Saroki’s Crispy Chicken & Pizza (Haslett)
1619 Haslett RoadFriday night became Saturday night overtime last weekend. It was fine. J and the kids were busy all day volunteering for a synchronized skating competition at Wings Event Center. Neither of them are on synchro teams this year so I didn’t have to be there. The overtime opportunity came up so I took it.
This one was a little bit of a drive but nothing to outrageous. I needed to be in Haslett for an afternoon assignment. I was by myself so I could take my time getting over there.
I worked from about 1 – 4 PM then went looking for lunch. I was near the high school and I knew there were some options just to the north of where I was. Of course, I gravitated towards the gas station chicken.
Saroki’s Crispy Chicken & Pizza is inside the Marathon gas station on the corner of Haslett and Marsh Roads in the unincorporated community of Haslett near Lansing. The gas station is really kind of difficult to get in to. There’s an entrance before the building on Marsh Road and one on Marsh Road once you get past the building. The whole shopping plaza feels shoe horned in to the plot of land. The entrance to the building actually faces away from Haslett Road. There’s a sign for the restaurant portion of the building on the outside that almost looks like it has it’s own entrance but it doesn’t. You have to go in to the convenience store entrance to get to it.
The restaurant is off to the left when you walk in the store. You have to walk through rows of the convenience store and past the cashier counter to find it. When you get there, there is a large kitchen with cases full of pizza slices and fried chicken near the cash register waiting for you.
I was going for hot food but they also have a pretty big case of grab and go cold items as well. I do really love cold pizza and cold chicken. They had both as well as some of their side and dessert items in a display case ready to go.
I wanted to try both the chicken and the pizza so I ordered a three piece chicken tender meal with fries and a Pepsi plus a slice of the All Meat Pizza. The total for the meal came to just under $18. It’s paid right their at the restaurant and not at the convenience store register like a lot of gas station chicken restaurants.
The slice of pizza was tossed back in to the oven to warm back up and the fries had to be made fresh so it took a few minutes for my order to come out. There is no place to sit and eat in the gas station so I headed back to the car to eat some of it before getting back on the road.
I started with the pizza first. The slice is a New York style slice topped with sausage, pepperoni, bacon and ham. It had a really good snap to the crust all the way up to the point. I saw several people coming in to pick up whole pizzas to go before the Michigan State game and I can kinda see why. This is the type of pizza I really like. It has a thin crust but it’s a crispy thin crust all the way through. There was enough meat on the slice that I got a little bit of each in every bite which is always a bonus.
I started in on the chicken next. I ordered three tenders but I found four in the box. Bonus tendy!! The chicken was really good. It was super crispy, juicy, and had a lot of meat. The crispy layer had a bit of a sweetness to it. I asked for hot sauce to dip the chicken in but I ended up not using it. The chicken was really good on it’s own. Better than my usual gas station chicken. The batter was light and airy yet still had a crunch to it. The meat was tender and juicy. You really can’t ask for more than that from a gas station meal.
The fries were battered with a seasoning on them. Nothing super great but a good compliment to the tenders.
The final thing in the meal was the Honey Butter Biscuit. Like most gas station chicken places, the biscuit was overcooked and sticky. I’m not a huge fan of places that put the honey on their biscuits. Yes, it’s delicious, but now my steering wheel gets sticky. You know you’re going to eat chicken from a gas station in the car. The biscuit was tasty and I ate it in two bites. Then had to find some napkins to make sure I didn’t make everything in my car sticky and sweet.
Saroki’s Crispy Chicken and Pizza is a place that was never on my radar. They have 21 locations, mostly on the east side of the state, but this one near Lansing is the furthest one west at this point in time. It’s totally my kind of place. The chicken is good. The pizza is good. It’s fairly cheap and it comes from a gas station. What’s not to like about it?
SW Michigan Dining 