Gas station food
'Round here, we take it to the next level.
I was recently roadtripping in the upper Midwest for a yearly gathering of my fellow college newspaper editors, and my ride-along noted my overexcitement about gas station food.
“You’re gambling with your life, Wilson,” she said as I tucked into an egg salad sandwich from a Kwik Stop. “Show me where you keep your key fob, just in case this doesn’t end well.”
But my stomach is galvanized from decades of gas station eating. In the same way you may enjoy McDonald’s only after a kid’s game, or you only eat cake for birthdays, I claim the gas station for my meals on the road.
Anything-salad sandwiches are always the main thing. Tuna, egg, chicken—doesn’t matter. As long as it isn’t on a croissant, I’m in. My thinking is this: Croissants are best made by select bakeries. But plain old loaf bread is universal in texture and flavor, so I know I’m getting baseline. I check the freshness date, because I’m not a daredevil, but that’s about the end of my concern. I don’t buy turkey sandwiches, or ham. Most cold meats gross me out, truth be told. Either I’m eating like an eighty-year-old grandpa with my tuna salad sandwich, or I’m moving on.
To another part of the cold case, that is. I can cobble together a nice charcuterie board of cheeses and sausages. I am often pleased to find local stuff for this. Nitrate-infused salami is the only cold meat I do like, because at least it feels honest with all its warnings on the label. Add some crackers from the shelf-stable area, and you’re done.
If none of the above is available, I’m going for the roller hot dog, and no, I won’t apologize.
For a side, I’ll pick up a banana if there is one, but avoid the apples, which are usually Red Delicious and almost always mealy. I may eat in gas stations, but I do have some standards. I’ll also take cheesy popcorn, but I don’t like the mess. A friend recently told me that some gamers eat cheesy snacks with chopsticks to keep their fingers clean, and this makes sense to me. Will try.
For me, car drinks are best served hot, no matter the temperature outside. Since I’m usually the driver on a roadtrip, it’s coffee for me. And wasn’t it so great when they started having those little grinding machines? I just love that. My personal mix is 3/4 dark roast coffee and 1/4 dealer’s choice from the cappuccino machine. Just tell the person at the counter so you keep it honest, and I’ve never had someone charge me extra for this move. But trust me, it’s way better than using those single servings of creamer. My friend gets iced coffee, heavy on the ice, so it melts and feels like drinking dressed-up water. I invite you to share your gas station coffee fetish, because I know for a fact that you have one if you are still reading.
Dessert, you ask? I’m all over the board here, mostly because dessert is often where the locals get in on the game. In Iowa at least, you will almost always find a local dessert option in the gas station. I’m talking homemade caramels, flavored popcorn, cookies, brownies. Get anywhere near the Amana Colonies, and you’ll probably find a slice of fresh pie in a clamshell for the road. (You can reuse that clamshell to pack your bar soap next time. I just made that up, but I think I might try it, because without a bar of White Dial, my natural deodorant doesn’t work worth a damn.)
Anyway, if the cosmos aren’t aligned and there’s not a local option for dessert, I’ll find an obscure candy that I don’t normally see at the grocery store. That’s generally French burnt peanuts if they have them. For the unbaptized, these look like artificial mulberries made with Red Dye No. 5. They are possibly labeled “burnt” because they have been bubbled and blistered in a nuclear furnace. All entirely worth it for the illusion of a protein-heavy dessert, which makes this choice feel justified.
In these politically charged times, gas station dining is the true equalizer, if you ask me. If you drive a car to your vacation destination this summer—which I highly suggest, because the airlines definitely don’t have it together—you will need gas. And if you’re on the road for a few days, a melty cooler doesn’t make sense, and neither does the intestinal bomb drop of eating fast food multiple times a day. But you can pay Donna, who lives up the road from the gas station, to make you a nice sandwich and a cookie. That’s America!
Now get on out there and enjoy your tuna salad with its thin, anemic tomato and chewy flap of lettuce. I assure you, it’ll be more satisfying than the continental breakfast at your hotel, and far more entertaining.
I never properly considered the gas station food options until 1) I took my son to Iceland, where eating in the gas station is one of the best values going, and 2) I road-tripped with you.
Fun post! No mention of Casey’s breakfast pizza?