Confessions of a Crap Eater #1: Sheetz Cheese Sub

I’m not saying I literally eat crap, guys, but let’s be real: I eat crap. I am someone who likes to go out to eat, but I am really poor. So rather than eat at home most of the time and only go out to eat when I can afford really good food, I eat the cheapest crap I can find at fast food places, just so I don’t have to cook. I can’t entirely explain this habit, but it is what it is. As a result of it, I tend to love a lot of cheap places to eat that all my friends turn up their noses at. This semi-regular column (which is named after a Philip K. Dick novel, in case you were wondering) will deal with the sandwiches I find and frequently consume at these places.

We’ll start with one of my favorites, which comes from what is, in all reality, a gas station. When I was a kid, gas station food was the kind of gnarly shit you wouldn’t eat on a bet, and the most substantive offerings they had were usually hot dogs on a spit. Things have changed a lot since the 80s, though, partly due to the advent of upscale gas station eateries like Sheetz and Wawa, with their touchscreen ordering system and wide variety of food options. So these days, instead of thinking “ew, gross” when I contemplate eating at a gas station, I usually think “Oh cool, I can order without talking to anyone–and the food is cheap.”

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

OK, not all of it is cheap. And there are some pretty horrible items for sale at Sheetz (do NOT get the pizza. You’ve been warned). Even some of the “good” stuff is horrible FOR you, even if it tastes delicious. But the subs that can be found on the $4 footlongs menu (apparently an attempt to one-up Subway…. hey, I’ll take it) are not only cheap and delicious, but actually pretty good for you. In a relative sense, at least.

I developed a taste for footlong veggie subs back when I was vegetarian, an era of my life that ended roughly 11 years ago. These days I like steak, chicken, and roast beef subs just as much, and perhaps sometime when I am feeling flush I will write about those offerings from Sheetz as well. Most of the time, though, the $4 footlong cheese sub (as opposed to the veggie sub, which has no cheese and can be vegan if you really want it to be) is my default Sheetz order.

My order ticket, with bonus nail polish and awesomely evil total price.

I get a ton of veggies on this damn sub, as you can see, and it is always a bit too much for the Sheetz staff. Sometimes the sandwich is just left hanging open, and they wrap it that way. That’s when I know it’s gonna be a mess to eat. The staff had things under control this time, though, as you will see shortly. Before we get there, though, let’s talk about the options I exercise where this sub is concerned. Sheetz has actually gotten kind of out of control with it in recent times, offering options like cream cheese, marinara sauce, and for slightly more cash (80 cents for a footlong), chili. I haven’t messed around with any of these options, though next time I feel like partying I may just throw all of those things on there and see what kind of awesome taste nightmare/adventure I come up with.

Anyway, I don’t like raw onions, so I skip those, but I get pretty much all the other vegetables I can without creating some kind of weird taste conflict. Then I get to pick three cheeses from a choice of something like 8, and I always get cheddar and provolone. On this particular occasion, I grabbed the “hot pepper jack” cheese, which isn’t really hot at all but has a bit of flavor which can confuse people used to bland crap. For some reason I wasn’t feeling like adding the Italian dressing I usually get on this thing, and just went with Sheetz’s Fire Roasted Tomato sauce. Who knows what the details of that sauce are, but it’s pretty tasty. I added Old Bay seasoning too, because they don’t offer oregano anymore. This is what I get for going to a gas station for food.

One half of the footlong sub.

The Sheetz sandwich makers had this one under control, as you can see above. Some lettuce spilled out, but lettuce is pretty superfluous on sandwiches like these most of the time, so I never mind if half of it ends up on the wrapper rather than on the sandwich. The surface integrity of this sandwich was good, and I successfully ate it while holding a book in my other hand, which is always the measure of victory for me with my lonely fast food meals.

So was it good? Sure, pretty good. I don’t want these kinds of sandwiches to change the world or anything–I never mind when some fast food menu item comes out perfect and is totally outstanding, but that’s a bonus if anything. I just want something decent to eat for my dinner after spending a day doing my mind-melting job for basically no money. This sandwich fit the bill. There were none of those weird hard bits you occasionally get when eating banana peppers, and since I didn’t mix two dressings like I sometimes do, there wasn’t too much sauce spillage everywhere. They gave me plenty of jalapenos, but as always with fast food sub places, their peppers weren’t very hot at all (I can remember that when I worked at a Subway, they were only fresh the day after you opened a fresh can of jalapenos. If they sat in the fridge for more than a day or so, the spice slowly faded out of them. I’m sure the same is true at Sheetz). I dunno, dudes. It didn’t change my life–it never does–but for the price, I really can’t complain.

The full meal. Note second half of sandwich, wrapped separately.

Sheetz fries are always a bit weird. If you get a bag rather than a cup of fries, it’ll save you 70 cents, but some of the employees at the Sheetz where I work are way more inclined to stuff the bag full of as many fries as possible than they are to do the same thing with the cup, so sometimes I wonder if I’m really getting any more fries by springing for the cup rather than the bag. On the other hand, you never know when a manager will prepare your order and give you as little food as possible, so I usually play it safe and order the cup. If I run out of fries before I run out of sub, I am bummed.

You will notice I’m sitting in a fast food dining room in this pic; most Sheetz locations only give you the opportunity to eat outside, which is wack–bugs, wind, dealing with however hot or cold it might be that day, etc. But the Sheetz I like to go to, which is actually not all that close to my house anymore now that I moved across town, has an actual dining room in it. You can tell how weird this is due to the fact that it is always empty.

Oh look, I’m the only one here. Again.

I’m in this place like three times a week. Which is cool, because I have one of those loyalty cards that allows me to accumulate points towards a free sub, and I can then use those points to get some crazy elaborate sub with all sorts of extra toppings on it even though I accumulated the points by buying the cheapest thing on the menu over and over. It’s also not cool at all, because what kind of loser eats alone in the dining room of a gas station multiple times a week? But I’m under no illusions that I’m cool, so fuck it.

Next time on Confessions Of A Crap Eater, I try some of those pseudo-fancy-but-actually-pretty-cheap new burger options McDonalds has been rolling out lately. Stay tuned, or whatever.

Drew

I’m a transgender weirdo who loves music, books, comics, and all kinds of other geeky crap. I edit an arts/music/culture magazine in my hometown of Richmond VA (rvamag.com). But let’s not talk about my day job. Let’s talk about food. I love food.