60010 Corey Lake RoadWe spent two and a half days over Memorial Day weekend at my in-laws and didn’t go out to eat or order in something in after picking up chicken at the Sand Lake Party Store on our way to their house on Saturday. We grilled one night and we smoked some stuff on a new smoker I bought for their house on Sunday. We did leftovers for the meals we didn’t cook.
We packed up to head back to Kalamazoo around 1:00 on Monday. The kids swam for a little bit in the morning and we once again ate leftovers for lunch after J’s mom cooked breakfast.
I wasn’t super hungry but I knew I would be by the time we got home. J suggested pizza once we got home but I wanted to pick up one of the way. It gave me an excuse to seek out a pizza place one of my cousins, who has a lake house west of Three Rivers, told me about several years ago.
Appoloni’s Ristorante e Pizzeria is near Corey Lake and Harwood Lake in western St. Joseph County. It’s on Corey Lake Road at the intersection with Born Street. J was a little surprised as we pulled up on the small building kind of in the middle of nowhere with a log cabin siding exterior.
I had a real hard time calling in an order. The first time I called I got an automated machine that said it was going to connect me but hung up. Then I got a fax machine the next two times. The third time I actually got someone…then got put on hold for 7 minutes (yeah, I looked at the call time on my phone when she finally picked up again). Persistence paid off and I put in an order for a 16″ pepperoni pizza and a 16″ cheese pizza.
There’s a pick up window just inside the door and around the corner when you walk in. I headed there and gave the ladies working my name then grabbed a Pepsi out of the cooler to add to my order. I paid $35 tab then headed out but not before taking a peak at the ice cream counter next to the pick up area. They have Hudsonville ice cream in a number of flavors to go with the pizza.
We chose to take it home because the kids were exhausted but there is plenty of space to eat both inside and out. The dining room was pretty full with large groups enjoying lunch together. The dining room is simple with large tiles on the floors, old church pew doubling as benches, and a homey wooden chair rail against a white wall.
There are tables outside as well. There’s a fenced in area with a few picnic tables. There were a couple of families sitting out there eating ice cream when we pulled up.
When we got home, I opened both boxes and didn’t know which pizza was which. They both looked like cheese so I assumed the pepperoni’s were under the cheese. I did some detective work…by biting into a slice from each pizza…to figure out which was which.
The pepperoni pizza was pretty much all mine. The pizza is a fairly thin, chewy crust topped liberally with a sweet sauce, and some pepperoni’s hidden underneath a golden brown layer of cheese. I really enjoyed my pizza. There was no snap or really resistance when I bit through the crust. The crust is very doughy and very bread like.
The 16″ cheese pizza looked exactly the same but it wasn’t hiding pepperoni’s underneath the cheese. J ate a couple of pieces but she wasn’t wild about the crust. She thought it tasted a little undercooked and would have liked a little more crunch when she bit into it. She and the kids ate about half of their pizza while I ate all but two pieces of mine.
Appoloni’s is a good pizza…at least in my opinion. J would make a few changes, but I think it’s different from most pizza places and I actually enjoyed the crust the way it was. They used to have another location in Three Rivers but that one closed up last fall and is for sale. This one is also for sale but they’re keeping it open until they sell. It’d be a shame if this place closed for good. I think it’s a great place if you’re staying on any of the nearby likes and I know my relatives drive down from Pleasant Lake occasionally when they want something different as well.