Today’s words of wisdom:
Do not. I repeat, Do not, rely on your GPS when making dining decision after a long day in an unfamiliar area. In particular, I advise giving said GPS one shot then either stop and ask for advice or go home.
The consequence, if you choose not to heed me? Well, you may just end up going to 6 different locations, criss-crossing a beachy resort town, only to fail at every turn. In the end, you find yourself at a large national chain paying way too much for frozen seafood. Downtown restaurants: not open Sunday evening. Beach side inn: only has BBQ outside, ended at 7pm. Pub/Grille place: a mystery as we could not find a sign. The gourmet hot dog place would have won, if Chris was in charge. But I am not in favor of eating a corn dog at all, much less for dinner. No fewer than 3 places had changed their names/genres/focus. The focus seemed to be all on beer and bar instead of food, unfortunately.
At last, as we got closer to Grand Rapids, Joey’s Seafood appeared in our list of nearby restaurants. We both like Joey’s and even though its pricy, I didn’t care anymore. The hour was growing later and I still had a paper to finish write from scratch for my class, due before bedtime (I think I’ve written this same sentence before, hmm). The GPS is a little ahead and she starts saying “arriving at destination” about 500 feet before the driveway. A little confusion here as we don’t see a Joey’s but there was a blue sign (Joey’s has a blue & yellow theme) in front of the strip mall. Best we can tell, Joey’s is now an Asian Buffet. Which Chris was willing to eat at but I shot down, not wanting a meal of fried Chinese anymore than I wanted a fried hot dog (note to Chris: wedding, less than 1 month away, dress to fit less than 10 days away).
We traced back to what ended up being our “choice”, the national chain steakhouse. Honestly, my food was just fine and I had some tasty leftovers today. Chris was disappoined when his lobster tails tasted fishy and the rice pilaf was really just rice. I guess I’m spoiling him with the addition of the frozen mixed veggies at home. Also, we learned that while the ketchup bottle caps are cleaned nightly, the peanut buckets only get a wash once per week. Not that this knowledge stopped me from eating the peanuts: I’ve worked in commercial kitchens, I don’t scare that easily.
The pluses on the day: we found two quiet, secluded, sandy beaches for future reference. And, if we ever decide to open a boutique restaurant in Michigan, we know exactly which beach/resort town is most in dire need of our services.
On returning home, I did a little research. Seem’s Joey’s Seafood is a Canadian company and they never really hit it big here in the US and now the crappy economy has done them in, at least stateside. They did have two locations in Minneapolis (how Chris knew of them) and one in Michigan’s UP (my experience). The Twin Cities locatoins are gone but I couldn’t find a reference to the one in Houghton. It was there in May, packed with people and quite tasty too.
Good Food Hunting 