which just made this appetizer remarkable.
After finishing off the fries, I was a little stuffed, but I really wanted to give my sandwich a shot while it was still warm. I ordered the Classic Chopped Pork Sandwich with a side of mac-n-cheese. The brioche roll was filled with a large helping of slow cooked pork. Typically, it’s topped with slaw, but I’m really not wild about that. The meat was served fairly naked with five different types of BBQ sauce on the side. There was a little bit of sweet BBQ sauce on the bottom bun, but it was not covering the meat, so I added on a little bit of a spicy sauce to raise the stakes. The bun the sandwich was served on was perfect for the juicy meat. Even after I pulled it out of the fridge and reheated it later.
The mac-n-cheese wasn’t as fancy as my co-workers, but it was still large Rotini noodles covered in a thick cheesy sauce.
Meat was exactly as delicious as I expected it to be. This place wasn’t there when J and I lived in Lansing….probably a good thing. We searched high and low for good BBQ in Mid-Michigan and the best we could find was Smokey Bones in Lansing Township. It was good, but it was also sad that there was no good local BBQ in town. Meat fills that void very nicely.
Made-From-Scratch Mac-N-Cheese w/Mushrooms and Green Peppers
Buffalo Fries
Classic Chopped Pork
Side Order of Mac-N-Cheese
