A Dining Destination Hidden in a North Texas Gas Station – Texas Monthly
Some of the tastiest, most affordable “fast foods” in Texas can be found at gas stations. In Rest Stop we stop for a bite to eat and explore the scene, from Nepalese dumplings to chilaquiles.
A few attentive locals know exactly when it happens. Green Spot Chef Pedro Cristobal and his family prepare enough breakfast tacos each morning to fill three large pans. They’re tightly wrapped in foil and stay steaming all day. By the time it’s close to closing, some regulars will have found out, and you could just grab a free taco with whatever else you order – maybe a kombucha barrel or a bison jerky – because any leftover tacos are included to go goodbye- goodbye. Free or not, the tacos are wrapped in foil and stacked, filled with bacon, which is still crispy at 2:00 p.m. Lift them up with pliers or face a scalded palm.
The breakfast taco is exactly the kind of friendly, old-fashioned general store tone that the nearby White Rockers love. This is no ordinary Texaco nestled in another mall. Green Spot, a lead-free gem just a stones throw from Dallas’s White Rock Lake, is carefully curated and much more neighborly. These hot dog rolls are for the other gas stations. This is the kind of gas station with double shots of espresso, steak and eggs and indie-made insect bombs.
It’s all friendly, as friendly as friendly it gets – as much as you want and want at a North Texas gas station and healthy grocery store that once had a fro-yo topping bar (endless sprinkles and the freshly made salsa bar.) disappeared when COVID-19 hit). There’s Noble Coyote Espresso from a local Dallas roaster, strong enough to raise the double dead (zombies after they’re beheaded). On a recent visit, Kevin Sprague, co-owner of Noble Coyote, showed up behind the coffee counter, clacked his espresso beans, and tucked them down himself. A curtain of roasted chocolate and dark wood aromas falls over the room.
During your lunch break, you can see locals in crisp and clean scrubs, ordering from a menu where some items cost over eight dollars. You might spot a power suit or two that keep everything busy, except for a trio of foil-wrapped breakfast tacos in one hand like Wolverine’s claws. Any day of the week, you will definitely see a crumpled pajama whisk by holding a styrofoam container of Huevos Rancheros or a breakfast BLT. Today a team of older cyclists is resting at the patio tables outside the market and drinking Green Spot’s environmentally friendly juices. That group is the Velo Veterans, a cycling community of mostly retirees who race against the sun a few times a week as it rises over White Rock Lake. Green Spot is always on your route.
“There’s a lot here that you can’t get anywhere else,” says Sprague. It’s true, especially when you remember standing at a gas station on the ever-bustling Buckner Boulevard. Turn in any direction at the green spot and you will catch something local. Photos of the White Rock Lake overflow (taken by Adam Velte, the manager of Green Spot) line the walls. Dallas’s Empire Baking is represented with cookies and muffins tucked away next to the breakfast tacos. The fridges are of course full of local beer and kombucha, some of the drinks are made about a mile or two away. Without much ado, the Dallas musician Erykah Badu will drop in occasionally for vegetarian dishes, according to legend. The collaboration – the community of the commercial – is the reason why Velte has been working here since it opened in February 2008.
Then there is the food. Try the chilaquiles, a large plate of happiness wrapped in salsa and tortilla chips. Cristobal asks if you want it spicy first, an important question to answer before dropping chilies and lime showers. Put a scoop of creamy black beans in one side of the container (which gas station has red-hot beans?); in another the fried egg lies like a duvet over a warm bed. Cristobal makes a grid pattern over the rest of the chilaquiles and lace the chopped white onions and grated cheese with sour cream. A forked bite, a fully stratified bite with all the red heat, will burn the cobwebs off your head.
How about a cheeseburger and fries? Green Spot has a simple and reliable heart warmer (they’ll do a real medium rare if you ask) with Cheddar or Pepper Jack. The beef patty is grilled flat and only seasoned with a little salt and pepper. The juices are trapped behind the fried crust. This good, greasy juice runs over onions, lettuce and tomatoes between the soft rolls. This cheeseburger is best as a dine-in meal, enjoying the first bite seconds after it’s been on the hot grill plate.
With a little luck and the help of friends, the spot would have survived the pandemic, says Velte. The guests kept their usual stops despite the masks and the swirling fear. The last few weekends have seen business soar. Velte is currently thinking about a children’s card for school, which will soon open behind the market.
“Let’s bring more of this together,” he said, gesturing across the shop. If we had been to another gas station in town, this feeling might have been confusing. But not at Green Spot.
Green spot
702 N. Buckner Boulevard, Dallas
Phone: 214-319-7768
Hours: Monday to Friday 6.30 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
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