Wally’s (Pontiac)

• 1 Holiday Road
• Pontiac, IL 61764
• (815) 844-8690
• Website

It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a weekend and gone to my parents. Life is busy and while I love that we’re involved in so many things, I hate that getting home has taken a back burner.

We still see my parents a lot. But they make the effort to come to us. They come for the kid’s events and will spend a day or two in Michigan as long as the weather is nice.

J and L flew to Dallas this past weekend for a figure skating camp. I can’t work and pick B up from daycare on time so I usually have to take the days off when J is out of town.

Our plan for Friday was to pick B up directly from school, drop J and L off at AZO (they had a late flight so they wouldn’t miss work/school that day) then B and I were going to Illinois for the weekend.

My parents live in a really small town. There’s not much to do there. We usually just end up at my brother’s house in the next town over so the kids can play. My nieces are quite a bit older than him but they still enjoy hanging out and playing video games with him.

Saturday my mom wanted to go see my aunt. She’s in a nursing home in Pontiac. She was diagnosed with ALS a year or so ago. We used to Facetime with her but she can’t talk anymore so that’s gotten difficult. Since I was home, we went over there to see her. We all get more out of face to face interactions.

We spent about an hour with her then we headed back home. We had plans to meet at my brother’s again for dinner later that evening.

I hadn’t eaten lunch though. Again, not a lot of options where my parents live and they didn’t really have anything ready to eat in the house.

My mom suggested we stop in Pontaic. I didn’t want a big meal but she said there was a gas station that we could grab sandwiches from….and you know how much I love a gas station sandwich.

Wally’s is quite the gas station. It’s located on Holiday Road just off I-55 on the west side of Pontiac. To say the place is huge is an understatement. Opened in 2020, the property is 30,000 square feet and has 76 pumps and 4 electric vehicle charging stations. There’s no comparison to Wally’s in the Midwest but I hear this place has a similar concept to a chain of gas stations with a beaver for a mascot in the south.

We didn’t need gas. Just food, so we headed inside.

There are so many food options. It’s nuts. There are grab and go cold sandwiches right as you walk in.

There are grab and go hot sandwiches behind that.

There’s house made beef jerky behind that.

Keep going and you’ll find a pastry case.

And in the center of it all is a popcorn stand. That’s the first thing you smell when you walk in and it’s hard to walk by it without stopping for a bag.

In addition to all that hot food, Wally’s also has all the traditional gas station snacks. There are large coolers with drinks and candy, chips, and a huge selection other snackables off to one side of the store.

All B wanted was an icee so I got him one of those then went looking for myself.

I headed back to the hot food grab and go and couldn’t make up my mind. Yes, we were going to be eating dinner in a few hours, but I didn’t eat lunch so I grabbed two sandwiches and a bag of chips.

My mom grabbed herself a cinnamon roll for the morning plus grabbed a bottle of water and a Pepsi Zero for me. Once we had everything, we headed to the checkout where the bill came out to around $30.

I wasn’t going to eat the sandwiches in the car because I figured I’d end up wearing most of them, but I grabbed the bag of chips knowing that was something I could snack on during the drive home. The chips are homemade and come spilling out of a paper bag. There’s a salt and pepper seasoning on them to provide that extra kick of flavor, but it’s really hard to go wrong with home made chips. They were fantastic.

When I got back to my parents house, I started unwrapping sandwiches. I started with the Chopped Beef BBQ. I think I’ve made it known I prefer sliced brisket over chopped and that holds true with this sandwich. It is a very dense sandwich. The bread is dense and the meat is packed in tightly. The flavor is fine but it’s hard for me to override my brain who wants to believe this is a pulled pork sandwich, not a beef sandwich.

The other sandwich I got was the Italian beef. Now, I knew this wasn’t going to be a true Italian beef so my bar was set pretty low. This sandwich, like the brisket, is really dense. Dense bread and tightly packed meat between that bread. The meat…was actually really tasty. If this was actually a true Italian beef with a gravy soaked bun and some hot giardineria, it would be on point. The sandwich was really good just as a sliced beef sandwich. There was a layer of cheese between the bread and the meat that added an extra layer of welcome flavor.

The easy thing to do here would be to draw comparisons between Wally’s and Buc-ees…but honestly, I’ve never been to a Buc-ees, so I can’t do that. From the stories J and L tell me (who went to their first Buc-ees while in Dallas last weekend) they sound similar but I have no first hand knowledge of that.

Right now, there are only two Wally’s locations. This one in Pontiac was the first. Another opened in Fenton, MO in 2022. My assumption is this chain will grow. There are two more planned stores in Whitestown, IN and Independence, MO expected to open this year.

Wally’s really have everything you want at a fuel stop right off the highway. There’s a huge food selection and it’s mostly grab and go. You can get gas, hit the restroom, and fuel yourself up before getting back on the road.