Joey and I have been kicking around a dream for a while. This is what it looks like:
We buy a travel plaza off the Mass Pike. A whole travel plaza, or maybe just part of one since I’m not sure if we really want to own a gas station. And let’s just catapult ourselves there, right smack in the middle of that dream, and there you are on the Mass Pike, driving from one place to another very faraway place. You’ve been in the car for eleven hours, and although you stopped to pee and buy a candy bar and some sort of mystery jerky for lunch, you really do think you should stop for some proper dinner. Deep in your memory, you remember hearing about a mythical rest stop where the food was real and there were flowers in the bathroom. Exit 2? Or maybe 3? And then you get there, and it’s clear that you’ve found it. Because this rest stop looks different.
Inside it’s wooden and warm, and there are a few big community tables where big and little and young and old people are all sitting together. And as the table draws you in (and of course there is a seat there just for you), you can’t help but notice that everyone is talking about where they’ve come from and where they’re going.
I know you don’t have much to spend, and this is, after all, a rest stop. But I’ve got a few big pots of soup ready, and between the meaty stew and the garden vegetable and the udon in broth with tiny pickled vegetables, I’m hoping there’s a pot that calls to you. Five bucks gets you a big bowl of soup, a side of homemade bread with soft, salty, butter, and a hot cup of coffee (or peppermint tea if that’s your thing) to charge you up before you go. Oh, and cookies. There will be cookies, too.
This is our dream. (Although Joey’s version involves breakfast burritos, too.) And every time we end up in one of these crazy travel plazas in search of food and comfort and bathroom, I wander like a small child in Times Square, trying my best to look people in the eye, feeling more than ever that we’re all here looking for a pause and a rest and meal that will make us feel new again.
It’s the first of the month, and I was hoping we could talk about road food. Travel plazas, tiny diners, picnics you packed yourself–anything counts. Was there a place that saved you? A scary meal you’ll never forget? I’d love to hear your stories, recommendations, and of course, warnings.
Happy August, friends. I hope the summer’s treating you well, and for those of you who are heading off on road trips of your own, help is on the way. I’m sure we can wrangle up a few lunch recommendations for you in the comments.
Occasionally I teach workshops, and I have one coming up this fall. Join me and stellar novelist 
Please tell me that you and Joey are not kidding about that idea. I love it. (Hi!)
Not kidding! Definitely dreaming, but you never know when those dreams will turn into real life, real food, travel plazas, right?
Please put it at exit 2! It sounds like a blissful idea!
Oh, what a wonderful idea! You always feel gross enough when traveling, and eating greasy, heavy road food never helps. A chance for real food, and real conversation, would make all the difference in the world. (And now that we’ve just moved to Massachusetts, I really love the idea of having it here!)
My parents and grandparents always loved stopping at diners on road trips. Sometimes this paid off with surprisingly good food and warm service, and sometimes the food was almost inedible, and once we’re pretty sure the diner was a front for something illegal, because we were the only customers, they looked shocked to see us, and I’m pretty sure they had to go get the food we ordered from a nearby restaurant. That was a slightly scary experience.
I love this discussion idea.
Finding food on our travels is one of the reasons I cannot quit my smart phone; there are many reasons why I want to disconnect but gems like finding decent food in unknown places reminds me that I need to control my smartphone not quit it.
We have had some awesome food in out of the way places that I wish we could go back to just for that meal.
When moving back east from Portland, Oregon we found a natural food store with the best coffee and breakfast burritos since leaving PDX in Bozeman, Montana . And the counter guy gave us a short cut that cut 200 miles out of our trip! Later that same trip we found an Irish Pub in Buffalo, NY that had the best fish and chips and the friendliest waitstaff. We felt like we had stumbled into our own local – it was worth the effort of parallel parking our moving truck.
We found a great sandwich shop in Connecticut on our way to Philly one weekend. We much prefer the train when we travel there but the sandwich shop always makes the pro list when we are debating the drive/train travel option.
Also, we lived in Burlington, VT for a year and heavily relied on our phones to find us food and gas as we traveled back and forth to our friends and family’s homes as there are no travel stations or signs on the highway to alert you to the up coming amenities. We have been to great bakeries in Richmond and restaurants in Waterbury several times.
All of these places are less than 5 miles from the highway (our criteria) and going to them has made traveling much more of a fun adventure than and A to B with fast food in between.
wellllll, what a can of worms you may have opened Alana!! hahaha! great topic!
My husband and i live in Canada but also have a home in Pennsylvania. Our many many travels to and fro have turned us into ALMOST the people that never want to eat out again! But necessity dictates sometimes. I just wonder if Americans realize how bad their “takeout” food is!? If you don’t know any different yadda yadda. I’m not being mean and i’m really curious. The portion sizes astound me and the wild abandon in the cheese topping department? WOW. Your dairy farmers (is it even real cheese though?) will never be threatened with job loss! Please don’t take offense anyone. I’m just sharing!
