"I think it's important to surrender to situations that take you out of your comfort zone."
- Haley Bennett (American actress)
- Haley Bennett (American actress)
Crow's Nest
Kalamazoo, Michigan
AMBIENCE: I had a preconceived notion that the Crow's Nest would have an eye-catching nautical theme. I was wrong. The Crow's Nest is so named for being on the second store of a two story building.
My understanding is that there is some kind of business relationship between the Crow's Nest and the 24 hour coffeehouse on the first floor called the Fourth Coast Cafe. They do share a common front door. You don't have to hoist yourself up a mast to get to the Crow's Nest, just be able to navigate these stairs.
Once upstairs you enter a beautiful, nicely lit, and cozy dining room. The room only has about 12 tables. The wood floor, brick walls, and art work on the walls exude a clubby feel; the type of place where a jazz trio would feel at home. I checked the adornments on the walls. There was not one seafaring objet de'art that I could find.
We were seated next to the front window, providing a crow's nest view of the sunrise over the Vine neighborhood of Kalamazoo.
Land Ho! I think I see some terra firma!
AMBIENCE: I had a preconceived notion that the Crow's Nest would have an eye-catching nautical theme. I was wrong. The Crow's Nest is so named for being on the second store of a two story building.
My understanding is that there is some kind of business relationship between the Crow's Nest and the 24 hour coffeehouse on the first floor called the Fourth Coast Cafe. They do share a common front door. You don't have to hoist yourself up a mast to get to the Crow's Nest, just be able to navigate these stairs.
Once upstairs you enter a beautiful, nicely lit, and cozy dining room. The room only has about 12 tables. The wood floor, brick walls, and art work on the walls exude a clubby feel; the type of place where a jazz trio would feel at home. I checked the adornments on the walls. There was not one seafaring objet de'art that I could find.
We were seated next to the front window, providing a crow's nest view of the sunrise over the Vine neighborhood of Kalamazoo.
Land Ho! I think I see some terra firma!
5 out of 5 stars
FOOD: Aha! The menu did have three nautically named dishes: the Captain's Ration Omelette, the Queen Anne's Revenge (Blackbeard's ship), and the dish I ordered, the Master-at-Arms scramble. The Master-at-Arms was described as a mix of sausage, onion, bell pepper, garlic, cheddar cheese, sausage gravy, potato, and choice of toast (I chose rye).
The Master-at-Arms was as gargantuan as it was delicious. Pictured is not a shallow bowl. That scramble runs 2 or 3 inches deep. I first finished off the rye toast as I contemplated the task before me. I dug in and the taste was amazing. The sausage was perfectly spiced, the eggs perfectly cooked, the bell peppers tasted like they were picked the day before. The potatoes were cooked to perfection. The sausage gravy and cheddar cheese supplied the decadent experience you would expect. I started strong. It was so good.
Just over half way through, the meal started to feel like ballast in my bilge. I estimated that there was at least a half pound of sausage in the dish not including what was in the gravy and maybe 3 or 4 eggs. When our waitress came by to check up on us, I asked how many eggs? She said only two. No way! Were they ostrich eggs?
The taste buds were saying go,go,go. The stomach was saying no,no,no. I started to eat really slow, stirring what was left of the scramble hoping that would make it shrink. I was starting to sweat a little. The waitress came by again and I jokingly (well, semi-seriously) asked her if the management had trained her in CPR. She said no but that there was a index card pinned to the wall of the kitchen with instructions. It was time to quit. I threw in the white napkin.
Up until that morning, I had completely finished every breakfast I had ordered in the previous 27 state breakfast visits. I was an all-star member of the clean plate club. Not this morning. My comfort food zone had become uncomfortable. I had been defeated. I had surrendered.
The Healthy One who was back to her old ways, ordered yogurt and granola. The granola was made downstairs in the Fourth Coast Bakery. The organic Greek yogurt was topped with fresh blueberries. She also got a small cup of fruit and two ample pieces of banana nut bread with the order.
The yogurt tasted foreign to her. Certainly not like the smooth and creamy Chobani-like stuff she consumes by the gallons. She said it had both the consistency and taste of cream cheese. She was not very fond of it. I did a little research about this and discovered that if you take your conventional yogurt and let most of the whey drip away you get a yogurt that tastes and looks like cream cheese. I assume some people prefer their yogurt with less whey and would declare the Crow's Nest's version delicious. No whey is not the way the Healthy One likes it. It is only right that I not deduct any stars for the food because the Healthy One weighed in with a personal taste preference.
The banana bread, which came from the downstairs bakery, was taken with us to be eaten later in the day after I had recovered from the Sergeant-at-Arms. Consumed at 2 PM, it was delicious.
Just over half way through, the meal started to feel like ballast in my bilge. I estimated that there was at least a half pound of sausage in the dish not including what was in the gravy and maybe 3 or 4 eggs. When our waitress came by to check up on us, I asked how many eggs? She said only two. No way! Were they ostrich eggs?
The taste buds were saying go,go,go. The stomach was saying no,no,no. I started to eat really slow, stirring what was left of the scramble hoping that would make it shrink. I was starting to sweat a little. The waitress came by again and I jokingly (well, semi-seriously) asked her if the management had trained her in CPR. She said no but that there was a index card pinned to the wall of the kitchen with instructions. It was time to quit. I threw in the white napkin.
Up until that morning, I had completely finished every breakfast I had ordered in the previous 27 state breakfast visits. I was an all-star member of the clean plate club. Not this morning. My comfort food zone had become uncomfortable. I had been defeated. I had surrendered.
