Steveats: Gas Station Pizza Showdown

Debuting a new, semi-regular feature! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

As part of my continuing culinary adventures at gas stations, and at the urging of Eric Rueb, I decided to give one certain food item at three different places a try – pizza. The results were… not really that surprising overall, but individually, somewhat surprising!

First discussed and worst I had – 7-Eleven. This actually looked like the best of the three pizzas available to me, as the cheese looked to be seasoned and the pizza hot. Important note here – it’s an incredible curve that we’re judging these pizzas on, as a good portion of frozen, store-bought pizzas are better than these ones.

However, while the 7-Eleven pizza looked OK, it was incredibly bland and greasy. That’s a double dip of bad pizza qualities, since if I’m ingesting a bunch of calories and oily cholesterol, it better taste good. The pepperoni was slightly better than the cheese, but both left this reviewer cold.

In second place is Cumberland Farms. This was only narrowly behind 7-Eleven in terms of look, and it definitely tastes better. It’s kind of like good cardboard with cheese. You know, the type that would be acceptable to send something precious in, as compared to the cheap cardboard used for fast food, or to house gas station pizza.

I think the deciding factor in Cumberland Farms over 7-Eleven is the heat lamp. Cumby’s seems to keep their lamp on a higher temperature, or *gasp* they might actually ditch the pizza more frequently. This leads to fresher tasting cheesy cardboard.  

The surprising taste winner is Speedway, because their pizza looks like it was microwaved about a million times before being put out there on a heat rack under some lamps. This wasn’t a fluke, either – I went at two different times, and three different Speedways, and each time, the pizza looked like a warmed-over substance strip mined from the surface of Mars.

However, it definitely tasted the best of the three gas station pizzas I tried. I have no clue why either. My guess would be that because it’s a bit thinner, it retains its (probably fake) cheese taste and sauce a bit better than the other two. Also, the Speedway ’za is definitely helped by the fact that they helpfully offer up a bunch of seasonings. I went for the shaker of Garlic Parmesan, and covered the slice, and that definitely helped.

All three pizzas were edible, and since the going rate was two slices for $3 at all three places, I can’t really complain about the price too much. However, if you’re looking for an actual meal vs. a quick bite, then your Generic Chain Pizza Place is better for $5, whether you favor Domino’s, Pizza Hut or Papa Gino’s.

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