Restaurant Review Travel Plaza Virginia Ruther Glen

This “Restaurant Review Travel Plaza Virginia Ruther Glen” is a review of the restaurant at the Ruther Glen Travel Plaza in Ruther Glen, VA, USA, based upon our own expectations of what a restaurant that caters to professional truck drivers of commercial motor vehicles should be like — as well as our own preferences in foodstuffs.

Restaurant Review Travel Plaza Virginia Ruther Glen

Date: 5/5/2010

Location: Ruther Glen Travel Plaza, Ruther Glen, VA, I-95, exit 104

Overall Facility:Restaurant Review Travel Plaza Virginia Ruther Glen

This is a no-smoking facility.
There is an area for diners just inside the restaurant (usually populated by professional truck drivers) and plenty of seating in the back past the buffet.
A buffet is featured nightly with meats, vegetables, soup and salad items..
Diners may order from the menu.

On this particular night, the restaurant featured a steak buffet. There were also other meats available on the buffet. Between us, we had four steaks (Mike, 3, and Vicki, 1).

Pros: Restaurant Review Travel Plaza Virginia Ruther Glen

There was plenty of just about everything on the bar when we came through. Hot food items were being regularly restocked.
There was a wide variety of entrees: steaks, brisket, barbeque, chicken.
The mashed potatoes were quite good. They were well seasoned and the small lumps and small amount of potato skins in them assured us that they were “real” potatoes.
Our waitress, Lottie, was friendly and attentive. She provided lemons for our ice water in a separate bowl. She also gave us a pitcher with water so that we could refill our glasses, and gave us another pitcher of water after we drained the first one. She automatically put out extra napkins and straws for our drinks without our having to ask.
We enjoyed having hard boiled egg on our salads. Mike liked having chow mein noodles to put on his salad.
Mike liked the penne and cheese sauce (like macaroni and cheese).

Cons: Restaurant Review Travel Plaza Virginia Ruther Glen

The cottage cheese had red and green “additives” in it; Vicki doesn’t like this.
Mike noticed that one crock for canned peaches was empty at the time he came through.
Vicki noted that the piece of steak that she had was not particularly well seasoned to her taste and had a good bit of fat and gristle on it.
Vicki noted that there was no chocolate dessert on the buffet or much in the way of dessert at all. Of the two gelatin type desserts, the orange ambrosia, was made with cottage cheese and not whipped topping (which surprised Vicki).
The cucumbers were cut too thinly in our opinion.
A number of the cherry tomatoes on the bar were beyond their prime.
As what we think was a space saving option, the restaurant mixed raw broccoli and cauliflower in one crock on the salad bar. For folks like Vicki who like one but not the other, this required that the customer selectively remove the desired vegetable while leaving the other behind.
There was only one hot green vegetable on the hot bar: green beans with ham.
Besides the buns wrapped in plastic near the barbeque on the hot bar, there was no other bread set out or offered.