I can imagine the horror on many people's faces @ the idea of getting lunch/ dinner @ some grungy looking gas station. But growing up in the south, & having a lot of experience traveling all over the south by car, I can really appreciate this.
These type of places are everywhere. You will have to mingle with some interesting local clientele, but if you can get past the rough facade, you can really find some true gems.
It's easy to pass them up without giving it a second thought. It can be a risk, & sometimes you'll get burnt. But if you have a little sense of adventure, it can pay off big time.
When I was traveling a lot for an old job all around the south, it became a game of mine to try and find the best side of the road food I could. If I resorted to chain fast food on my way home, I considered it a failure.
This article really captures the energy of these type of establishments. And to be fair, it doesn't have to be a gas station
. Tons of fantastic BBQ or 'meat & threes' are sprinkiled all over if you keep your eyes peeled.
I had some really great meals, & got a nice dose of culture along the way.
For those in the Bay Area, a pretty great local spot is The Junction, out in the wilderness between San Jose and...Livermore. Take 130 east out of SJ over some pretty rustic and gorgeous hill country, past the observatory, and eventually you get to this wooden shack where you can get some good homecooked mac n cheese from a tray, homemade hot sauces, etc, play some horseshoes out front, and generally forget you're a quick drive back to the valley of scrum
I've spent a bunch of time travelling through these places for work. I'm vegan and surprise surprise there is almost nothing I can eat. All the veges have either meat or dairy or both.
Good thing is often they will have a tin of beans on the shelf for sale and some hot sauce, so I never went hungry.
Also really nice folk literally 100% of the time. You won't find that in the cities.
Bonus note - i'm a foreigner and it never made any difference, I was always treated the same as everyone else.
I grew up in the South and ate at little hole in the wall BBQ places all the time. Never saw any outright discrimination. Many establishments were owned and and operated by black people. I must say cuisine is one of the few uniting features of the south. The racism is still there, but it is quieter, subtle, and behind closed doors most of the time. It’s very sneaky and many people miss it.
I’m sorry for your experience, that seems painful.
I’ve has the opposite. I grew up in the south as an underrepresented minority and I found the gas station / food shack food culture to be really inclusive and taking orders from anyone who had money.
Granted, I grew up after the civil rights act, so it was probably different under segregation.
I’ve only ever experienced “we don’t serve your kind around here” on tv and movies.
Unfortunately places like these are dying out the UK, from experience they seem to be failing to attract younger customers. They're also quite out of the way. As such, they put up their prices to compensate and start a death spiral until they can longer afford to stay open. A lot of older traditional pubs suffer the same fate.
My great grandparents and I would occasionally drive out to these places to enjoy a traditional Sunday roast, with little door-ways, a thatched roof and a wall filled with Sheffield steal / horse shoes / plates / other collectables. There we could trade old stories and enjoyed traditional English food to the point of becoming food comatose.
A tip to the serving staff wasn't expected, but it wast customary to give notes and tell the staff to keep the change. Often the food was so cheap that leaving the change didn't make much of a difference.
I have noticed a trend toward this in Sydney, Australia, where grocery stores and quality restaurants are abundant. However it is not local home cooked food.
Instead large multi-national petroleum companies seem to be turning their branded stations into quasi-restaurants and cafes.
These have always existed on highways (truck-stops), but now I am seeing them all over the inner-city and suburban areas.
There is a very strong chain of these in South Australia (OTR) owned by Peregrine Corp and the Shahin Family. It's a smart strategy, buying up prominent corner sites everywhere and spreading the offering beyond petrol/diesel/gas which you'd assume has a fading future.
I had a oil refinery client in the Louisiana swamp (Port Barre to be exact). They bought some software and I was there to train them and do the config. When it came time for lunch someone suggested Exxon. I asked if the Exxon refinery had an exceptional cafeteria or something, they clarified that it was the Exxon gas station up the road. We went and there I sat enjoying the best Cajun meal I have had to this day.
Rural counties in the Mississippi Delta average one grocery per 190 square miles...
Yes. This is the spot in Luca mentioned.[1] Nearest Wal-Mart Supercenter, #714, is less than 10 miles west. Two more about 20 miles east. That's why there are so few small grocery stores in those tiny towns.
Even counting Wal Mart as a grocer (and it is -- the biggest grocer, of course), if you drew a 190 sq mi rectangle centered on Lula, you wouldn't hit any of those Wal Marts.
Born and raised right across The River from Lula. I remember when Walmart was just Walmart--the Supercenters with groceries didn't exist yet--and there were many more grocery stores. Some regional chains and some mom-and-pop type places with charge accounts. There was a liquor store/grocery not far from my childhood home where my family had a charge account. My mom would charge to the account to get cash sometimes, and we had a good relationship with the owners. Then Walmart opened the Supercenter on the other side of town.
