It’s decent food… but fails to reach it’s potential due to service problems.

When I was a kid growing up in Connecticut, I would occasionally see these stores named “Wawa” but at some point they all disappeared. Wikipedia says the company abandoned most of the New York Metro area and New England because it was too competitive. Wawa stores remain in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. It’s a basic convenience store, similar to 7-11, and most newer locations also sell gas. For me, what makes Wawa great are their delicious hoagies.

There’s a self-service touch-screen ordering menu in each store where you can order hoagies, soups and more. The chicken salad hoagie with extra provolone cheese is my standard choice, and I would pick it over Subway or Quiznos any day. For the amount of meat they pile on, and the price, those other chains don’t compare.

I’d never eaten other items from the hoagie shop, but recently a billboard for their Hot Turkey and Stuffing Bowl got my attention. I hoped their bowls would be just as good as their hoagies, and since Thanksgiving is right around the corner, it might help me get into the holiday spirit. After trying it twice, it appears my order was incorrectly made both times. According to the WAWA website I should have received hot turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. When ordering the first time, there was no stuffing in my bowl. I’m not sure why… maybe they ran out. For that matter it was NOT an option on the menu screen. They did offer cranberry sauce, which I decided to add.

So I got my first bowl and was quite excited. It felt pretty hefty, though I suspected it was probably just mashed potatoes weighing it down. When I opened the container and got a whiff, for some reason my first thought was cat food. After a few seconds, and to my relief, I was getting a familiar aroma of turkey and gravy. There was a lot of gravy, so much I worried it was going to spill. As I thought, the majority of the bowl was mashed potatoes. Thick sliced turkey was sitting on top, with a small amount of cranberry sauce finishing it off. When I finally jumped in, I devoured everything pretty quickly. The potatoes and gravy were great, but the turkey didn’t stand out. If I took a piece of turkey alone, I could taste it, however it wasn’t very flavorful. If I took an entire forkful of different ingredients, the turkey flavor got lost completely. There wasn’t much cranberry sauce but it was strong and tasted great. I kept thinking it would have been better with stuffing, and how it should be mandatory in a Thanksgiving Bowl.

On my visit to another WAWA location, I discovered they had stuffing available there. Problem solved, right? Not exactly. This time, I received NO turkey and NO gravy. Yeah that’s right, my second bowl was just stuffing, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes. Maybe something went wrong with the automated ordering process, or maybe since it was 11:30 at night the person preparing it just wasn’t in the mood to do it correctly. Whatever the reason, it was very disappointing to see no turkey in my Hot Turkey Bowl. I didn’t want to waste my $3.17 and didn’t feel like driving back, so I dove in. It was actually not too bad. The stuffing was very tasty and just moist enough. The mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce tasted just like the first location. Even though it was incomplete and made incorrectly, I still enjoyed what was given to me.

This was a tough review for me to grade. Despite the lack of stuffing in the first bowl, and lack of turkey in the second, I still enjoyed both. They’re not in the same league as the excellent hoagies, but they’re good. If I had received all of the correct ingredients, I would probably be giving the Hot Turkey Bowl a score of B, but with errors on both visits and turkey taking a backseat to other ingredients, a C- feels appropriate.

Trying something new and different from the Wawa sandwich counter was a decent overall experience, but I think I’ll be sticking with the hoagies in the future. They actually offer this bowl in hoagie sandwich form, so maybe I will try that next. At the very least, eating two of these bowls from Wawa has gotten me excited for the real Thanksgiving meal that’s coming soon, and I know my mother and sister will prepare it right!

Price: $3.17 / Website: Wawa.com

Fast Food Critic Score: C-

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Nutrition Facts - Wawa, Hot Turkey and Stuffing Bowl.

Calories - 871
Calories from Fat - 414
Total Fat - 46 grams
Carbs - 78 grams
Saturated Fat - 16 grams
Trans Fat - 0 grams
Cholesterol - 51 milligrams
Sodium - 2783 milligrams
Protein - 37 grams