Checkers

Decent fast food place inside the Pembroke Travel Plaza off the highway.
I’m from Canada and we don’t have Checkers so I actually had to find this one here. Still love their CHILLI CHEESE FRIES. Simple menu and good quick bites.
They take credit, debit, cash and including Canadian cash at a 35% exchange rate. (See uploaded photo for conversion chart)

Definitely not the highlight of my vacation. We were on the road and hungry, but on a slight time constraint, so stopping at the travel plaza for some food was inevitable.
I picked Checkers, since I’d never been, but was disappointed in my meal from start to finish. It took an unusually long time to receive our food. I know fast food places aren’t foodie palaces, but in fast food, how the hell do you compromise SPEED?
Checkers isn’t any different than McDonald’s or Burger King, but the prices were noticeably higher. $ 8 for a chicken sandwich, fries, and a drink? The food wasn’t particularly good or bad. It was almost like eating play food from a Fisher Price kitchen.
Pack some snacks and pick another restaurant. Deviating from the interstate will be worth it.

I grabbed a burger (Big Bufford) while my road trip companions made use of the «facilities». It was a decent fast food double cheese burger that didn’t break the bank even considering it’s on the thruway. The best part? They whipped it up so quick I got back to the car as everyone was getting buckled in. I was not popular as I enjoyed my burger while everyone else watched. Thankfully it was only another 8 hours to our destination…

eating at a truck stop

Stopped in for breakfast while on a road trip. Ordered a large breakfast bagel combo. The potato cakes were a bit greasy, but the dining experience overall was very good.
I have been a customer in the past and will repeat.

Red haired young teenaged food attendant while serving me kept wiping his nose on his left hand and his right shirt collar. He coughed into his left shirt collar. Then, he placed his fingers INTO the french fry basket to taste one of those fries. I left disgusted and afraid, wondering about the future of my health. I gave my Buford to my wife and now am watching her closely. Checker’s does accept credit cards.

Two of things that I hate about driving back east is the tolls and the drivers. Most of the bridges and good roads require a form of shakedown called a toll. Besides having to pay to drive on a crappy road you can’t stop most anywhere you want. You have to wait for a Travel Plaza. I have a seventy minute bladder and the plazas are about 45 miles apart so if you do the math, you’ll know that I’m doing the Pee-​Pee dance behind the wheel about half of the time.
I had the privilege of using one of the comfort stations today at the Pembroke Plaza today and figured what the heck, I’ll grab a bite while I’m stopped. They had pizza slices rendering grease under heat lamps at one place so I passed and checked out the burger place. A large poster proclaimed that everyone should try a Big Buford and so they should. Now I remember that a Rally’s at PCH and Cherry in LB has, or maybe still has, Big Bufords and it was so bad that I’ve never been back. The one, almost, redeeming quality of the Rally’s was at least it was cheap and the food showed it. Well nothing is ever cheap, or even reasonable, at these Plazas. They’re like the food courts at an airport, but without the airplanes. They have a captive customer base and they charge whatever they like.
On the return trip, when I start doing the Pee-​Pee dance and can;t make it to an exit, I’ll be using the Plaza. But if my tummy starts growling like a Grisly crawling out of the cave in Spring, Read my lips, no more Plazas.