We snacked our way through a Buc-ee’s and ranked the best bites, from top to meh
The biggest part of the Buc-ee’s spectacle is its food, a menu centering on barbecue and snacks and a few proprietary creations.
On a trip to the Florence, SC, Buc-ee’s, the closest location to the Triangle, we sampled 16 of the most popular and notable bites.
Here’s a ranking of our favorites, from best to meh.
Paddle tail
Much like Buc-ee’s itself, the paddle tail is a lot of things at once. It’s shaped like the shrink-wrapped Southern pastry the Honey-Bun, but instead of being sticky, the paddle tail is flaky and crispy, dusted with cinnamon sugar and drizzled with a thin stream of icing. It brings to mind the crispy edges of churros, the flakes of a croissant and even has a chewy bottom like a morning bun. If anyone asks to share, tell them to get their own.
Chopped brisket sandwich
This is the top-selling sandwich at Buc-ee’s, and the company’s pitmaster says it isn’t close. While the sliced brisket might be for the purists, the chopped brisket is the one where Buc-ee’s is allowed to shine. Like a chopped pork sandwich, which mixes together the best muscles from a smoked shoulder, the chopped brisket sandwich mixes just enough fat and lean together to reach some greater barbecue ideal.
The bites here are all about flavor, not smoke rings or bark. The brisket is chopped for all to see, then doused in a sweet and tangy sauce and doled out for sandwiches. The beef is rich, just fatty enough with a smoky embrace. It can seem a bit like sacrilege to prefer the chopped brisket, but this one is the clear winner.
Beaver chips
Housemade chips are a gamble, one that rarely pays off. Can you really make a remarkable potato chip, something beyond the many perfections already found in every other gas station and grocery store? Well by God, Buc-ee’s has done it. They call theirs “Beaver chips,” because of course they do, stocking them in the warm space between barbecue sandwiches, lit by heat lamp.
These are crunchy and salty and better than you thought they were going to be when you reached for them. Depending on how many laps you take inside the store, you may finish the bag before you check out.
Sliced brisket sandwich
It’s hard to make a perfect brisket — maybe the hardest thing to do in barbecue. And with sliced brisket there’s nowhere to hide. If you’re a barbecue purist and looking to see how Buc-ee’s stacks among the best, you’re probably reaching for the sliced sandwich, where you’ll find strips of the lean brisket flat topped with a bit of Buc-ee’s signature barbecue sauce.
Between the bun the brisket is plenty tender with a healthy chew, the slices layered like roofing shingles. The smoke is there, the seasoning on point, and while the sauce masks any dryness, you’ll miss the fatty unctuousness of the very best brisket. But then you might need to step back a second and think of a better $8.50 brisket sandwich you had from a gas station in South Carolina. Likely there isn’t one.
Turkey
Somewhat of an outlier among the barbecue options is this thick-cut offering of pleasantly smoked turkey breast. The turkey can be chunked as much as sliced, served between a bun and sauced with the same sweet sauce as the brisket and pork. Most bites are tender and moist, and can tip toward the salty side of well-seasoned, but that’s never been a complaint of mine.
Pecans
A warm nut cannot be denied. There’s a pair of machines at Buc-ee’s constantly spinning, heating pecans and almonds and filling the air with the irresistible scent of toasted sugar and nuts. I sprang for pecans, which were spiced and candied. If they weren’t warm they would be good and fine, but because they were warm I wondered if I’d ever stop eating them (I didn’t).
Double Chocolate Brownie
Shrink-wrapped as if bought at a sidewalk bake sale instead of a massive gas station, these brownies are fire. They are dense and fudgy, and you’ll be scraping the plastic for every morsel.
Sausage on a stick
Maybe it’s all the years of eating at the North Carolina State Fair, but I’m a sucker for any food on a stick. Here Buc-ee’s serves about a foot-long smoked sausage, charmingly if inexplicably wrapped in a tortilla. If you’ve ever enjoyed a smoked sausage, you’ll certainly love a version with a handle.
Pulled pork
Though it is king of the Carolinas, pork plays second fiddle at Buc-ee’s. While there aren’t many places to find gas station brisket in North Carolina, smoked pork is in abundance. The style served at Buc-ee’s will taste familiar and perfectly fine.
It’s heavily sauced, pulled to the pieces and studded with a few blackened ends. It won’t fit into any kind of eastern or western Carolina tradition and likely won’t measure up to most fire company dinners, but isn’t in any way a bad barbecue option for those steering clear of beef.
Steak and cheese burrito
I went with the burrito with Texas in its name: the Texas cheesesteak, stuffed with cheese and peppers and slices of beef. The burritos are among the most gigantic grab-and-go meals at Buc-ee’s, wrapped in a pleasantly chewy flour tortilla. You’ll find heaps of steak, peppers and cheese inside, but all seemingly in balance, topped with a bit of salsa verde from the salsa bar.
Beaver nuggets
This iconic snack is probably what Buc-ee’s is best known for beyond the brisket. These come in a variety of flavors, but the classic Beaver nuggets, a caramel coated corn puff, are kind of a mashup between kettle corn and Cheetos, without the cheese of course.
Buc-ee’s is riding the sweet-and-salty lightning here, and the nuggets are one of the cult favorites. I actually prefer the “Bold & Spicy” version, which is more of a tingle than a sizzle, but fits into my road trips cravings a bit better than the caramel classic.
Jerky
The Buc-ee’s jerky bar is about 15 feet wide, stocked with piles of dried beef in more than a dozen different varieties. This is where I admit I made a mistake. At the jerky bar you can order as little as one piece of jerky, which is what I did, thinking I had outsmarted the system and could get lots of tastes for very little money. Well some of the jerky strips are massive, and I ended up paying $7.65 for a single forearm-sized strip of jerky.
Buc-ee’s will, by the way, let you sample any flavor you want. I tasted the four flavors that jumped out to me, including the signature Bohemian Garlic.
Cherry maple: This one is sticky and candy-colored, brightly sweet but in balance with the salty beef.
Honey jalapeno: There’s nothing from the outside suggesting the fire within this jerky, but it’s excellent and spicy, with a hint of a sweet note.
Korean BBQ: Cherry red from the gochujang and sprinkled with sesame seeds, you’d think there would be more flavor here, but none of the spicy, sweet of Korean barbecue comes through.
Bohemian Garlic: This jerky bears Texas Czech influence in its name and is addictively well seasoned, though not particularly garlicky.
In the FWIW department, the texture of the jerky in the sealed bags at Buc-ee’s is a bit more tender and enjoyable than the strips from the jerky bar.
Jalapeño Kolache
These stuffed breads, pronounced ko-lah-chee, come from the Texas Czech tradition and are one of the signature items at Buc-ee’s. Most are stuffed with some kind of sausage; I sprang for the jalapeño version. The bread is a bit sweet, balanced nicely by the heat of the sausage and marked, somewhat charmingly, with a single slice of fresh jalapeño, roasted into the dough. There might be more balance with a bit more sausage, or maybe cheese in the mix, as things can get a bit bready.
Fudge
The Buc-ee’s fudge counter is a centerpiece of the massive gas station. The fudge is all made in-house and there are a couple dozen options. I sampled two versions, one chocolate and one salted caramel, each rich and creamy without being cloying. The fudge is dense but smooth, steering clear of the grainy texture that can sometimes dent a pleasant bite.
Chocolate chip cookies
If you already have a favorite store-bought cookie, these aren’t going to change your mind, falling a bit too far on the crunchy side of the cookie spectrum.
