PEC Challenge: QuickChek

I know what you're thinking.  Convenience store pork roll? From QuickChek? I will not leave any stone unturned.  That's my promise to you.  For those reading outside of New Jersey with confusion, QuickChek was my first convenience store experience.  Way before I was doing taquitos from Seven-Eleven (shoutout Bobbert, my Shirlington, VA taquito dealer) or getting kicked out of the Red Bank Wawa, I was going to QuickChek on Bergenline Ave.  I'm not a coffee drinker but I do know sandwiches and the custom touchscreen sandwiches from QuickChek are much better than the "hoagies" from Wawa, sorry.  So when I stumbled into my first QuickChek in a while (grabbing some snacks on my way to Mountain Creek for some snowboarding), I was surprised to see pork roll as an option for a breakfast sandwich.  I suppose this is Jersey after all but generally, these regional chains would only keep with the basic sausage/bacon egg and cheese.   I wanted to say "national" chain there but upon further research, it looks like QuickChek's are only in the New York metropolitan area, starting in Dunellen, NJ in 1967.  The more you know.  OK, enough about convenience stores, how does it stack up?  About how you would expect a convenience store to do.  You're here for utility, not quality, but I'm not going to lie, this surprised me a little.  In fact, the buttered roll from QuickChek was considered in NJ.com's "64 NJ Defining Foods and Where to Find Them" article. 

Bread Rating: 6.7/10 (You know the roll wasn't half bad so maybe good ol' Pete was onto something by including the buttered roll from here.)

Pork Roll Rating: 5.6/10 (The meats were heated by microwave which my elitist brain is telling me is a red flag and should penalize it.  But I also have a history of eating at convenience stores so who am I to really judge? Anyway, the pork roll reminded me of some other spots out of state that didn't really know how to handle our beloved breakfast meat.)

Egg Rating: 5.8/10 (One of those egg patty things you get at places like McDonald's, again not hating on it, just informing you.  This was a little better than what you'd find, but still, one of that imitation insta-egg things vegans probably eat. Again, nothing wrong with it.)   

Cheese Rating: 7.2/10 (Bet you weren't expecting some white American cheese.  I know I wasn't and honestly it brought together the sandwich in a nice way.)

Sandwich Composition: 6.2/10 (For being a microwaved, quick sandwich you pick up and go from a convenience store, this wasn't half bad.  The SPK ratio was actually good, and the sandwich kept together nicely for the most part.)

Overall: 6.3/10 (I know it seems like I actually enjoyed this sandwich, and I actually did, but I have to keep some sort of integrity in my life and this sandwich is what it is.  The moral here is, this could have been a lot worse and it wasn't half bad.  If you run a deli or bagel shop though and you score lower than this, you should just close your business because QuickChek put this all together in about 5 minutes.) 

Price: $4

You can find QuickChek's all over New Jersey but this one was located at 1268 NJ-23, Butler, NJ 07405.