Pull into the 76 station on Route 35 and the plan might be nothing more ambitious than filling the tank and grabbing a drink. Then you walk inside and spot butter chicken burgers, lamb korma sandwiches, kathi rolls, masala fries, and mango lassi on the menu.
That changes things quickly. Gully Kitchen Express has planted a full Indian-inspired kitchen at 417 Route 35 in the Red Bank mailing area, physically in Middletown, turning an otherwise ordinary gas-station stop into one of the more unusual places to eat around Monmouth County.
The hook is certainly the location, but the food is not built around novelty alone. Familiar Indian sauces, spices, and fillings are worked into burgers, paninis, wraps, bowls, and loaded fries that make sense whether you already love Indian food or simply want lunch that is more interesting than another deli sandwich.
And yes, ordering a butter chicken burger while somebody beside you buys windshield washer fluid is part of the fun.
The Gas Station Stop That Turned Into a Red Bank Food Destination
There is no grand entrance announcing that something unusual is happening at 417 Route 35. Gully Kitchen Express operates inside a gas-station convenience store, which means the first impression involves fuel pumps, coolers, packaged snacks, and people making quick stops on their way somewhere else.
Walk farther in, though, and there is an actual kitchen turning out made-to-order Indian-inspired sandwiches and street-food dishes. That contrast is exactly what makes the place memorable.
The address is listed as Red Bank, although the property is physically in Middletown, placing it along one of Monmouth County’s busiest commercial corridors rather than in a restaurant-heavy downtown block. It is the sort of location where lunch often means whatever can be picked up quickly, and Gully Kitchen Express has leaned into that reality rather than fighting it.
Most of its menu travels easily, with burgers, paninis, kathi rolls, bowls, fries, and drinks designed for customers who may be eating at a counter, taking food home, or carrying it back to the car. Current menus show many of the signature sandwiches and rolls around $9.99, with bowls generally around $12.99, keeping the meal firmly in casual-lunch territory.
The kitchen also keeps considerably longer hours than many traditional lunch spots, although posted hours vary slightly between ordering platforms, so checking before a late-night visit is sensible. More interesting than the logistics is what has happened to the old gas-station-food expectation.
Nobody pulls into a fuel stop expecting caramelized onions, paneer, mint chutney, lamb korma, or butter chicken sauce. Here, those ingredients are the reason some people are pulling in at all.
How Gully Kitchen Express Brings Indian Street Food Into a Convenience Store
Indian street food has always been good at fitting enormous flavor into food that can be eaten without much ceremony, so the gas-station setting starts making more sense once the menu lands in front of you. Gully Kitchen Express describes its approach as a mix of Indian street-food inspiration and modern comfort food, and that idea shows up most clearly in the format.
Instead of building the menu around a long list of curries served in traditional restaurant fashion, the kitchen takes recognizable flavors and puts them into things that work naturally as quick meals. Kathi rolls come wrapped in layered flatbread, sandwiches stack fillings between bread, and bowls combine sauced proteins with rice, fries, vegetables, and other toppings.
Even the vegetarian choices receive the same treatment rather than feeling like afterthoughts. The Karma Sandwich, for example, brings together a chickpea-and-saag patty with paneer, cucumber, tomato, pickled onions, tamarind chutney, and mint chutney.
The Bombay Sandwich goes in another classic street-food direction with a spiced potato filling, cucumber, tomato, onion, chaat masala, and mint chutney on grilled bread. Those combinations make the menu approachable without sanding away the Indian identity that makes it interesting.
Someone who usually orders a chicken sandwich can recognize the structure immediately; the difference arrives through butter chicken sauce, chutneys, spiced fillings, paneer, and korma. That is a smart fit for the surroundings.
Customers do not need a white tablecloth, a long meal, or even much explanation. They can order something familiar in shape, discover flavors that are considerably less familiar, and be back on Route 35 without turning lunch into an event that eats up half the afternoon.
The Butter Chicken Burger That Made People Pay Attention
Start with crispy fried chicken, put it on a brioche bun with lettuce and onion, and you already have the bones of a perfectly understandable chicken sandwich. Gully Kitchen Express then gives the whole thing its reason for existing by adding creamy butter chicken sauce.
The Butter Chicken Burger, currently listed around $9.99, is one of those mashups that sounds slightly chaotic until you consider how naturally the pieces fit together. Butter chicken sauce brings tomato richness, creaminess, spice, and a little sweetness, all qualities that happen to work extremely well with fried chicken.
The lettuce and onion keep the burger from becoming one uninterrupted wall of richness, while the brioche bun makes it easy to handle. There is also a family connection behind the idea.
Owner Tushar Paul has said the sandwich was inspired by the butter chicken his mother makes, giving what could have been a simple fusion gimmick a much more personal starting point. If the burger is the headline-grabber, the Butter Chicken Panini shows how flexible the same flavor profile can be.
That version combines chicken tikka with mozzarella, caramelized and pickled onions, butter chicken sauce, and hot sauce, creating something closer to a pressed deli sandwich with an Indian center of gravity. It is easy to understand why butter chicken became the kitchen’s calling card.
