I road tripped across VA in search of the best gas station food

“Eat here and get gas”: the saying classically used to demonstrate to children how important commas are. To Southerners, however, the saying is more common.

Independent, small businesses will serve food out of gas stations, and I’m not talking about Wawa or Sheetz. Real gas station dining is not from a chain, and this food can be locally, or nationally, lauded. People flock to these places to eat hamburgers just as frequently as people come to pump gas.

This horrifies my Northern raised mother. Apparently in the North, gas stations are not made for the gourmet, and they’re certainly not places respectable people eat. Sure, they’ll eat there if they’re practically starving, or if they’re on road trips and don’t feel like stopping too long to eat at a full fledged restaurant. Food served from gas stations is seen somehow as dirty or plain ol’ yucky.

Obviously some gas station food is gross. But it isn’t all bad. My sister, father and I went on a mini road trip to sample some of the best gas station food the Southern Shenandoah Valley has to offer.

Mac’s

Mac’s

First stop, a place called Mac’s. Saveur, a food publication, has accredited this backwoods gas station as having some of the best fried chicken in America. Mac’s was in the middle of nowhere. It had a creaky floor and sticky tablecloths. But the chicken was delicious. According to my father, it was “meaty and moist, with a touch of spice.”

My favorite thing about the place was that someone could purchase 300 pieces of fried chicken for the reasonable price of $330. It must be good if there was enough demand for such large orders that they put it on the menu display.

Moore’s Country Store

The next gas station was Moore’s Country Store. This place had the most diners, and seemed to be extremely popular. They were famous for their hot dogs, served with mustard, onion, slaw and chili. Considering it only cost $1.69, it was delicious and just spicy enough.

We also tried some macaroni and cheese. It was average, so I did what any good Southern chef would do: take it home to fry like a chicken. Your arteries haven’t truly been clogged until they’ve been clogged by macaroni and cheese fried in butter.

Moore’s had the widest menu selection, which included oyster stew. Word from the wise – don’t eat oyster stew during off-season in the middle of the mountains. Go for the hot dog.

Kelley’s Food & Gas

The next gas station, Kelly’s, was…interesting? The servers were extremely friendly. They called everyone “honey” and the like and sang together. However, the onion rings we purchased were nothing to write home about, the hamburgers did not look special and when you turned the lights on in the bathroom, it sounded like a train. We bought a lottery ticket here, but we didn’t win.

Shady’s Place

The final stop was a place called Shady’s. Shady’s was shady in the most literal sense – it was rather dark inside. We got a pork BBQ sandwich with coleslaw for $3.85. I loved it. The BBQ was exquisite and one barely noticed the factory, mass-produced bun it was served on.

True to rural Southern style, half of the patrons were barefoot. I don’t know about “no shirt,” but no shoes and you still get service. We ran into the problem of too little seating here. Unlike other places which had plenty of tables, Shady’s only had one splintering picnic table out back by the propane tank and a wasp nest. This gas station dining was perhaps better as take out.

Apologies to all the health conscious or gluten free folks, but we did not encounter a single gluten free thing in these gas stations. Even the potato fries we consumed at Moore’s were battered.

Gas stations don’t serve the healthiest of foods. They don’t have wait staff to wipe down tables between patrons and the place can (shockingly) smell of gas, which isn’t always conducive to pleasant culinary experiences. Sometimes it is more tempting to buy the familiar, prepackaged snack food instead of whatever is being served from behind the counter.

But gas station dining is worth trying. Besides the blaring convenience of being able to refuel your car and your body in one stop, some places do have really good food. These businesses follow health codes and employees need to wash their hands, meaning there is nothing inherently dirty or dangerous about the food.

Eating at a gas station is a whole different atmosphere than eating at a traditional restaurant – there are often more truckers and farm laborers, you are eating in the middle of a store and there are different smells and sounds. It is fast paced, inexpensive and has a much wider beverage selection than any restaurant I’ve encountered.

Although for each place we stopped, there were probably six other gas stations serving food, our appetites weren’t limitless. The South is crawling with these spots, and some are definitely worth stopping for. So grab a friend and an appetite larger than a woolly mammoth on steroids, leave your gluten free buddies at home and road trip across the South gorging yourself on marvelously fatty, greasy, flavorful gas station food.