Get It While It's Hot

Gas Station, Roadside, and Convenience Cuisine in the U.S. South

Constance Bailey, Shelley Ingram, Casey Kayser

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807186749
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

Get It While It's Hot brings together scholars, food writers, influencers, and even a CEO to discuss the phenomenon of eating by the side of the road. This innovative collection examines an increasingly commonplace belief across the U.S. South—that some of the best, most enjoyable food comes from places you would not expect: a gas station, the back of a pickup truck, or a ramshackle building made of plywood.

The essays collected here look at the delicious food that can be found in such spaces, but also at the ways that gas station, roadside, and convenience cuisine contributes to the social and cultural identities of people and communities in the U.S. South. Sometimes these roadside spaces serve goals of equity and food justice as they relate particularly to race, class, and gender, and sometimes they stymy them. Contributors address the importance of roadside vendors to low-income areas and communities of color, while also revealing how gas stations and convenience stores are particularly prone to anti-Black surveillance and community gatekeeping. Several essays examine the appearance of service stations and unconventional food vendors in southern literature. Interviews with photojournalist Kate Medley, social media influencer Stafford Shurden, and Stuckey's CEO Stephanie Stuckey provide firsthand perspectives on the diverse landscapes of food culture in the South.

By surveying the importance of roadside and convenience cuisine to communities across the region, Get It While It's Hot illustrates that these spaces do not function like typical restaurants. They mark boundaries of community, establish consistency and familiarity, and invite people, sometimes paradoxically, to pull up a chair and sit a while.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• PART I. THE PANTRY
• Introduction
• Holy Grounds: Queer Southern Adolescence in a Styrofoam Cup
• I’ll Take Twenty Dollars on Pump #2 and an Order of Chicken Curry to Go: Cuisine, Conversation, and Cultural Confluence
• Tasting My Place: Livermush at Home and at Convenience Venues in the North Carolina Piedmont and Mountains
• A Taste of Nostalgia: Candy Vendors in Southern Black Communities
• You Can Get ’Em Piping Hot After 4 P.M.: Southern Maid Donuts Hits the Spot
• The Tailgate Review: An Interview with Stafford Shurden
• PART II. THE COMMUNITY
• Introduction
• “We Got Us”: Let Out Meals, Black Eateries, and a Home Away from Home
• The Chicken Hut: Southern Hospitality Reimagined in East Durham
• Southern Bodegas: Black Women, Community, and Good Food
• The Road Back to the Yellow Blinking Light: Gas Stations, Food, and Community
• Ice Cream and Dynamite in Darlington Heights, Virginia: A Reflection on Race, Community, and History
• Where Communities Come Together: An Interview with Kate Medley
• PART III. THE ROAD
• Introduction
• Seen and Unseen: Anonymity, Nostalgia, and Coming of Age on the Road
• Coming of Age in the Waffle House: Southern Female Adolescence in Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country and Mary Miller’s The Last Days of California
• What if They Won’t Let You Get It While It’s Hot? The Necropolitics of the Southern Convenience Store in Flannery O’Connor and Jesmyn Ward
• North and Back: Gas Stations and Road Travel in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing and Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird
• Every Traveler Is a Friend: An Interview with Stephanie Stuckey
• Afterword: Remembering the Time . . . One Last Word on Gas Stations, Roadside Stands, and Convenience Stores
• Appendix: Where to Eat on the Road
• Contributors
• Index