The Healthy One who was back to her old ways, ordered yogurt and granola. The granola was made downstairs in the Fourth Coast Bakery. The organic Greek yogurt was topped with fresh blueberries. She also got a small cup of fruit and two ample pieces of banana nut bread with the order.
The yogurt tasted foreign to her. Certainly not like the smooth and creamy Chobani-like stuff she consumes by the gallons. She said it had both the consistency and taste of cream cheese. She was not very fond of it. I did a little research about this and discovered that if you take your conventional yogurt and let most of the whey drip away you get a yogurt that tastes and looks like cream cheese. I assume some people prefer their yogurt with less whey and would declare the Crow's Nest's version delicious. No whey is not the way the Healthy One likes it. It is only right that I not deduct any stars for the food because the Healthy One weighed in with a personal taste preference.
The banana bread, which came from the downstairs bakery, was taken with us to be eaten later in the day after I had recovered from the Sergeant-at-Arms. Consumed at 2 PM, it was delicious.
5 out of 5 stars
COFFEE:
The coffee was pretty good, not your typical Midwestern hot coffee-flavored tap water. I bet the coffee shop one deck down from the restaurant had a lot to do with that.
4 out of 5 stars
SERVICE: Our server was wonderful. A real Kalamazoo pipperoo (only my mom may understand this word). She was pleasantly engaging and made sure we had a good experience. A ray of sunshine before the actual sun rose.
5 out of 5 stars
.
5 out of 5 stars
A FEW WORDS ABOUT KALAMAZOO:
Kalamazoo is a mid-sized city in southern Michigan with a population of just under 76,000. It is home to Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College. Once a big paper-making town, Kalamazoo like many Midwestern cities suffered enormous job losses beginning in the 1990s. The city also lost the headquarters of pharmaceutical maker UpJohn after a corporate buyout in 2000 and a large GM stamping plant closed its doors. The only export of real value seemed to be when the Yankees drafted Derek Jeter out of Kalamazoo Central High School in 1992.
The downtown area began to collapse, public school enrollment plummeted, the jobless rate soared and middle income families fled to the suburbs. Then a group of people came up with the brilliant idea that education was the key to economic rebirth. It was called the Kalamazoo Promise. The "promise" is that every graduating senior in Kalamazoo Public Schools, who had entered the school district in at least ninth grade, would have their tuition paid for at a select group of Michigan colleges and universities, regardless of need. The program began in 2005 and since then enrollment in Kalamazoo public schools has risen a dramatic 25%. The racial and income mix in neighborhoods have stabilized; no more white flight. Families are staying in the urban center and getting involved in community decisions. Not only that, jobs are returning to Kalamazoo. A better educated workforce is attracting firms from outside the region.
We walked around the downtown area on our way to dinner. Building construction was in progress along many streets. The number of restaurants, shops, and brew pubs filled with people on a Wednesday night was impressive. Blue Oyster Cult was even playing at a downtown theater! (It was a very interesting looking crowd we saw standing outside the theater during intermission).
So far the Kalamazoo Promise has paid out $90 million in tuition fees to 4,700 high school graduates. All the money is privately donated by individuals who insist on remaining anonymous.
Kalamazoo is a mid-sized city in southern Michigan with a population of just under 76,000. It is home to Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College. Once a big paper-making town, Kalamazoo like many Midwestern cities suffered enormous job losses beginning in the 1990s. The city also lost the headquarters of pharmaceutical maker UpJohn after a corporate buyout in 2000 and a large GM stamping plant closed its doors. The only export of real value seemed to be when the Yankees drafted Derek Jeter out of Kalamazoo Central High School in 1992.
The downtown area began to collapse, public school enrollment plummeted, the jobless rate soared and middle income families fled to the suburbs. Then a group of people came up with the brilliant idea that education was the key to economic rebirth. It was called the Kalamazoo Promise. The "promise" is that every graduating senior in Kalamazoo Public Schools, who had entered the school district in at least ninth grade, would have their tuition paid for at a select group of Michigan colleges and universities, regardless of need. The program began in 2005 and since then enrollment in Kalamazoo public schools has risen a dramatic 25%. The racial and income mix in neighborhoods have stabilized; no more white flight. Families are staying in the urban center and getting involved in community decisions. Not only that, jobs are returning to Kalamazoo. A better educated workforce is attracting firms from outside the region.
We walked around the downtown area on our way to dinner. Building construction was in progress along many streets. The number of restaurants, shops, and brew pubs filled with people on a Wednesday night was impressive. Blue Oyster Cult was even playing at a downtown theater! (It was a very interesting looking crowd we saw standing outside the theater during intermission).
So far the Kalamazoo Promise has paid out $90 million in tuition fees to 4,700 high school graduates. All the money is privately donated by individuals who insist on remaining anonymous.
BURN THOSE BREAKFAST CALORIES OFF:
The night before breakfast, we did quite a bit of walking through downtown Kalamazoo. After breakfast we drove to the Indiana Dunes State Park on the shores of Lake Michigan.where we did 4 1/2 hours of hiking. This was no walk on the beach. The dunes reach heights of 200 feet above the lake. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. Clearly seeing the Chicago skyline 35 miles in the distance from the top of a dune was a thrill.
The night before breakfast, we did quite a bit of walking through downtown Kalamazoo. After breakfast we drove to the Indiana Dunes State Park on the shores of Lake Michigan.where we did 4 1/2 hours of hiking. This was no walk on the beach. The dunes reach heights of 200 feet above the lake. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. Clearly seeing the Chicago skyline 35 miles in the distance from the top of a dune was a thrill.
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October 5, 2017
NEXT UP: Indiana
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