5000 Franklin SteetMy baseball trip every year is typically a one day thing. I’ll leave Kalamazoo in the morning, go a game at Guaranteed Rate Field with my dad, brother, and friend from elementary school, then drive back to Kalamazoo after it’s over.
I did something different this year. I went to my parents after the game.
My dad always gives me a little grief for not going back to their place and hanging out but I typically just want to go home. They live a little over an hour south of Chicago so it’s back tracking when I do decide to leave.
This year, our trip coincided with my home town’s “homecoming.” It’s not the school homecoming but the village festival. When I was a kid, it was three days long, had carnival rides and games, and a slow pitch softball tournament. Like most things, it’s not that anymore. It’s now two days, doesn’t really have much for kids to do but they still have a beer tent open until 1 AM with live music,
We headed back to the beer tent for about an hour then went to one of the bars in town for one last drink before going to bed.
When I got up Sunday morning, my mom wanted to go to breakfast before I left so we went to the one sit down restaurant in town for a really delicious breakfast. I hung out for a while longer because I didn’t really see my mom all that much as she was working when I got to town on Saturday afternoon and it bed by the time we got home from the ball game and the drinking.
I got on the road right around 11 AM central which was slightly later than I wanted to leave but it was fine. I didn’t have to rush home for anything.
I wasn’t super hungry as I was driving through the final stretch on Indiana but there’s a restaurant there that I was really craving. I figured it couldn’t hurt to stop so I pulled off the highway at the Michigan City exit.
I was heading towards a new Raising Cane’s not far off I-94 in Michigan City. The restaurant is on Franklin Street in front of the Meijer between US-20 and I-94. The building sits where a Buffalo Wild Wings used to be. That building was tore down and this new fast food building was erected in it’s place.
Raising Cane’s is a simple fast food chicken joint with a very limited menu. It’s pretty much just chicken tenders. Ordering is done at a counter just like any other fast food spot. The food is packaged up pretty quickly and order numbers are called out that correspond to a number on the receipts.
There’s a decent sized dining room and it was full on this Sunday afternoon. This is a good spot for large groups and sports teams because it’s chicken fingers and almost every kid (except mine) like chicken fingers. There were a few seats open but most of the people who were coming in the same time as me where getting food to go. There are also disco balls in the ceiling for some reason….I guess a chicken finger fueled rave cold break out?
Like I said, the menu is pretty much just chicken fingers. I ordered The Box combo which is four fingers, fries, Texas Toast, slaw, Cane’s sauce, and a drink. The cost was right around $14 dollars and it took about five minutes for my meal to be bagged up. I had barely got the lid on my pop when the number was called.
I started eating the fries when I got back on the highway. They’re simple fast food crinkle cut fries. Nothing special other than a good filler. I’m not a sauce guy but I hear the Cane’s sauce is the best. I suppose you could dip these fries in the sauce to give them some flavor.
I waited for the chicken to cool before I started in on that. The four chicken fingers are all fairly large, juicy pieces of chicken with a crunchy breading that keeps it’s lighter color. Chicken tenders are something almost every restaurant has on the kid’s menu but these aren’t kids menu tenders. These are adult meal kind of tenders. There’s a bite to them and while I know I’m in the minority by not dipping these in the Cane’s sauce, I don’t see a reason to. They’re tasty tendies on their own.
The last piece of the meal I ate was the Texas Toast. I’m sure this is pre-packaged and reheated but it’s actually a really buttery, delicious piece of bread. I don’t know why they throw it in. Toast is usually more of a BBQ thing but it’s an added bonus to already pretty filling box meal.
I know that there’s always a tendency to crave the fast food you don’t have in your backyard but I really like Raising Cane’s and always try to find a way to stop when I pass one.
There were plans to build one here in Portage but that got derailed by homeowners who live next to the proposed location on Milham. Hopefully a new location is found and we got one (or a couple) of these in the next few years.