The dish is already one of the most approachable entries into North Indian cooking, and putting those flavors into recognizable sandwich formats lowers the barrier even further. You do not need to know the difference between a vindaloo and a korma before ordering.
You only need to know that crispy chicken, brioche, and a creamy tomato-based sauce rarely make poor company.
Kathi Rolls, Lamb Sandwiches and Masala Fries Go Beyond the Burger
The danger with a place known for one unusual sandwich is that everyone orders the viral-looking item and ignores the rest of the board. That would be a mistake here.
The Lamb Korma Sandwich is arguably just as interesting, using shredded lamb with romaine, onion, tomato, and korma sauce in a handheld format that is less common than another chicken-based creation. Then there are the kathi rolls, which bring the menu closer to the Indian street-food tradition that inspires the whole operation.
The Butter Chicken Kathi Roll wraps butter chicken gravy with mint sauce and sautéed vegetables in Indian flatbread, while the Malai Chicken Kathi Roll goes creamier, pairing seasoned chicken with onions and cilantro-style chutney flavors. Vegetarian diners can order a Butter Paneer Kathi Roll instead, giving paneer the same portable treatment.
The sides are where restraint mostly disappears. Plain fries would feel oddly cautious next to this menu, so there are Masala Fries for about $4.99 and fully loaded Butter Chicken Fries for roughly $12.99.
The latter pile fries with chicken, butter sauce, and herbs, essentially turning a side dish into dinner. Butter Paneer Fries provide the vegetarian equivalent with masala fries, paneer, butter sauce, mint chutney, and a creamy drizzle.
Even the drinks stay on theme. Mango lassi offers the familiar yogurt-and-mango combination, while chai is available hot or iced depending on the current menu.
None of this feels like a restaurant tossing curry powder onto American fast food and calling it fusion. The stronger dishes work because they start with combinations already familiar in Indian cooking, then change the delivery system.
Korma becomes a sandwich sauce. Butter chicken moves onto fries. Paneer goes into a roll. The flavors remain recognizable even when the packaging changes completely.
Familiar Indian Flavors Get a Fast-Casual Makeover
There is a useful distinction between making Indian food less Indian and simply making it easier to grab for lunch. Gully Kitchen Express mostly lands on the right side of that line.
Look across the menu and the recurring ingredients are not shy ones: saag, paneer, tamarind, mint chutney, chaat masala, korma sauce, pickled onion, butter chicken gravy, and spiced potatoes all appear in formats more commonly associated with American fast-casual restaurants. That means a first-time customer can start with something as recognizable as a burger or bowl without being handed a bland version of the cuisine.
The bowls are a particularly good example. A Butter Chicken Bowl, generally listed at $12.99, pairs chicken in creamy tomato sauce with aromatic rice, seasoned fries, and salad greens.
The Butter Paneer Bowl takes a similar path with paneer, rice, fries, cucumber, tomato, lettuce, red onion, herbs, and sauces. Neither asks the diner to choose between something traditionally Indian and something built for an American lunch break.
They are deliberately both. The same thinking explains why the menu is relatively compact.
There is no attempt to compete with a full-service Indian restaurant offering dozens of regional curries, biryanis, breads, and tandoori dishes. Gully Kitchen Express has picked a narrower lane built around sandwiches, wraps, bowls, and loaded sides, then packed those formats with the flavors it wants to showcase.
That focus matters in a convenience-store kitchen where speed and consistency are part of the appeal. It also makes the place unusually easy to recommend to a mixed group.
One person can order paneer, another lamb, another fried chicken, and another a bowl, yet the meal still feels like it came from one coherent kitchen rather than four different fast-food counters.
Why This Route 35 Kitchen Is Worth Pulling Over For
Route 35 is full of places designed to solve practical problems quickly. You can fuel the car, pick up groceries, grab coffee, buy a sandwich, and be moving again before your navigation has had time to recalculate.
Gully Kitchen Express fits neatly into that rhythm while also being strange enough to break it. The kitchen is at 417 State Route 35, with Red Bank used as the mailing address and Middletown as the physical location, and its position makes it an easy stop for anyone moving through northern Monmouth County rather than something that requires navigating a downtown dining district.
The prices help preserve that casual identity. Signature burgers, paninis, sandwiches, and kathi rolls tend to hover around $10 on current menus, while bowls and loaded butter chicken fries sit closer to $13.
Add a roughly $5 mango lassi and it is still the kind of meal you can reasonably classify as a quick stop rather than a destination dinner. Yet the food gives the place more personality than the setting initially suggests.
There is something distinctly New Jersey about finding an inventive independent kitchen tucked where nobody expects one, particularly along a highway lined with businesses people normally pass without a second look. The best reason to remember Gully Kitchen Express is not simply that it serves Indian food inside a gas station.
Novelty might get someone through the door once, but it cannot do much after the first bite. What sticks is the specificity of the menu: crispy chicken under butter sauce, lamb with korma, paneer with chutneys, masala-coated fries, and a cold mango lassi waiting a few feet from the convenience-store coolers.
The gas station is the surprise. The kitchen is the part worth remembering.
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