Sheetz (Smith Road)
29225 Smith RoadI had another late night in Detroit.
Usually when I have those really late nights, I have a colleague with me that I have to take back to Lansing before coming home.
I didn’t have that this time. There were two co-workers coming from Grand Rapids so they drove all the way to Detroit together. That meant I could just meet them there.
I got to Detroit early and got myself a sandwich from The Original Gonella’s. That held me over for most of the day but I didn’t eat while at our job site so I was pretty hungry by the time I got back on the road to head back to Kalamazoo around 1:00 AM.
I know the choices are pretty limited but there is a really good option not too far off I-94 not far from the city.
Sheetz has opened two locations in Romulus near the Detroit Metro Airport. I stopped at the one of Wick Road back in January so I decided to find the other one which just opened not too far away earlier this summer.
The second Detroit area Sheetz location is on Smith Road at the intersection with Middlebelt Road right off I-94 in Romulus. This location is about 3 miles from the Wick Road location. It’s funny to me they opened the first two Sheetz’s in Michigan so close to each other. The gas station takes up a pretty large plot of land right on the corner. From the outside, it looks like any other roadside stop.
I’ve blogged about Sheetz in the past but it’s always been in other states. My first experience was at a location in Brookville, PA on my way home from New York City in 2023. There were no Sheetz locations in Michigan at that time. Now we have two.
At first glance, Sheetz looks like most gas station convenience stores. There’s a large section of candy, chips, other snacks and drinks to the right when you walk in. The store is still fairly new and has a little bit of that new car smell to it. It’s really clean and even at 1 in the morning, really bright and welcoming.
What makes Sheetz different is the hot, prepared food section. I headed straight to the order kiosk and started swiping through it. I was pretty hungry and wanted a couple of different things. This way of ordering at a gas station isn’t soemthing completely foreign to us Michiganders. There are a few Speedways that do this with the Speedy Cafe concept. The big difference is, the Speedy Cafe’s are always closed when I’m hungry and Sheetz is open 24/7.
I put in my order, hit the bathroom, grabbed a couple of bottles of Pepsi then went to pay. There are self pay kiosks in the store as well but I had cash I wanted to use so I got in line for the regular way to pay.
Unlike Speedway, you don’t need a stamp on the receipt to show you’ve paid. The kitchen can see if you’ve paid or not and that’s how they know to give the food to you. There is a TV screen hanging near the pick up counter with order numbers. You can see where you’re at in line. If you order online, it shows a name. If you order on the kiosk, it shows a number that matches your receipt.
The kitchen area is pretty large and near the back of the store. There’s really no interaction with that kitchen though until they hand you a bag of food. You can’t order with a person. It all has to be done through the touch screen.
It took about ten minutes for my order number to be called and I was ready to get back on the road and get home. There is a pretty big dining area though with a couple of different table types. Most people were just using the seating to wait for their orders though since it was so late at night.
I ordered quite a bit of food as you’ll see.
When I got back to the car, the first thing I opened up was the fries…er…Fryz. They’re simple frozen, skin on French fries. The order was pretty big and pretty salty. I’m not a ketchup person but these are like the perfect ketchup fries. They were fine as they were and I ate them pretty quickly.
The next thing I got in to was the burger. I got my burger with a fried egg, American cheese and bacon. No sauces because I was in the car. This burger is way better than most gas station burgers because it’s made fresh. It doesn’t have time for the bun to get hard. I was actually really surprised by how good this burger was. It’s still a gas station cheeseburger but the freshness really helps. The fried egg is cooked all the way through and the bacon is actually somewhat crispy. I feel like I’ve had burgers at Sheetz before and they haven’t been as good as this one. The fact that I was really hungry probably has something to do with it.
The last thing I got was the Classic Sampler which is a choice of three of the fried appetizers. I chose the Wisconsin Cheese Bitez, Mozzarella Sticks, and Boneless Bites. The small box was overflowing with delicious fried food.
I started with the Mozzarella Sticks. Again, no sauce because I was in the car and I didn’t want to wear it. There were three mozzarella sticks in the box. They were perfectly fried with a nice, light but crispy outer layer and a good mozzarella cheese pull in the middle. These would have been slightly better with some marinara but I didn’t want to make a mess.
The Wisconsin Cheese Bitez were next. These were delicious fried cheese curds. They’re more like the kind of curds you get at a bar and not quite like the ones at Culvers. They were nice and golden brown with gooey cheddar cheese in the middle.
The last thing in the box was the Boneless Bites. These are pieces of white meat chicken with that same delicious, crunchy exterior. Each of the bites was about two bites so they were fairly big in size. I think there were four or five in the box.
I have been complaining a lot recently about Speedy Cafe’s closing way too early. It happened to me again this past Friday in Schoolcraft. Went to get a pizza at 9 PM and it was closed.
I don’t have that problem with Sheetz. It was 1 AM when I walked in the store and the kitchen was still open. The food was really good and it solved my hunger problems at that time of night.
I know Sheetz is opening more stores across the state and there’s been some pushback from people and I really don’t get that. I would gladly take one of these stores in Kalamazoo.
SW Michigan Dining 