Having a croissant at a gas station food shake in New Jersey, isn’t that everyone’s travel dream? It was mine while on a break from life in Paris and travel in France.
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The sign at Johnny’s, the drive-up food shack at the Valero gas station in Ewing Township, New Jersey, announces coffee and croissants along with hot Italian-leaning lunch fare, so I couldn’t resist stopping in the other day to try a croissant.
Tony Cifelli runs the shack, which opened in September. About a year ago John Picerno, a friend of the family, told me he was going to build the shack and asked if I was interested in running it for him. I told him that operating a café in New Jersey had long been a dream of mine but it wasn’t a dream that I was quite ready to assume. Besides, Tony was a far better choice. Admittedly, I might have found a more authentic recipe for croissants than buying them at Sam’s Club, but Tony is better suited for operating a food shack with green, red, and white awning. He and his assistant Sergio make mean sausage and meatball sandwiches, a tasty roast pork, broccoli rabe, provolone sandwich, and other hot lunch fare.
But this morning I stopped by for a croissant. Tony gets a kick out of the way I say “croissant”; he says I make it sound so French. Here Tony, Sergio, and I pose with my croissant.
I can’t honestly recommend the croissant here, though when toasted and buttered it wasn’t bad, which is the case with many things.
I then tried the corn muffin, which I much preferred. I like corn muffins but they’re hard to find these days, at least in New Jersey. Blueberry and chocolate are much more common. I saw a French toast muffin at the nearby grocery store.
When I came to Johnny’s another morning Tony suggested I try an egg, pepper, and onion breakfast sandwich. As Sergio pushed it around the grill Tony stumped me by asking if I wanted ketchup on it. I spend too much time in France to have a quick answer to such a question. I hesitated in the same way that visiting Americans hesitate when they order a ham-and-cheese sandwich in France and are asked whether or not they want butter on it. Tony helped my indecision by recommending the ketchup. That must have done the trick because half the sandwich made for a filling breakfast and the other half made for a filling lunch.
I plan to return in the coming week to try other non-croissant items on the menu (got my sights set on a rib-eye cheesesteak) and further enjoy the pleasure of hanging out with Tony and Sergio inside Johnny’s in the slow hour before the regulars start driving up for lunch.
Endnote: Since West Trenton/Ewing Township, New Jersey, is right across the Delaware River from Pennsylvania (historical Washington Crossing is just upstream), where the state gas tax is higher, Pennsylvanian’s stop at this and other gas stations in the area to fill up before crossing the bridge on I-95 to go home. For my European readers, that’s like going to Andorra from France for cigarettes or from England to France for alcohol, except that you don’t have to worry about going through customs.