555. Tipping Point Theatre – April 16, 2022 – Northville, MI

Tipping Point Theatre, weaving the magic of story into my Saturday afternoon!

Is there anything more compelling than live theater when it’s done right? Being able to attend plays again since COVID happened has been such a treat for me. So I was excited to experience a production of The Baxter Sisters at this community theater in downtown Northville.

The experience was wonderful! The Baxter Sisters was a moving tale of four sisters from small-town Michigan attempting to make it big on the dance circuit of the 1930s – until the tragedies and realities of life lead them down different paths. While I’m sure every seat in Tipping Point’s intimate, 100-seat theater is a good one, I felt especially fortunate to be seated in the first row facing the front of the stage – front and center to the singing, dancing, and drama!

Tipping Point Theatre is a non-profit community theater that started in 2007. Check its site for tickets to upcoming performances, and experience the magic yourself!

361 E. Cady St.

Northville, MI 48167

www.tippingpointtheatre.com

554. Browndog Barlor & Restaurant – April 16, 2022 – Northville, MI

When in Rome – or Browndog Barlor of downtown Northville – savor a Drunken Muppet.

The Drunken Muppet is a drink, not an inebriated puppet – a boozy milkshake, to be exact. It’s a delightful concoction of Browndog Creamery’s Kookie for Cookies ice cream, chocolate vodka, and chocolate liqueur, topped with house-made whipped cream and cookie pieces. The ice cream gives it a minty-blue hue.

Kookie for Cookies is not your typical cookies-and-cream ice cream. Not only is it dyed blue, it’s also got the cookie factor times three. This ice cream is infused with chunks of cookie dough, chocolate-sandwich cookies, and house-made chocolate-chip cookies!

I didn’t walk up to the bar of Browndog Barlor and order one of those Kookie for Cookies milkshakes. I ordered a Mocha Under the Influence, an intriguing concoction of chocolate ice cream and espresso-infused vodka (I almost never pass up a chocolate option on a dessert menu!). But somehow my order got lost in translation, and I was brought the Kookie for Cookies. Hence the “when in Rome” aspect of this visit to Browndog. I couldn’t bring myself to waste a perfectly good milkshake!

And good it was. The Kookie for Cookies was decadently creamy; it went down so very easy. Boozy milkshakes are dangerous in that they belong to that category of drink that makes you oblivious to how much alcohol you’re consuming. I didn’t leave Browndog Barlor bombed, by any means, but I did have a good little buzz going.

Browndog serves more than just boozy milkshakes crafted with its artisan ice cream. It also features a full food menu with hearty fare such as tacos, burgers, and sandwiches. Brunch is served on Saturdays and Sundays, and scoops of Browndog’s signature flavors are always available, as are pints to go.

And Browndog isn’t skimping on the flavor varieties! The current ice cream menu includes six ice creams made in conjunction with Faygo (the Rock & Rye varietal, Choc & Rye, with its swirls of fudge and brownie pieces, beckons my childhood self!). Other options are as varied as Flowers & Figs (featuring lavender, fig jam, and honey) and Fruity Cereal Milk (described on Browndog’s site as “White chocolate covered Fruity Pebbles are hand mixed into a Fruity Pebble steeped cereal milk ice cream.”). A cornucopia of choices awaits you and your own “when in Rome” moment!

120 E. Main St.

Northville, MI 48167

(With an additional location in Farmington)

www.browndogcreamery.com

177. Center Street Grille – June 12, 2016 – Northville, MI

Happy Fourth, all! For those of you in the U.S., whether you’re kicking it in the backyard or out on the road exploring, I hope you’re having a relaxing and enjoyable holiday weekend. Me, I’ve stayed pretty close to home. I’ll be attending my third barbeque in a row tonight, this one at my dad’s house.

I’m soooo appreciating having three days off in a row to recharge and enjoy this excellent weather we’ve been having! Still, I am itching to explore. Next week, there will be some of that on the docket, for sure. I’ve been so busy working two jobs lately that I haven’t gotten out as much as I’d like. Wah wah. But several weekends ago, I did trek out to Northville to meet some friends.

If you haven’t been to downtown Northville yet, please go! It’s the perfect summer weekend destination, a delightful little city center filled with interesting, explore-worthy establishments. There’s artsy shops and a juice bar and Next Chapter Bookstore, the rare indie book peddler. And of course, restaurants. This time we ate at Center Street Grille, a sleek new sports bar.

