The place I had driven two hours for was closed, and I ended up eating a pork sandwich off a hot plate behind a bar because it was the only thing open. It was the best meal of the trip, and I have been trying to understand why ever since.
The host walked me to a booth for four and I sat down in it feeling like a display. Years of solo meals on the road later, I have thoughts about counters, about phones, and about the conversations I did not want and then did.
A four page laminated menu, ninety something items, and a server standing there waiting. Ordering in a place you have never been is a skill, and most of mine came from getting it wrong in front of strangers who were kind about it.
Two eggs over medium at a counter at quarter past six, cooked by someone who had been there since four. If I only get one good meal a day on a long drive, I have learned to spend it in the morning, and here is the reasoning behind that.
A taquito off the roller grill at twenty to midnight, three days into a drive, is not a food experience. It is a decision. Here is what I have learned about which pump food is fine, which is genuinely good, and which I will not touch again.
Two places across the road from each other, eleven cars on one side and three on the other, and me sitting in the gravel stalling. Everything I thought I knew about reading a lot before I walk in, including the parts that turned out to be wrong.