5038 W. KL AvenueYou’ve seen me write a lot about “Pizza Friday” in our house. It’s just kind of become our thing. It was always a thing for J growing up and it’s an easy dinner that actually lasts us a couple of days with leftovers.
Everyone has their favorite pizza place. If you grew up in a small town, it’s probably the only pizza place in town. If you grew up in a city, you’re willing to go to war over who has the best pizza.
J grew up in a Chicago suburb and their pizza place actually is a hill worth dying on. Palermo’s 95th in Oak Lawn is no doubt, the best pizza I’ve ever had.
I grew up in a small town. Our only pizza option in town was the gas station pizza. My family actually fought between Monical’s Pizza, an East Central Illinois chain, and Pizza Hut. My bad…I loved the breadsticks from pizza hut. But I appreciate Monical’s a lot more now.
There aren’t really any good local pizza places on the west side of town where we live. Well…there’s Kazoopy’s, which we really like, but they have like a two hour delivery window on Friday night so it’s not really an option.
Our go-to is actually one of the first pizza places we found when we moved to Lansing over 15 years. Yeah, it’s a chain…but it’s a Michigan chain and they have some mighty fine pizzas.
Our go-to pizza joint and has been for years, Cottage Inn.
The only Cottage Inn Pizza left in Kalamazoo is on KL Avenue near Drake Road in Oshtemo Township. The restaurant shares a building with The Big Burrito and Bronco Liquor. This location has been open as long as we’ve lived in the area….in fact, the last time I blogged about it was pre-kids in 2011. It was still our go-to but our order has changed quite a bit since then.
We typically do delivery on Friday nights but I was at Lawson Ice Arena which isn’t that far away. J asked me to put in the order and since I had to pass the restaurant on the way home, I decided to just do a pickup.
I got the small, carry-out only shop right when the app said my order would be ready. The public space consists only of a pick up counter and a few chairs for waiting. There used to be some tables here to sit and eat but that’s not the case anymore.
I had already paid so I grabbed my four boxes and headed home.
The first time we tried Cottage Inn way back in 2008 we didn’t know they had thin crust pizza. In fact, we didn’t order from Cottage Inn for quite a while after that because a regular pepperoni pizza was just kinda meh. It was fine but we did find a place nearby that we really liked. About a year later, I must have been in the area of the one in Holt for something and J called in an order for me to pickup. They offered thin crust which kind of blew us away. We’ve been ordering from Cottage Inn ever since.
Our typical order is a large half cheese, half pepperoni thin crust pizza. B has gotten away from liking pepperoni and J has always kind of just tolerated it. Going half and half works for everyone. The thin crust is still our favorite pizza from Cottage Inn but it can be pretty hit or miss. This particular night, the crust was pretty doughy and hard to bite through. J made a comment that we should be asking for the pizza “well done” in hopes that the crust will come out crispier. The top of the pizza is still pretty tasty. The sauce has a little zing to it and I love the way it tastes once the pepperoni juices mix in.
I was pretty hungry that night and wanted something a little different. I really like the Motor City Meatball. I ordered this one in a 12″ regular crust because all of the toppings need a little more crust. This pizza comes with big chunks of meatballs, pepperoni, Italian sausage, parmesan cheese, and Italian seasoning. I also do my pizza with the butter parmesan crust. I’m not typically a big fan of the regular crust but this pizza needs it. The large meatballs really weigh down the slices and the thin crust doesn’t hold up as well. I get meat all over the table when I do this one in thin crust. It’s really the meatballs that make this pizza for me. Everything else is delicious, but I love the big chunks of meat on this one. It’s one of my favorite pizzas and something I order for myself as a special treat from time to time knowing no one in my house is going to eat any of it.
We have a pretty set routine when we order on Friday nights. For the most part, everyone sticks to the pizza when it’s hot but we also always order a small order of the garlic cheese bread. I usually end up eating most of it either later in the night or the next day for lunch. This bread is the regular pizza crust topped with garlic butter and cheese. The sticks are amazing when dipped in either the garlic butter dipping sauce or the marinara that comes with it. This cheese bread is good warm but it’s just as delicious cold and makes for a great later meal.
The reason the kids love Cottage Inn is because of the Cinnamon Stix. We always order a large order here because these are amazing for breakfast the next morning. The Cinnamon Stix are bread sticks topped with a cinnamon sugar mixture.
Just like that, these things are delicious, but it also comes with vanilla icing. Most of the time we get two but on this night, we only got one for some reason. It was still enough to more than cover the Stix. The thing that makes these so great is the excess. We’ve ordered Cinnamon Sticks from other pizza places and they always pale in comparison. There is less cinnamon sugar and less frosting. The Cottage Inn Cinnamon Stix tastes exactly like a cinnamon roll. There’s an excess of cinnamon sugar and an excess of frosting and it’s so incredibly delicious. The kids literally get mad when I order pizza from anywhere else because their cinnamon sticks don’t match up to Cottage Inn’s.
The cost of Friday night pizza can be expensive. Sometimes it’s as much as $60 once we include delivery. I picked this one up and I had a free large one topping pizza in the app so the bill was just under $40 on this particular order.
I’m sure Friday night pizza will always be the norm in our house. I like to move the ordering around a little bit but we’re in a comfort zone right now with Cottage Inn. We order a lot of food but by Saturday evening, it’s all gone and we’ve gotten several meals. I’m happy J stumbled upon the thin crust after we had already written them off. It turned out to be our favorite pizza.