To get a good understanding of how the outside world views Amarillo, skip the fancy brunch spots and walk into a gas station on I-40 at 7:30 a.m. Look for the stainless-steel warmer glowing near the coffee bar. It’s packed with foil-wrapped breakfast burritos, and you’ll see them being grabbed off the rack by wind turbine crews, long-haul truckers and sleepy families rolling off the highway.
Amarillo has quietly experienced a convenience-store boom in recent years to serve those motorists. Buc-ee’s showed up, of course. Homegrown Toot’n Totum and Pak-A-Sak expanded to compete with them. QT joined the ranks. Even Circle K is reestablishing a local footprint.
Our team decided to do the important journalistic work of figuring out which of these gas station chains serves the best breakfast burrito. We crisscrossed the city, buying only prepackaged arrangements of eggs, cheese and meats in a flour tortilla. We sampled a frankly irresponsible number of burritos. We definitely figured out who was best, so we’ll divide our list into two categories: The Disappointments and The Clear Winners…