The Lemon Dessert You Should Avoid Picking Up During Your Buc-Ee's Pit Stop

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Road trips need fuel, which means gas in the car and snacks for the driver (and the passengers, too). To help steer foodies on the road toward the best bites, Tasting Table rounded up a list of 12 foods from Buc-Ee's to avoid – and, while we're generally loving the convenience store chain's wide oeuvre of packaged and freshly-made fare (especially the Beaver Nuggets), we advise leaving Buc-Ee's Lemon Crisps on the shelf.

Lemon cookies should offer a balance of sweetness and tang, with a light, crispy mouthfeel. Buc-Ee's tiny, crunchy cookies come packaged in a plastic tub emblazoned with the chain's iconic cartoon beaver logo. A descriptive tagline on the tub promises "Zesty Sweet Lemon Cookie Treats," and, while the tub definitely facilitates easy snacking in the car, that's the only criterion on which it delivers. That tagline promise is sorely missed. In reality (as we mentioned in our review), Buc-Ee's Lemon Crisps are "bitter and far too tangy. This acrid flavor is followed up by a cheap, artificial aftertaste that makes it seem like they were flavored with lemon-scented all-purpose cleaner." A peek at the Crisps' ingredients label reveals that lemon is listed in fifth place, behind flour, cane sugar, butter, and eggs, and just before baking powder and soda. Indeed, the advertised "lemon" certainly tastes like it ranks this far down the ingredient list. Regarding the Crisps' proportionately underperforming texture, our reviewer notes, "They're not quite crunchy and are too hard to be considered a soft, chewy cookie."

According to fans on social media, there was a time when Buc-Ee's Lemon Crisps tasted better. A Reddit thread from two years ago dimly posits, "[Buc-Ee's] Lemon Crisp Cookies Suck Now" (yikes). The poster shares that they look forward to snacking on the Crisps every time they travel through Texas, but after a few months between visits, "I go to get the Lemon Crisps and [lo] and behold the packaging is different but so [is] the taste! [...] [I] am so upset at how gross they taste now! They are way too bitter and you can barely taste that real butter homemade cookie taste. Now it just tastes like bitter processed garbage. Has anyone else noticed?!" Indeed, the comments are filled with equally disappointed commiserators, who shared comments, including, "[T]his is not what I came for. And there's a weird aftertaste too," "THEY ARE DIFFERENT," and "Yes, the new ones are terrible. Wish they'd bring the old ones back!" 

Still, as Buc-Ee's already-gargantuan enterprise expands, quality control is an infamously common drawback of expansion. Another post asks foodies about their general "thoughts on Buc-Ee's," to which one commenter responds, "The last couple of times I've gone into a Buc-Ees it was so g******** crowded I just had to go to the bathroom and then leave." Good things almost always change as they grow, and not always for the better. Either way, we recommend these iced lemon poppy seed shortbread cookies to foodies craving a lemony treat. Buc-Ee's Crisps aren't it.