Have a great day!
oh ya, we pack picnics a lot but it’s tricky crossing the border with fresh anything.
I would plan a trip just to visit that kind of road stop. Love this dream.
Wow!! This is an amazing idea! Do it! Every traveler would wait to stop at your place.
Last year I made the trek, either alone or with my son, from central NH to upstate NY to bring my son back and forth to college. On the way home for Christmas break, we decided to stop at all the places we always wanted to stop but never did because the trip seemed long enough without making unnecessary stops.
Although the weather was snowy and the roads slick, we stopped at a great little restaurant in a small Vermont town. There was a large bar and a few tables and friendly waitstaff. We ordered hot sandwiches and got wonderful, enormous things that filled both our bellies and our souls for the remainder of the trip.
I always wanted to stop on yet another trip to NY but the lure of home beckoned and I never made the time to stop again. This year my son will take his own car to college which means I won’t be making the trip very often. At least one more time, however, I promise to stop and eat and enjoy my trip a bit more.
oh! Your post and the comments reminded me of a rest stop called the Big Apple. It’s in Ontario, Canada, along Hwy 401 between Kingston and Toronto and their specialty is apples. They are a family business that makes apple pies (and some other fruit pies and apple products) and they also serve some basic comfort food, have a gift shop, and these giant, usually clean washrooms. It’s the closest I’ve ever seen to your lovely dream plaza 🙂
Earlier this month, my husband and I went on a week-long camping retreat in N. Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with a group of other twenty-somethings. One of my favorite parts of that trip was the stop for brunch that our car made on our way back down to the Lower Peninsula.
It was a cafe in downtown Marquette that I can’t remember the name of, but everything was homemade – they made their own bread, sourced all their meat and dairy from local, sustainable farmers, had little pots of fresh strawberry preserves on all the tables, etc. It had an awesome, quirky vibe to it that was like a big hug after spending a week in a tent. I would go back there in a heartbeat, if only the drive wasn’t over 10 hours. :o)
We frequently are on the road around Wisconsin, and I’m always looking for good food options. If you happen to remember the name of the cafe at some point, I’d love to know!!
A “real” restaurant just got permission to start building in and out of NH on Route #93. It will have the gas and the food. But real food. That’s the plan anyway. 2 years from now. Keeping my eye on it. I’ll let you know. It took the Governor to approve it.
It’s not really a normal highway – certainly not a turnpike – but I was recently on Highway 1 between Carmel and Big Sur, on vacation with a friend and her baby. We were both tired, that general exhaustion of traveling with babies, and we stopped at the Big Sur Bakery. Incredible coffee, buttery and crumbly scones, and amazingly nice people. In the redwoods. It was magical. Every highway deserves some place like that!
BIG SUR BAKERY! One of my homes away from home. I whole heartedly second this. If they happen to have fresh donuts when you arrive, order them NO MATTER WHAT. 🙂
I’ve never been to big sur, but I want to go camp in the nests! People keep telling me about that. I’m going to plan a trip around nests and donuts.
When driving back east from Utah, we ALWAYS stop at the Big Hollow Food Co-op in Laramie, Wyoming. It is our oasis. Sometimes we get things for lunch, sometimes we get snacks from the bulk bin, or the produce section. And, when we are heading back west, we stop and grind big bags of flour.
You have to drive into town, of course, to get to it, but I love your idea of real food right on the highway.
new pioneer food coop in iowa city is right off route 80. always stop there on my cross country journeys!
I have switched from eating when I travel to travelling to eat.
Along the Crow’s Nest Highway in BC in Canada, there isn’t much in the way of creature comforts. My boyfriend and I stopped in Princeton, a half forgotten mining town full of empty store fronts, mostly to find a bathroom. What we stumbled upon was a bakery. The wooden floors bounce and shuffle a little under foot. Not one chair matches any other chair. But every loaf of bread or croissant or fruit bun is delicious and made with giant portions of love. We have always been in too much of a hurry to have their lunches but I swear next time, we will make time.
Your dream rest stop sounds incredible! We just drove from NJ to DC with our one-year-old and stopped to stretch our legs and pick up a snack at a rest stop in Delaware that had great reviews on Yelp, but I was still disappointed. I had to walk through every eatery (all big fast food chains) before I found a bottle of whole milk for my son (at Burger King of all places) and there was nothing organic in sight. There was a convenience store that had some fresh fruit, boiled eggs, etc that looked decent, but not great. We ended up sharing a roast beef and cheddar sandwich from a Panera-type place, but it wasn’t very tasty. Thankfully we had brought along some organic food pouches and crackers for our little one.
