Is Wawa’s Gobbler Menu Worth the Hype? A Food Editor Tasted 3 Items to Find Out

• What It Is: macaroni and cheese, hot roasted turkey, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce
• Price: $10

I wanted to like this one the best, since there’s no bread element to turn mushy under all those fixings. But alas, it’s at the bottom of my list. The mac and cheese was disappointingly overcooked and too salty. The gravy was also excessively salted, as well as too generously applied. The cranberry sauce brought some acidic balance to the dish, but I feel like rice or potatoes would have been a better neutral base than the mac and cheese.

• What It Is: hot roasted turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce on a hoagie roll of your choice
• Price (Shorti): $8

Most of the components (on any Gobbler, I guess) are mushy or downright wet. Between the stuffing, mash, gravy and cranberry sauce, the bread turns soggy in mere minutes. The turkey provides some textural contrast (and it’s a step above, say, pre-cooked grilled chicken strips that you can find at the grocery store, because it’s moist and tender without having a particle board-like consistency), but all in all, the sammy is a bit one-dimensional. If the stuffing had some toothsome pieces of bread, that would’ve been nice, but it’s more like a stuffing spread. That said, it’s flavorful, savory, herbaceous and salty. The cranberry did its job of cutting through the richness with its sweet-tart magic.

• What It Is: cold deli turkey, stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce, wrapped in a flour tortilla
• Price: $7

I didn’t expect to enjoy the sweet potato so much (I usually prefer it enrobed in toasted marshmallows…), but I thought its starchy, brown sugar-y notes paired seamlessly with the sweet-and-sour cranberry. I also didn’t anticipate appreciating the wrap over the hoagie; I *adore* Wawa’s Shorti rolls and have had dozens with nothing but butter in my day, but in this specific case, the wrap was a lot less messy (likely because there’s no gravy) and held together well. One change I didn’t enjoy as much, though, was the cold deli turkey over the hot roasted version. Again, the texture of the handheld was uniform throughout; a few whole cranberries or crunchy bread in the stuffing would’ve gone a long way.

Having tried three options, I’d say the ultimate Wawa Gobbler order is a Sweet Potato Hot Turkey Gobbler Bowl as is (so you won’t have to deal with soggy bread or sticky hands), or if you insist on a handheld, the Gobbler with Stuffing & Mashed Potato on a hoagie roll with the gravy on the side. TBH, I could do without the meat across the board, so I’d sign off on nixing the turkey from either option. (No matter what you order though, don’t sub cold turkey for hot in these items.)