Some people are food snobs. You know the ones, they run to the newest restaurant opening, fawn over the hot local chef, eat things that should be used as bait. I have never been accused of being a food snob. I have, however, been accused of many other food offenses, and eating at gas stations is one of them.
I look at food a lot like I look at gas and, quite often, I eat where I fill up my tank. It’s convenient and I am usually at a gas station when it’s time to eat anyway. People who eat at gas stations fall on the opposite end of the food chain from epicurean snobbery. Gas station food carries no pretension, just carbs and grease and a decent amount of salt. In the Deep South they also sell sweet iced tea, and I suggest you get that whenever possible.
It’s been years since I ate at the Junior Food store gas station on the back road to the Gulf Coast from South Alabama. They made some of the best fried chicken I have ever eaten, and I have eaten more than my share. By the way, fried chicken is one of the staples of gas station dining, but not the only one. Like I said, get the sweet iced tea.
Many stations pour a sack of frozen, battered bird parts into boiling oil, chase them with tater logs and call it lunch. If a gas station sells such chicken tenders, they’re just pretending to be a serious highway eatery. I won’t go as far as to say a gas station can’t boil down some tasty version of these tenders, but real gas station cooks sell birds with seasoned crust on the outside and bones on the inside. Look for the bones and you are starting to follow the gourmet gas station road. And look for the sweet iced tea.
On East Market Street in Charlottesville, Virginia, there is a gourmet gas station that can compete with just about any serious gourmet establishment that doesn’t have pumps out front. Fuel Co. is not exactly your run-up-the-off-ramp, gas-and-gut-bomb rest stop. It is a totally new dining experience. If you’re ever in Whoville, check it out.
I am not including the Shell stations with Subways tucked in the corner or the Sheetz with those gooey cheese fries. When I judge a gas station’s food, I look for a terse woman behind a counter with a chip on her shoulder. If you ask her, “Is your chicken good? or “How’s your hamburgers?” “Do you make your ham biscuits from scratch?”; if her response isn’t a little scary and tinged with an attitude that oozes, “I know I look 65 and am wearing an unflattering hairnet and an ill-fitting uniform and have a few clogged arteries and this may look like the worst job in the world to you, but I worked my considerable butt off since three hours before you took your first pee this morning and I am liable to jump this counter and plant these greasy Reeboks I got on sale at Wal-Mart about six inches up your scrawny colon if you ask me again if the food I have slaved over is good.”
She might not give you a first chance, much less a second. Just do yourself a favor and look for bones in the chicken and dive on into any other items on her scrawled menu that strike your fancy. Or she may strike more than your fancy.
In a small town Southern gas station eatery I saw a sign once that read: “This ain’t Burger King. Here you will get a Wandaburger. You won’t get it your way, you’ll get it my way, or you won’t get the damned thing.” The Wandaburger was mighty tasty.
I ate at a roadside gas station restaurant in Texas in the 1980s. During the day, they sold gas and lunch. At night, it was a “beer and a beating for two bucks” kind of joint. I ordered the chicken fried steak sandwich and made the mistake of not ordering the owner’s iced tea.
“I’ll have a Dr Pepper,” I said.
The big-jowled, red-face, Crisco-stained, Popeye-forearmed, iced-tea-pitcher-toting owner stood poking a hole through my face with a furrowed stare. He tapped his iced tea pitcher and leaned in so I could smell that he’d broken a good sweat cooking and serving and ringing up gas and Redman and lunch.
“What’s wrong with my iced tea?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just in the mood for a Dr Pepper.”
“So you think Dr Pepper makes a better beverage than my iced tea?” he got louder.
“No,” I answered. “I just see that you have Dr Pepper and I want one.”
“I have a baseball bat behind the counter over there, ” he said with a little smile that I knew was not a smile at all but a hypocritical frown and maybe a warning. “You want some of that too?”
“I think I’d like a big glass of your sweet iced tea,” I said. I really didn’t need to test his sincerity or skill with that bat over iced tea.
“Sweet iced tea is the only kind there is,” he said pouring a big cup full. “Wise choice, sir. And for you, it’s an extra large and it’s on the house.”
I thanked him, wondering if he was joking or if I had actually come that close to a Louisville lunch upside my head.
I leaned over and sure enough, right below his cash register was a baseball bat with more than a few forehead-sized dents in it.
It was the best iced tea I ever drank.