I can’t imagine that the items I saw are any cheaper to produce than what you describe. Next time, I think I will look for a grocery store rather than a rest stop. Once we got to DC we stopped at a Whole Foods to pick up milk, fruit and juice and it worked out great.
I remember when I was in my late teens and early 20s, rest stops meant a free-for-all of junk food — it was exciting. Now that I know so much more about food, it makes me sad. I remember the first time we were on a road trip after I learned about what fast food actually is. We hadn’t had a bite of anything from Wendy’s, BK, McDonald’s in probably two years, but the only thing open when we stopped was a BK. We got a chicken sandwich to share and didn’t even finish it — it was sooo salty and my husband ended up with an upset stomach.
We will stop at Rein’s Deli in Connecticut even if we’re not hungry and don’t need the bathroom… your place would be like that! P.S. New to your blog, it was recommended at a canning/preserving class I took at a fabulous little place called Relish in Somerville, MA.
I love Reins too and we stop there almost ever time we drive through CT to NJ to see family. My parents found the place more than 20 years ago and do the same thing.
CathyT
Reins- that’s a new one for me! We’ll have to take a little detour next time we’re driving through CT.
The Blairsden Baker in a tiny town in the California mountains. We found it on a cross-country trip. Wooden farm tables, homemade pastries and bread, pine trees all around, just what the traveler’s soul needs. I love to travel with the Stern books for just this reason. Another book that we used as a fun framework for eating/traveling is American Pie, by Pascale LeDraoulec. Although I suppose the most fun is finding places on your own…
Hi! We have just travelled in a big zig zag across Australia over the past month. I have pretty much become that person who doesn’t want to eat out anymore. I find myself scouring menus and reviews for ‘fresh!’ ‘soup!’ ‘salads!’ ‘homemade bread!’ ‘juice!’ wherever I can. I hadn’t given the environment of rest stops much thought but you’re ideas sound wonderful. Most days we tried to pack a simple lunch of large crackers, cheese, tomato and cucumber, fruit and dried snacks. If we ate on the road it was usually toasted ham/cheese/tomato sandwiches, burgers (bad burgers!) or salad sandwiches. I got all nostalgic just to find a homemade burger patty.
Your idea of soup and bread is basically my on-the-road dream. Now that we have arrived and are back in a kitchen I am loving the chance to make fresh soups and salads. I have a beautiful memory of stopping in some tiny New England town on farmer’s market day. There was one stall selling soup. They would dollop some creme fraiche on top for you. It was the best thing ever. We just left Brisbane where a new stall opened at our local market selling soup and fresh bread. The. Best. Seriously. On this road trip through the dusty outback, our most memorable food stop was at in a tiny town cafe where they made their own sausage rolls and burger patties. Everything was fresh and tasted good. The vegetarian burger patty was delicious.
I could go on and on. Thank you for a timely post and sharing of ideas!
hmm, travelling and food… you can’t exhaust this subject. Memories of summer vacations, stopping at local supermarkets in France or Italy, shopping for an instant picknick and eating it at the next little lake. Fresh baguettes, tomatoes, melons. Bypassing the rest areas along the highways and instead driving into the next little town, looking for the local place where builders stop for lunch. Ordering the plat du jour and finishing with some strong coffee. Looking for snack bars where the truck drivers stop for a meal. Taking a detour when you see signs pointing to a local village festival. What fun! Yes, the fast food chains are all over Europe as well. But yes, there are plenty of alternatives: bakeries that are open 24 hours in Slovenia and Croatia and sell sandwiches, pizza and borek. Piadina stalls in Italy. Bakers and butchers in Germany and Switzerland. Making myself hungry now….
Oh Yes!! And after you open your first rest stop, please expand west! (and yes, to breakfast burritos, too!)
Years ago, I travelled I-80 in Iowa regularly on my way back and forth to college. There was a wonderful Amish restaurant that my mom and I always stopped at when we drove together (and she was paying!). What I remember most was the smell of fresh baked rolls and the taste of their homemade strawberry jam. Conversely, whenever my friends and drive home we stopped at a massive truck stop which advertised itself as being the wirl’s largest. Since we were broke college students who paid in quarters we always ended up with Wendy’s frosty’s and fries. I live on the east coast now and am always loathe to stop at the giant rest stops between DC and Philly- the food is gross and the bathrooms are worse! Please buy one down in our nec of the woods! I’ll take road trips just to stop in!
Have you ever heard the Sterns on NPR’s show Splendid Table? They travel the country trying regional specialties and finding hidden gems. Their website is RoadFood.com
Personally I always associate road trips with McDonald’s apple pies. Not the new baked ones, but the old crispy, possibly deep fried ones. These were a staple of teen and twenty-something road trips. Steamy, sweet, crispy, slightly dangerous (that filling was HOT), and oh so yummy.
