Raise the Roost (George Ade Travel Plaza)
5100 Plaza Avenue We knew the drive home from Chicago wasn’t going to be an easy one. The sun was shining as we left Evanston and stayed that way pretty much all the way to Indiana. I’ve driven I-94 in snow storms many, many times while at work so I know how bad that lakeshore route can get. I made the decision to just add a little extra time to our trip and take the Indiana Toll Road all the way to US-131.
We hit blue skies and sunshine when we walked out of the Robert Crown Center in Evanston. It stayed that way pretty much until we got to South Bend. I kept looking at my map and the weather ahead of us and decided I should probably make a bathroom stop and grab something to eat before we got in to the really bad stuff.
The Indiana Toll Road has some really nice Travel Plazas about every 30-40 miles. They’re all 7Eleven gas stations and all have some food options. Some have a bigger food court while others just have a chicken joint.
We stopped at the George Ade Travel Plaza which is at Mile Marker 23 Eastbound. It’s just past the interchange with I-94. Usually when we take the Skyway through Chicago, we get on 94 to head home, but this time we stayed on the Toll Road.
I actually chose this one because I knew they had one of the chicken places…and you know how I feel about gas station chicken.
Raise the Roost is a chain of quick service chicken that’s part of the 7Eleven chain. All of the store’s are inside the bigger 7Eleven gas stations or Speedway’s (which is now owned by 7Eleven). I don’t know when this Travel Plaza was rebuilt but I remember at one time, this was a Hardees restaurant and I would occasionally go out of the way to get Hardees. On the Toll Road, the smaller stops all have Raise the Roost as their food options now.
The gas station is pretty tightly packed in. B and I hit the bathroom. I grabbed a Pepsi and a bottle of water for the road and let him get a F’Real Shake.
We then walked over to the chicken counter. It’s got a food court look to it with just an order counter and a kitchen out in the open. The menu board hangs on monitors above the fryers. I stayed a few feet back and looked over the menu since this is a place I’ve never encountered before.
There are also some grab and go options typical of the convenience store. There is pizza away from the counter but they also have some sandwiches and small fryer items that you can easily eat in the car.
I ordered the 3 piece chicken tender combo which came with a side and a biscuit. I picked the potato wedges. I was handed a receipt then went to the cash register to pay. I had a lot of extra stuff so the bill was pretty high but my chicken meal was right around $11.
By the time I got back to the chicken counter, my meal was boxed up. The lady checked her screen to make sure I had paid then handed me the box so we could get back on the road.
I started with the chicken when I got back to the car because the wedges were too hot to pick up.
The chicken has a really thick, crispy breading on it that was really tasty. There may have been more breading than meat though. Some of it was tough…likely because it had been sitting under the warmer for a while but it was still a tasty chicken tender. I wasn’t offered sauce and usually wouldn’t take it anyway but these could have used a little something just because they appear to have been sitting for a while.
The wedges came out super hot. They were thick pieces of potato with a crispy exterior and a light, fluffy, potato-y inside. I had to let these sit for a while because they were so hot. Not a ton of flavor…definitely could have used some BBQ sauce or something but not bad either. They were just kind of meh. Nice big, filling wedges but needed a little something else.
The biscuit definitely wasn’t fresh. It was a little hard. Still had a delicious buttery southern biscuit flavor. Just had probably been out of the oven for a while.
Raise the Roost wasn’t bad, it just suffers from being a chicken place at a Travel Plaza. They have to have food ready to go because no one wants to wait 15 minutes for it to be cooked fresh. I was hungry when we stopped and I knew we probably still had a couple of hours on the road so I was happy to grab this box of food and get moving.
By the way, there’s a chance we could see one of these in Kalamazoo or at least somewhere in West Michigan in the future. 7Eleven has begun replacing some of the Speedy Cafe’s with Raise the Roost and/or their other concept Laredo Taco Co. Whether ours in one that will replaced hasn’t been announced yet but don’t be surprised if you see the logo pop up around here at some point.
SW Michigan Dining 