Honestly who really eats (and enjoys) truck stop food

I'm pretty sick of the truck stop food too. Nothing healthy

 

I run in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle and the food is just as bad down here. If I have time, I sometimes walk down the road a mile or so to get a meal.

 

Petro Bordentown, NJ was good food but service and cleanliness need help. Haven't been there in a while so maybe things have changed.

This is exit 7 on NJ turnpike or exit 56 on 295.

 

I think the smaller ribeyes and NY strips at the 72 ouncer in Amarillo taste great and are fairly cheap. Plus the craft beer

 

The chili is good too.

 

The bull fries are good too, I'll try the chili next time

 

East Armarillo in Texas would be the TA there. Decent food, especially at night when things are not too intense.

I second the suggestions of locating a decent walk in near any place you can put a big truck. I would imagine you will not have any difficulty in taking a chance at something nicer other than a truck stop you have become sick of.

Im sorry you are having difficulty with bad food.

I will share one experience of my own that was pretty bad. There is a stop in a place called Duncannon PA to the east of US 15. At one time it was a great stop for eating. IMHO I think they put a new cook in the kitchen and I come along ordering spagetti with sauce on a plate.

What came to my table was cold sauce, uncooked spagetti over half the volume of the food on the plate.

I lost my temper and assured the waitress girl that she is not the target of my anger. Poor thing. SO pretty too. ANYhow... I did not have to pay for that crap. But it was seriously the last time I would go to that particular stop. That was 25 years ago, I remember that evening very well. 8.35 plus tax for such uncooked CRAP.

Another option would be street food trucks, roach coachers along your route of travel.

If you do locate a decent place with good food Order duplicates in a take home tray Wrap them in aluminum foil as a defense against parasites, bugs etc store these in your portable cooler in the sleeper and eat on them the rest of the work week. That way you know you can heat em up on top of the engine block in a few minutes (Take the tray off the food and put it on a small non stick pan with a grilling spray. Another option would toss a bag of charcoal onto a rest area grill or just a circle of stones atop more stones as a firebed for a hour or until heated through.

I don't know if you will pay full price for several meals similar to the one you thought was very good. But it has helped in the past when I find myself in say Sysco west of Boston (Framingham? Spelling?) with just a week old doughnut in the vending machine beyond the clerk's window.

As I write this Im storing a pair of new york steaks in my fridge, It's worth 5 meals when sliced to size so that I can get almost a week out of them which puts the 22 dollar price tag down to around 4 dollars a meal not including the trimmings and what have you to go with the meat.

 

You're going to have to hit the grocery store every few days. Get some fresh fruit, healthy granola, crackers, tuna. If you have a fridge you can get baked chicken, etc. If you're OTR you're mostly sedentary, and you do not need very many calories. If you tolerate hunger for a while, it goes away. Eat a few small snacks a day, drink water, and try to keep your mind on something else. When you get around a good accessible restaurant, every few days ,splurge.

 

Had a great colon cleanse with the bean burrito I at at the j yesterday.

 

The only place that I have ever eaten Cornish Game Hen was in a gas station in Goldfield NV. They had a couple of tables and everything but it was a two pump gas station. It was really good, surprised the heck out of me. For me I never am able to get food and store it in the truck. I have tried but it never works out.

I have bought a convenience store sandwich that was frozen. I put it in the genset enclosure in the trailer that was running in the middle of the summer in NV. 30 minutes late warmed up/cooked and ready to eat.