Arcadia Brewing Company

If you were traveling and stopped for lunch which would you choose, a place that you have been to and liked or a place that you have never been to but has the potential to be much better than the place you know.  This was a choice I had when traveling through Battle Creek recently.  The choice was made a little easier, I felt, because I was choosing between a coffee shop/cafe and a brew pub.  Even if you don't even consider what you might have to drink, I think that the decision was fairly easy.  While I like the coffee shop and will probably be back, the food served there is fairly light while in general, the food served in a brew pub is much more hearty and I was in the mood for a meal so Arcadia Brewing Company it was.  When I walked in, while there were a few people there, I was a little unsure if the place was open but I was quickly greeted and took a seat at the bar.  The space, while large and very open, looks like it was built out of the brewery/bottling plant that is next door.  The ceiling is unfinished and the floor is cement.  The bar, tables and booths all look like something that you might see in an English pub, but because the floor was cement, the ceiling was unfinished, and there was a window that looked into the brewery/bottling plant, it looked as if they cleared an area in the factory and set everything there.  Despite looking unfinished though, the staff were very friendly and the beer is very good.  I tried their Thunder Trail ESB and their Sky High Rye.

For my meal, I started with a dish that really reminded me of poutine.  They didn't call it poutine but that was what it reminded me of.  The dish consisted of Fried Potatoes topped with Bacon Jam, Jalapenos, and Cheddar Cheese.  It was a heart attack on a plate and it was awesome. The potatoes were fried to perfect tenderness.  The bacon jam was on the sweet side as a jam might be expected to be but it was savory and chunky and really good.  The jalapenos provided a nice fire to the dish and while there were enough to keep things pretty spicy, there weren't so many that it was like eating fire. The dish was not precisely a classic poutine because it used fried potatoes instead of french fries and shredded cheese instead of cheese curds but it was close enough that it might as well have been called poutine. 

I continued with a Breakfast Pizza.  What is a breakfast pizza?  It was a Pizza with Sausage and Mozzarella Cheese, topped with Fried Eggs, and sprinkled with Chives.  The crust was very thin and cracker crisp and with the sausage, cheese, and six eggs on it, it was much more than I was going to be able to eat in one sitting.  I ended up taking half of it home with me and it traveled petty well.

I really enjoyed my time at Arcadia.  It was a good place to spend some time having some good food and beer while waiting for the train.  It will definitely become for me a stopping place on the way back to Chicago.