I appreciate a good sports bar. Sure, I enjoy dining at fancy restaurants, but I realized recently that I prefer eating at a solid watering hole to a snooty-snooty, here’s-your-dollop-of-artfully-arranged-food-you’ll-pay-$40-for-and-leave-hungry type of place. Belies my blue-collar roots, I guess. At Center Street, I had the Mediterranean sandwich, a delicious chicken wrap studded with flavorful feta and smothered in hummus. My friends’ meals included the goat cheese appetizer and pizza; they enjoyed both. The service was attentive, the ambiance polished, subdued, down-to-earth.

135 North Center St.
Northville, MI 48167

144. Urge Juice – September 27, 2015 – Northville, MI

Photo of Urge Juice’s offerings from its website, http://www.urgejuice.com. Honestly, my juice was so delicious that I gulped it down before I even remembered to take a photo of it!

I’m massively behind on this blog, to a shameful proportion. Confession: I used to do much of this writing during the downtime at my previous two office jobs, which had a lot of lulls to take advantage of. This July, I got a new job, working for a company I respect and with a huge workload attached to my role – but not much time for slacking aka gloriously writing of my exploits around the Tri-County area. So until my other blog, A Cookable Feast, takes off – or possibly this one? – and my dreams of being a food blogger-entrepreneur are realized (still a far-off pursuit, but someday!), my creative pursuits need to be smushed into my life wherever they can. I just need to get better at the smushing. Anywho, I’m going to stuff my sorries in a sack (Seinfeld reference!) and carry on with the task at hand: writing about the gloriously delicious offerings of Urge Juice. The company has a location in downtown Northville, which I visited on a gorgeously warm Sunday earlier this fall. There is also a Berkley location, and, I found out from visiting their website, they also sell their juices at both the Royal Oak and Birmingham farmers’ markets.

The juice is $10, so at first you’re kind of like, “Whatttttt? Ten dollars for juice? DubTF? But then you learn, it’s cold-pressed raw organic juice chock-full of amazing vitamins, and it’s in this huge glass bottle, and it’s tasty as all get-out. The one I tried, Let the Beet Drop, was incredible, and it was simply a mixture of juice from beets, carrots, apples, and lemons. Who knew that beet juice could be so tantalizing?

137 E. Main St.

Northville, MI 48167

(also a Berkley location)

www.urgejuice.com

143. Poole’s Tavern – September 27, 2015 – Northville, MI

Northville is the kind of cutesy little town that is perfect to explore on a beautiful fall afternoon; it’s like a Metro-Detroit version of Star’s Hollow (shout-out to my fellow Gilmore Girls fanatics!). But even the most bro-sy of bros will appreciate Poole’s Tavern. It’s got a great patio (it was still gorgeously warm when I was there a few weeks ago! RIP, warm weather, RIP) and bar food that extends beyond the usual fare (I enjoyed a dish of steak tips, hummus, and pita bread).

157 E. Main St.

Northville, MI 48167

poolestavern.com

70. Healthy Jones – October 6, 2014 – Northville, MI

A display of organic skincare products sold at Healthy Jones.

Health store focusing on natural, organic products (a great interest of mine).

114 W. Main St.

Northville, MI 48167

http://www.healthyjones.com

69. Urban Pearl – October 6, 2016 – Northville, MI

This is a super-cute shop featuring the work of Michigan artists – hand-crafted greeting cards, candles, t-shirts, beautiful pottery ware, Detroit-themed artwork, and more. I took pictures, but then the owner told me pictures aren’t allowed; the artists are worried about people taking them with the intent of copying their work. So I can show you a picture of the lovely four-pack of Michigan-themed notecards that I got, instead.

120 E. Main St.
Northville, MI

http://theurbanpearlgallery.com

68. Next Chapter Bookstore – October 6, 2014 – Northville, MI

Spent my 30th birthday as a lovely shopping day with my mother in downtown Northville. What an adorable town! This was my first time there, and I loved it. First stop was The Next Chapter Bookstore. I’d been wanting to go there ever since I heard about it years ago, in some news mention that Scream 4 was filming there. I love independent bookstores, and we don’t have enough in the area.

The shop was much smaller than I expected. It’s definitely not a full-blown bookstore; rather, it seems to focus on hand-picking titles. Every book is prominently displayed, and there are only a few copies of each out at one time. At first I was disappointed by the lack of selection, but then I came to appreciate the intention: to make the visitor ponder each of the titles that have been carefully chosen.

There’s a cute café that serves coffee and food inside the store, and some gift items, as well.

Side note: Apparently Northville is located on the border of both Oakland and Wayne counties and so has parts located in both. I tried researching online to figure out if more of it was in one county than the other but couldn’t get a clear answer. For the purpose of counting places visited per county for this blog, I’m counting it toward Oakland County. But I’m categorizing Northville posts in both the Oakland County and Wayne County categories.

141 East Main St.

Northville, MI 48167

http://www.readnextchapterbooks.com