Michigan’s Best Local Eats: Downtown Kalamazoo café serves up lunch for under $10 - MLive.com

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KALAMAZOO, MI – Looking for a quick lunch in downtown Kalamazoo? Totally Brewed Café has the answer.

The downtown café features sack lunches, soups and salads that allow customers to get their orders quickly, but that doesn’t mean the service suffers.

“We try to get to know people,” co-owner Laurie East said. “It just makes it nicer to go into a place.”

East co-owns Totally Brewed Café, 151 S. Rose St., with her sister, Shirlee Gernaat. They took over the restaurant in 2006.

Many customers are regulars who East knows. People working at local businesses stop by for lunch and since people started working from home with the coronavirus pandemic, customers also include residents of nearby apartment complexes.

East is at the café every day, while her sister mostly works behind the scenes. One of East’s nieces who used to be brought into the restaurant in a car seat, worked there for a year, she said.

“This has been a family business,” East said.

The café has plenty of great lunch options, with nearly all of them under $10.

Sandwiches at Totally Brewed are made with bread from Renzema’s Bakery, making a ham or turkey sandwich taste that much better, East said.

Egg salad and chicken salad sandwiches are some of the best sellers.

A Cup of Wonder, chicken salad topped with Cherry Berry Nut Mix – dried cherries, cranberries, blueberries and almonds – is another best seller. The café added it to its menu after a customer asked for the chicken salad topped with that nut mix

House-made white chicken chili is also a fan favorite.

Grilled cheese and tomato soup ($9.49) Thursdays are always popular this time of year, East said. Weiner Wednesdays and Taco Salad Tuesdays are popular year-round, she said.

A sack lunch includes a whole sandwich, chips, cookie and pickle for $8.60.

Soup options change daily but cover a wide variety, including chicken dumplings, chophouse potato, corn chowder, butternut squash bisque and broccoli cheddar.

A cup of soup is $4.54, while a bowl is $6.64. A cup of soup with a half sandwich is $8.69, while a bowl of soup and a whole sandwich is $12.88.

Porky mac – pulled pork on top of white cheddar macaroni and cheese – is also available by the cup or bowl. A sloppy joe with coleslaw made with a family recipe is another popular item.

The café also offers a full espresso bar and brewed coffee. They can make everything from mochas to lattes to café au lait.

Breakfast sandwiches and burritos are available in the mornings. As with lunch, the offerings are designed to be quick, so there’s no made to order plates of bacon and eggs, East said.

East also tries to have a sweets option available daily, from house-made Rice Krispie treats, to no bake cookies to scones and cinnamon rolls.

Herbed pretzel sticks seasoned at the café are also a popular side people get with their lunch.

Totally Brewed Café is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.

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Michigan’s Best Local Eats: Downtown Kalamazoo café serves up lunch for under $10 - MLive.com
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