We are Stern devotees over here. We keep a copy of their book in the car!
We are taking a 6 hour road trip from our home in Iowa up to Brainerd Lakes, MN, in a few weeks- a trip I have made countless times over the course of my life. As a young child, there so would always be 2-3 cars full of my cousins and us and my Grandpa and Aunts and Uncles. Two hours into the trip we would always stop at McDonald’s for breakfast in Fairmont and to get gas. It, like a couple other gas station stops, was a cornerstone of the trip and I have fond memories of eating McDonald’s Big Breakfast with my Grandpa. Many, many years.
These days it’s just my family who goes and may even be just my husband and I and our two year old this time. It the first time I have been since be coming a mom and your post has inspired me to seek out new options for the trip. Surely there is a food coop in St Cloud?!
If you are traveling through Iowa, in addition to the food coop in Iowa city on I80, West Des Moines has a Whole Foods right off 80/35 and a Trader Joe’s right off 35.
I love love love this idea!! It reminded me of a dinner that we’re going to attend in Paris when we visit. The difference is that the host, Jim Haynes, does this in his home, for people from all over the world. All you have to do is tell him you’re coming. I can’t wait.
http://www.jim-haynes.com/index.htm
Ah, Rachel- Jim Haynes has been a huge inspiration to me! Years ago, I heard his NPR essay on “This I believe”, and it started me off on this: http://www.eatingfromthegroundup.com/salon-challenge/
My husband and I used to seek out small restaurants when we traveled but that was some years ago. Rest Stops are terrible and the Mass Pike — bah! I’d almost rather starve (we used to go back and froth from the Hudson Valley to Boston a lot). I think your dream sounds fabulous.
I just took my first road trip in a while and I packed good homemade picnic food. Surprisingly I enjoyed planning the food for the trip as much as the trip itself, although I think I would like to start looking for good local food again on my next trip.
yes yes yes and YES!!! i’d go in with you in a HEARTbeat, from kneading to mopping.
having just driven two twenty-plus hour trips in a week (and thru Massachusetts — hi!!), and having nearly wept at the endless golden arches, and at finding a wee indie bakery in vermont around 6 a.m. to feed us well and fuel us with good coffee, i believe in this dream, this need, this opportunity, with abandon.
(maybe i’m still running on fumes. but still…)
I LOVE your idea! (and I need it when I travel.) My only solution for travel food has been to bring as much as I can with me from home… plenty of fruit and nuts for the train or plane (dried fruit is good, too); if I’m driving, I tote along an old picnic basket filled with local Lancaster produce, yogurt, and cheese (packed with ice packs, of course) to hold me over while I’m away.
and, maybe a jar or two of my preserves to go with the locally-made yogurt. 🙂
Oh, the picnic basket! For all the snazzy coolers out there, I just can’t stop loving the old picnic basket.
Another vote for Reins! Half-sours and frozen matzoh ball soup to go are another bonus if you’re too tired from your journey to cook when you get home. Also, right where 90 and 84 meet up in Brimfield, MA there’s an amazing BBQ place right off the highway called BT’s – might tack on a few more minutes than a rest stop but 100% worth it.
Okay, I’m convinced. I’m going to seek out Reins.
AND, that spot at 90 and 84 is right where we often need a place. Amazing BBQ is a bit hard to come by in New England, so we’ll take the extra time next time we’re heading through there for sure.
A couple of years ago we were driving from Missouri to Florida. By the end of the first day we made camp near Atlanta, Ga. I was sick of cheap nasty road food and I vowed we would NOT eat a breakfast of that type of food. While my husband drove I looked up breakfast in Atlanta. I found a place that sounded great. The local food review said all the right things..funky, local, home cooked, coffee, organic. I announced to my husband, son and daughter that we were stopping in Atlanta for breakfast. I had the directions to the place on my phone. My kids were game, but my husband was worrisome, would it be to far off the hwy, would we get lost? I was a little worried too, but I vowed to find it. As we got close the neighbor hood looked like a neighbor hood we would want to live in with sweet reclaimed bungalows with shaded yards. Then at the end of the block was The Flying Biscuit Cafe. It was incredible. It was an eclectic mix of very friendly people the waitress was our cafe historian. There were local meats to be had, local greens, made on the spot biscuits and pancakes and grits, but not just ordinary grits, grits that leave you wanting 3 years later. We loved it so much I bought their cookbook and we made sure we hit it on the way back home. My children still vow that we go back there again. It changed me and I won’t accept road food again.
When you open your travel stop let me know so when I travel east I can stop, have coffee, soup and make friends.
The Flying Biscuit Cafe! Consider it added to my list of road food gems. Now I just I have to find a reason to head down towards Atlanta….