Dip Recipes

In some cities, the local gas station doubles as a boutique bottle shop, with wines and craft beers by small producers My dad is the kind of old-school character who arrives four hours ahead of departure time for a domestic flight from Miami to New York. All of his bills are paid via paper check, which he drops off in person. And, naturally, he’s a big believer in going into the gas station to pay the clerk directly before filling his tank with gas, putting zero trust in the card machines out by the pumps. And so, when I was home in Miami a couple of months ago, he didn’t even have to ask before I marched into the Mobil station on the corner of Coral Way and 32nd Avenue to ask the clerk to fill us up at number four. But when I opened the door, I had to take a beat to marvel at the collection of wines lining the metal racks inside. On shelves, next to six-packs of Corona Light and local plantain chips, were the wines I used to sell at the small, natural-focused New York wine sho...

From Buc-ee’s Beaver Nuggets to 7-Eleven Spam musubi Whether we’re hitting them up during a marathon road trip or just a pit-stop during the weekly commute, gas stations are where America gets what it needs. For your car, that’s a few gallons of unleaded. For the rest of us, it’s something salty, sweet, crunchy, or highly caffeinated. But aside from a few constants (show us a fuel stop without jerky and Red Bull), the snacks, drinks, and often full meals available at gas stations vary greatly depending on where you are in the country; they’re dictated by local tastes, demographics, and plain old corn-fed culinary ingenuity. Here, then, Eater has compiled some of America’s favorite regional gas station indulgences, from gobs in Pennsylvania to breakfast pizza in Iowa to deep-fried burritos in Texas to Spam musubi in Hawai’i. Regardless of what your gas meter says, these are some of the bites worth pulling off the interstate for. The Northeast Stewart’s Shops Ice Cream, New...

Several chains, including Dutchman’s and Swig, offer the bright cookies. The question is: Who baked them first? My entry into Southern Utah’s frosted cookie feud began innocently enough. After living in Colorado for a good chunk of 2020, the time came for the 13-hour drive back to Los Angeles through mountainous highways that, while scenic, don’t provide many opportunities for roadside delights. It’s a long haul of Subways, Starbucks, and McDonald’s, save for the lower tip of Utah jutting out across Interstate 15, where some come for Dixie State University, or a bit of respite after visiting Zion National Park or, for a junk food-loving first-timer like me, the opportunity to eat at regional chains like Iceberg Drive Inn and Arctic Circle in one fell swoop. As excited as I was for my first go at fry sauce and “thick shakes,” nothing could have prepared me for the alliance I’d unknowingly choose by way of a legendary local treat just steps from the gas pump at Dutchman’s Marke...

This promising, punishing combination is the ultimate gas station snack Like Starbucks and national pharmacy chains, fast-food restaurants and suburban model homes, gas stations, by and large, share a quality of near-universal uniformity. You only need to step into them a few times before you know intuitively where everything is: there’s the cash register, the refrigerated drinks, the all-important bathroom. For drivers and travelers on the road, the relationship with this space — a familiarity built up five minutes at a time, stop by stop — is a necessity and a banality. It’s a fact of life, in the same vein as death and taxes. But gas stations, for all their mundanity, still carry a whiff of possibility. (Or is that just the smell of petrol fumes?) You can thank the idea of the road trip for that, and all the senses of nostalgia, adventure, and boundlessness that it engenders. Cast under the warm glow of the Great American Road Trip™, gas stations become a supporting player....

The Handy Landing Tea Room and Store in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire | weirsbeach.com For the first half of the 20th century, hungry travelers couldn’t do better than a roadside tea room If you happened to be traveling from Washington, D.C. to Richmond, Virginia in 1935, you’d likely find yourself cruising down Route 1, the forebear of Interstate 95. With the Great Depression receding in your rearview mirror, the trip is really an excuse to put some miles on your new Plymouth PE Deluxe, just like the one Chrysler showed off at Chicago’s Century of Progress exposition. Cars of the era average about 14 mpg, but 20 miles out, you notice you’re running low on gas, around Ashland, a 19th-century resort town that’s home to Randolph-Macon College. The car isn’t the only one on empty; your driving party is famished too. Just past Route 54, you spot an Esso gas station sign and pull into Ella Cinders Tea Room , likely named for the newspaper comic strip launched 10 years earlier. Lucky f...

A celebration of eating at America’s gas stations, with all the sweet, salty, crunchy, and caffeinated things you need to top off your tank There are few places in America where our needs and wants collide in such effortless fashion as the get-it-all, do-it-all gas station. Your car needs things: fuel, for one, or air, or wiper fluid. We, then, typically want things: Hot Cheetos or sour Skittles or nachos or coffee (both want and need) or a hubcap-sized diner breakfast or some tacos to go. (OK, you probably really need that bathroom.) In and among the fluorescent-lit pump lines, gleaming aisles, and adjoining dining rooms of the great American gas station, we — and our vehicles — can truly have it all. The utilitarian glory of fuel stops is nothing new , but there’s a good chance you and your stomach (and upholstery) experienced it more than usual over the past year. With air travel curtailed due to COVID-19, car trips were the preferred mode of transportation for 97 percent of ...

Rosa María Zamarrón Thousands of restaurants in gas stations and truck stops are owned by immigrants selling the kinds of comfort foods they wish they could find outside their own homes My mother claims that my father’s current favorite restaurant is called Taste of India, somewhere in the vague vicinity of the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s apparently located in the back of a gas station, and if you’d like to embark on an arguably impossible Carmen Sandiego-style chase, look no further. If you Google “Taste of India gas station restaurant,” you’ll be met with millions of results. There is a Taste of India restaurant in a truck stop in Marshall, Texas; there’s another in a gas station in San Jon, New Mexico; there’s yet another in Clinton, Mississippi; and a My Taste of India in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There are dozens of Yelp reviews of customers saying they didn’t realize their lunch would be served in the back of a Chevron, and TripAdvisor comments imploring future custome...