The groceries and "main street businesses" shuttered one-by-one as the Supercenter's bargain-basement prices claimed more business, despite the absence of public transportation in that little Delta town. Today the options are Walmart, the last regional-chain grocery store in the shopping center next to Walmart, or the dollar stores that regularly sprout up along the main thoroughfares in the area. The latter only carry freezer items, canned goods, milk and eggs--no fresh produce, except for the bananas, apples, and oranges next to the register if you're lucky.
The place continues to be a food desert, but this article really hits home. I've been to 50% of the places mentioned, and many more besides. The best fried chicken is always found in gas stations.
There’s a category of restaurants, common in the south, where a customer picks a type of meat and three vegetables at a certain price. Commonly served cafeteria style.
It usually means the food is cooked in large portions throughout the day and served in single portions.
Fun side effect, many in my large southern city are now owned and operated by Chinese and Vietnamese families. It’s neat seeing a southern tradition carried on by a new set of people. Reminds me of how many Mexican restaurants in Manhattan in 2000 were run by Chinese families.
At the corner of Post Road and Mason Mill Road just west of Douglasville, Georgia near the county line separating Douglas and Carroll counties lives a Shell Station that fits description of those beloved gas stations in this article. I stop there regularly for a variety of reasons. The windows have a thick haze of years of fried chicken grease, engine grease, and daily abuse. It doesn't matter much though because windows are so plastered over with posters for lost dogs, fish frys, and general advertisements. You can get the quality Shell gasoline but you can also get diesel and off-road diesel because there is a demand for such a fuel here. You walk in and the hot food counter is steps away straight ahead, boiled peanuts immediately to your right at the register, snacks and Cokes to your left, and beer in the back corner. The coolers make loud humming noises but the Bud Light is always cold - sometimes so cold the condensation has frozen over again on the tab forcing you bend your fingernail backwards a little too much for comfort just to open it. On the hot food counter there's always fried chicken of some sort, usually bone in but at breakfast they have a patty to put on your biscuit. For breakfast I like to go for the sausage biscuits. The biscuits are as big around as the palm of your hand, maybe a little bigger. The sausage usually has sat a little too long to be considered "fresh" but the biscuits are so good that you don't even worry about that. Besides, the two packets of mustard that get smeared on top usually help. Fried okra is a lunch-time staple during the hottest times of the year and it pairs well with the fried chicken. In the South fried okra is a prized seasonal side item. Good fried okra isn't just good, it's outstanding. The clientele is a mix of construction, tradesmen and tradewomen, lawn care, school teachers, office workers, and various day laborers. The trades and construction folks are too busy to stand around and chit chat so if they seem a little hurried it's because they are. Most of them have to be in the city (Atlanta) by 7am to start their shift. If you want that Southern hospitality look for someone not in a hard hat or wearing a shirt patch with their name embroidered on it, or you can wait for the weekend. Regardless, in such a diverse group respect and congeniality is always shown.
Thanks for posting! This a wonderful article, accompanied by truly great photos, that reminds me of my days touring the south. Bitter Southernerner is killing it these days.
Similarly there are Mexican food shops in gas stations out west. When I was looking at the Fine Article and thinking about that I saw that one of the Southern foods at the shops was hot tamales. Out west it's mostly tacos, burritos and quesadillas and I don't even know if they have tamales.
In Canada, combination gas station/convenience store/fast food chain restaurants are pretty common. As a USian who's lived in New England and the Pacific Northwest, the first time I came across one was almost viscerally starting.
I've spent the last two months in rural Saskatchewan working on an AgTech project. The gas station/convenience/restaurant 8 miles away from here used to do an absolutely amazing Indian buffet (East Indian, not First Nations) on Fridays, but they stopped due to lack of demand from the locals. They still make great "standard fare" food like subs, sandwiches, salads, etc, but... man do I miss that buffet.
I can imagine the horror on many people's faces @ the idea of getting lunch/ dinner @ some grungy looking gas station. But growing up in the south, & having a lot of experience traveling all over the south by car, I can really appreciate this.
These type of places are everywhere. You will have to mingle with some interesting local clientele, but if you can get past the rough facade, you can really find some true gems.
It's easy to pass them up without giving it a second thought. It can be a risk, & sometimes you'll get burnt. But if you have a little sense of adventure, it can pay off big time.
When I was traveling a lot for an old job all around the south, it became a game of mine to try and find the best side of the road food I could. If I resorted to chain fast food on my way home, I considered it a failure.
This article really captures the energy of these type of establishments. And to be fair, it doesn't have to be a gas station . Tons of fantastic BBQ or 'meat & threes' are sprinkiled all over if you keep your eyes peeled.
I had some really great meals, & got a nice dose of culture along the way.