Fried Chicken, Potato wedges and those sweetened Hawaiian rolls
Why even consider anything else?
No need to shudder if you’re on Hwy 191 near Gallatin Gateway, Montana. Stop in at the Gourmet Gas Station which actually deserves its name. (Truly - it’s a commendable place for dinner.) They claim to be in Bozeman, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
Pizza Pockets and corny dogs!
Around these parts, we have Pilot Truck Stops. We love Pilot.
Reason one: their fountain soda machines. They have “flavor shots” you can add to your soft drink of choice. Vanilla, cherry, lemon and maybe something else I can’t remember. But you can get a Diet Pepsi with all the Vanilla you want! Mmmmm, refreshing!
Also, they have those “hot dog rollers” with all kinds of nasty food in them. In the morning, they have “French Toast” wrapped around a breakfast sausage. Oh, and the French Toast is syrup-flavored, too. Two of those bad boys for $2.00. You can almost feel your arteries hardening! But damn! That’s good eatin’!
I’ve always been a fan of $.99 44oz drinks, especially when you can make a cocktail of all the “NOW WITH MORE ENERGY” ones they have on tap. Course, my teeth hurt afterwards, but no matter…
A friend once said to me, "If you had bacon that tasted like popcorn, you’d say ‘That’s terrible bacon.’ But if you had popcorn that tasted like popcorn, you’d say ‘That’s good popcorn.’ So don’t think of AM/PM food as hamburgers. They won’t taste right.
Think of them as Barfy Burgers. And they’ll taste exactly like Barfy Burgers."
We actually got the graveyard shift attendant to start calling them that.
Until he accidentally called 'em Barfies in front of a customer.
Me neither. The random curly hairs on the burgers and bandaids on the dogs are a big turnoff.
Fun Dip! Also, assorted candy you can’t get anywhere but at gas stations. Mostly Fun Dip, though.
Thats my fav as well.
they are just so damn nasty I can’t resist em
Never in my life had I heard of boiled peanuts. I had to look it up in case it meant something different.
Remember that shooting spree in Northern Washington a few months ago? The Shell station at Exit 240 where one or two of the victims were killed has really good 1/4-lb. hot dogs. I don’t know if they’re ‘roller’ dogs or not; they’re in the bun and wrapped in foil in the hot bin. That lets the grease soak into the bun. I like them with no condiments. AND by the time I get there they’re 1/2 price. They also have these sausage things in the morning. They’re roughly hot dog-shaped, and contain sausage, eggs, and cheese. They taste deep-fried.
My local gas station/mini-mart has a patty version of the sausage things. (Both places also offer a ham version.) Their fried chicken is very good, and they have ‘chicken fries’ – frenched chicken breast meat, battered and deep-fried. They have the typical mini-mart burgers, but if you want to wait 15 minutes they’ll make better ones (bigger patties, lettuce, tomato, onions).
It’s not in the spirit of the thread, but there’s a famous gas station near Lee Vining and Mono Lake that has pretty great food. The fish tacos are killer, and this comes from a guy who’s eaten a couple of hundred fish tacos in Baja.
There’s also a trapeze out front.
My quickiemart + gas station fave: The 2 for $2 roller dogs with more jalapenos piled on top than there is dog. Awesome. The jalapenos will kill whatever evil lurks in the dogs.
This next one probably doesn’t qualify under the strict terms of the OP, but …
We have one nearby quickiemart / gas station which has an attached eatery. It started out as an A&W; great root beer, too bad about the food.
The A&W died & was replaced by an awesome Cajun place run by two real Cajuns. I could eat there, and eat well, daily. The atmosphere is A&W-in-a-Phillips-station; the eatin’ is down home bayou awesome.
Once again I have to point out the major failing of US culture (apart from their inability to adopt Rugby League) - the absence of the savoury pie in their diet. Every service station within hundreds of kilometers of me has Mrs Macs Pies and although they are not great pies that are pretty damn good for the weary traveller.
I’ve recently become addicted to Little Debbie Apple Pies. I don’t much like the rest of their product line (which are mostly cheap - and cheap-tasting - knockoffs of other company’s products), but the apple pies are DA BOMB.
They’re tough to find, though. Other Little Debbie products are sold in multipacks in supermarkets, but not the pies. So I am usually getting a few at a time when I find them, which is in gas stations.
Can we agree Sheetz doesn’t count? Too close to real food (although it’s not; it’s “foodz”).
The last time I bought one of those things, one clerk turned to the other and said, “See? I told you somebody must buy those things!”
When in the US - 7-11 roller hot dogs/taquitos – They aren’t old, they’re aged and slow-cooked.
Here - Umeboshi onigiri (pickled plum goo wrapped in rice and nori), Oden (if it can be boiled and left on the counter for probably weeks in broth, it’s oden), yakitori (kabobs, basically), and corn dogs if I’m feelin nasty.
When I was little, no trip to the gas station was complete unless I got a Handi-snack and a Sno-ball (I think that is how they were spelled). You know, the cheese-and-cracker packets and the disgusting marshmallow, chocolate cake, and pink coconut monstrosities. Why were they pink?!
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
Homemade fried apple or peach pies. Fresh. Ya gotta be there when they’re delivered, or else they’ll sit under that infrared light all day and get stale.
Also, be aware that this may be a separate purchase from the normal gas station fare, since an old Gramma probably has a deal going with the station proprietor.
Quasi