5585 Gull Road, Suite 118Finding someone to sharpen figure skates in Kalamazoo is hard. There are a lot of places that do hockey but there’s only a couple of people who know how to properly do figure skates.
We’ve struggled for a couple of years with finding one of those people available when we need it done. We were typically at the mercy of someone saying, “yeah, I’ve got some time tomorrow night” and we’d leave our skates somewhere to be picked up.
The parents of one of our club members decided to figure it out themselves. They bought a sharpener and have done a lot of training and a lot of practicing on some of their old skates to get it right.
We got my daughter’s done with them a couple of months ago and she loved the way they were done. She said she has never felt so good on her blades.
She’s heading to the National Solo Dance finals in a couple of weeks so it was time to get them sharpened again. J asked if they’d be able to do it one night this week. They said yes so I grabbed L’s skates after I got off work and headed out to their place near Gull Lake.
It only took about 15 minutes to sharpen them then I headed home.
But I was hungry. So I took kind of the long way through Richland and came back in to Kalamazoo on Gull Road.
This was intentional as there are a couple of places in that part of Comstock Township that I wanted to grab food from.
I stopped at the new mochi donut and Korean corn dog place Mochinut.
Mochinut is donut chain that has around 150 stores in over 30 states plus locations in South Korea and Thailand. The Comstock Township store is one of 3 currently in Michigan. It’s located on Gull Road east of Sprinkle Road in the same shopping plaza where Two Fellas Grill is located. The space is right next to the old North Eleven in what was formerly a Cricket Wireless store.
The restaurant looks like a traditional counter service restaurant when you walk in. There’s a small kitchen in the back that’s surrounded by a counter. There were a couple of employees who were making drinks and restocking donuts when I walk in around 7:30 on a Tuesday night.
One side of the counter has the mochi donuts on display. It was later in the day so the trays were starting to get a little empty but there will still several of each of the flavors waiting to go home with someone.
I said it “looks like a counter service” restaurant but no one actually takes your order. There are a couple of touch screen kiosks where you put the order in yourself.
I put in an order for the 3 piece mochi donuts, a Koran corndog and a lemonade. The cost was right around $20. ‘
The three pack of donuts and lemonade came up first. I heard my order number over a loud speaker so I went to grab it.
Mochi Donut are a little different than a typical donut. They’re described as a fusion pastry combining the American donut idea with Japanese Mochi. They’re typically made out of rice and tapioca flours and formed in to little balls that form a ring that is easy to tear apart.
I obviously didn’t eat these right away. They went home with me where I had half of each for dinner then left the rest for everyone else to eat for breakfast the next morning.
The first donut I picked was the Choco Churo. This donut is covered in cinnamon sugar and chocolate syrup.
Next one was the Churro. Same thing but without the chocolate syrup drizzle.
Finally, I picked the Cookies and Cream. This donut has white chocolate topped with cookie bits and even includes a giant half Oreo cookie. No doubt, this was my favorite but I was nice and shared with everyone else.
The drinks have a unique feature where they’re canned after you order them. I just got a regular lemonade. You can put boba in to any of the drinks and they come with a boba straw. I’m not a boba guy. The whole idea of boba seems weird to me so I just got a regular lemonade…which was quite tasty. J said she got boba the time she took the kids and it can be a little hard to get the boba balls through the straw because of the design of the can. It’s a regular pop type type of can so opening is kind of small and you can’t move the straw around much.
The reason I really stopped at Mochinut was the Korean corn dogs. This type of corn dog seems to be a pretty polarizing thing. It seems you either love them or hate them.
My first introduction to the Korean Corn Dog was last year when I stopped at Kong Dog in Glenview, IL. I got a couple to try there and liked both of them. I love a good corn dog and while these were different, they were still really tasty. I’ve heard of other people that just hated it. In Korea, this type of meat on a stick is just called a Hot Dog, not a corn dog like we use in the US so even though the menu at Mochinut just calls them Hot Dogs, they’re really more of a corn dog.
There aren’t a lot of options for Mochinut’s. The options were original, potato, ramen, or Hot Cheetos. I ordered the original with the half hot dog and half cheese option for the center. The half stick of mozzerella is on top of the stick while the hot dog is on the bottom. Unlike a typical corn dog, the Korean corn dog is a yeasted dough made with a rice flour batter. It gives the batter a thicker coating then the typical thin corn dog batter. The original hot dog comes with options for a cinnamon sugar sprinkle so I did that. J got one a few weeks ago when she went and wasn’t a big fan because there was so much of the fried dough around the hot dog. The one I got was still much thicker than a fair corn dog but wasn’t quite as thick. I really liked the cheese part of the hot dog. It was like a delicious mozzarella stick. The hot dog part was also equally as tasty. Next time I’ll probably get one of each.
My favorite thing about fair corn dogs is slathering them in mustard. I wasn’t going to do that to this one but they did have a number of sauces and some little plastic cups to put them in. I decided to grab some yellow mustard and mango habanero. The habanero sauce was delicious. I dipped the hot dog in it until it was gone then used the mustard for the rest. Will definitely be grabbing more of the mango habanero sauce next time.
Mochinut is really unique to Kalamazoo. I think most people will like the donuts but Korean corn dogs and boba are not something every one is going to like. There’s nothing else like it in town so if you’re looking for something different, this is the place to go.