6005 S. Westnedge Avenue
Friday nights in the fall are overtime nights and I always try to find someplace new to grab dinner. Usually it’s pizza but I’m running out of new pizza places in the area.
I missed a chance a couple of weeks ago when my overtime assignment was in South Portage. I was actually going to grab a pizza from Fricano’s Sub Station because it has been a lot of years since I ate there but the wait was too long. I ended up not eating until I was done for the night.
As I was driving down Westnedge, I passed like three other places that I could have stopped for a non-pizza dinner but I was running late at that point.
Last week, my job site was near Schoolcraft. I had some time to get there so I decided to hit one of the Portage places that I keep forgetting about before getting on the highway to head south.
Rollup Ice Cream & Tea has been around the Kalamazoo area for a about four years. We first found them right at the beginning of the pandemic when they opened their first (and now closed) store on Stadium Drive. From there, another shop was opened in Portage on Portage Road. That one is closed now too but that is where they started offering fried chicken sandwiches. A third location was opened on Gull Road in Comstock Township where they continued the ice cream, tea, and chicken sandwiches.
The newest location moves the business from that Portage Road location up to the corner of Milham and Westnedge in Portage. It’s in the two restaurant building on the southeast side of the road next to Little Caesars. This spot was a Schlotzky’s for a long time. Once that business closed, Wing Heaven came in for a while followed by Skinny Kenny’s. Rollup Ice Cream & Tea is now giving the prime corner real estate a shot.
The layout of the store hasn’t really changed much from when it was a Schlotzky’s but Rollup did a some cosmetic changes when they took over the space once Skinny Kenny’s left.
It’s nothing dramatic but they need a large counter space for the roll up ice cream portion of the business. The order counter was extended past what used to be a drink cooler so it takes up the whole space in front of the kitchen. The menu boards hang just to the right of counter on the wall.
Besides a new coat of paint to match Rollup’s orange and purple color scheme, the rest of the space is pretty much the same as it has been for the last several years. There is a pretty large dining room with some nice solid wood furniture.
The menu at this location is so much bigger than I remember it being at the Gull Road location last time I was there. This place started as a roll up ice cream shop…which was and still is a unique concept in Kalamazoo, but they’ve now expanded to a full fast casual restaurant offering not only the chicken sandwiches but smash burgers, wraps, tenders, deep fried hot dogs, and salads.
I was really tempted to order a smash burger but I know I really like the chicken. I ordered a Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich combo which comes with scoop fries and a drink. The cost was just over $15 and it took a little under 10 minutes for someone to come out of the kitchen with a bag of food.
I popped open the fries as soon as I got in the car and started to head back to the highway. I love these scoop fries. If you remember on a recent blog I did about Kelvin & Company, I made a comment about how Rollup must have left their fry cutter there. I think that was probably the part Kelvin & Co wanted to point out to me as being inaccurate because I’m pretty sure you can get these from food service providers now. Rollup was the only place I had ever seen them before so I thought they were unique. They’re a really interesting fry. You get crispy edges but the rest of it is still pretty soft. Rollup always goes pretty heavy on the salt too which just make these fantastic tasting fries.
Rollup started with the chicken sandwiches a few years after the Popeye’s chicken sandwich became all the rage. I feel like restaurants felt like it was such a simple concept and something that could be easily replicated…and I feel like they were right. You never really saw fried chicken sandwiches on menus before outside of a place like Chick-Fil-A. Now you see them everywhere and they’re almost always delicios.
Rollup Ice Cream & Tea’s Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich is a fried white meat chicken sandwich that is drizzled with Nashville hot sauce and a house made seasoning blend. The sandwich is served on simple white bread bun with pickles. The chicken is so crispy and so juicy. It’s a pretty fantastic chicken sandwich without the heat added to it. The Nashville hot sauce isn’t overpoweringly hot but there’s a bit of a kick to it. Just enough to give the sandwich some spice but not enough leave you begging for a glass of milk.
Whether it’s ice cream or chicken, I’ve never had a bad meal from Rollup Ice Cream & Tea. We went to the Stadium Drive location a few times before it closed down but getting to South Portage or Comstock Township is a little more of a drive for us so we really haven’t been to those spots. Putting one near the highway on Westnedge makes it a little more accessible and a great option for a quick, delicious meal after a day of shopping.