Review: Wawa Buffalo Bleu Chicken Wrap

Where to find it: Any Wawa
Price: $4.19
Overall Rating: 8/10

I got introduced to these from my coworker at the hardware store.  With a Wawa just a hop, skip, and a jump across the parking lot and across the street, its a popular place to get lunch from.  Problem is, when you have a half hour and your lunch is around 12:30, oftentimes ordering a hoagie from Wawa can take 15 minutes just to get,  and when you do as much standing as I do, you want to do as much sitting as possible on lunch.

Solution: The Wawa Buffalo Bleu Chicken Wrap.

The Buffalo Bleu, along with a few other varieties, are made daily around 5 am and kept in a refrigerated case, so you can bypass all the suckers in the hoagie line and get back to the break room in like 7 minutes flat.

Appearance: It really doesn't look like much, and had it not been for the recommendation, I really probably would never have tried it.  My all time favorite at Wawa has always been the Homestyle Roast Beef (HRB),  so when I get caught in the tractor beam that is the HRB, its often hard to even consider alternatives.

Taste: I'm not one for nutrition labels, but this thing tastes a lot healthier than say my usual (Arnold Palmer, Homestyle Roast Beef, Tobasco Infused Slim Jim).  Keep in mind, its refrigerated levels of cold. If you mind cold chunks of chicken, you may want to hold off.  Finally, the buffalo sauce.  I have to admit, I'm a big fan of the Wawa buffalo sauce.  Its kind of spicy, but has that right ratio of creaminess to counterbalance it, but it still has a certain tang to it.  It's addictive for sure, as I started craving them on my days off as well.

Value: At $4.19, compared to the hoagies, it almost cuts my Wawa bill in half, but it could be because I'm packing supplements to a lunch to cut costs as well.  In addition to the time you save not waiting for a hoagie, the BBCW is defintely worth its weight in gold, even if it might be on the lighter side, but really its probably a healthier portion than most of whats on the market.

Review: Wawa Buffalo Bleu Chicken Tender Hoagie

Where to find it: Wawa
Price: I lost my receipt, but something like 5 or 6 bucks for a 10"
Overall Rating: 6.5/10 or like a C

So as my buddy Ed suggested to me, I should review some things more available to a wider audience as well as include some pictures.  For this review I did both.

While Wawa isn't available to a huge audience, they do span through eastern PA and there are some in New Jersey as well, and well worth a stop in if you are in the area.

This was a difficult review to do, because Wawa makes their sandwiches to order and you can get whatever you want on it and the computer ordering screen doesn't really recommend much, past the bare bones ingredients necessary to qualify for the specialty sandwich.

Anyway, here is what went into my sandwich:

Buffalo Bleau sauce

Lettuce

Onions

Cheddar cheese

Appearance: It doesn't look like much, just some chicken tenders, sauce, and lettuce. See for yourself:

Taste: This could really use some more of that tasty, tasty sauce.  I have to admit some bias, because I discovered this due to the lack of availability of the Homestyle Roast Beef sandwhich.  If you are dying for something warm and buffalo chicken-y, this will do in a pinch.  

Value:  Because this thing has chicken tenders on it, it takes time to heat up, making this sandwich one of the slowest things to prep at Wawa, which really eats into a half hour lunch break.  Maybe on a day off I'd be more willing to get one, but when I'm on the clock, I'm gonna look elsewhere.

P.S. I'm still fleshing out an official rating system, so any input on categories, scales, etc is welcome.

Wing Tour, Stop 2: The Gardenville Hotel

Location:
The Gardenville Hotel
Intersection of Pt Pleasant Pike and Route 413
Pipersville, PA 18947

What I Ordered: Plate of 24 wings split between me and Dan, and a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I've always called this place the Gardenville Tavern, but I guess I should go with the proper name of the Gardenville Hotel.  The hotel part of it is gone and now its a bar and restaurant.  Dan and I sat in the bar side.
I have to give this place an A+ for ambiance.  The building is an old one, and they've done little to modernize it.  While Dan was saying hello to some of his friends there, I had some time to myself to really take in my surroundings.  Sitting at the bar is like a time warp back into the 1930's or 40's.  The room is very dark and decorated with various animal heads which really gave it an almost horror movie like feel.
The jury is out on the wings.  It was an unexpectedly busy night, with only one bartender and two 21st birthday parties, the staff was strained and I'm not sure that the wings were what they could've been.  They weren't soaked in sauce, which is how I really like my wings and were a little more dried out, possibly from sitting a little too long from between being prepared and being served.  Once again, we had the standard buffalo sauce, nothing too fancy.  I would probably give these about a 6/10, but as I said, I'm inclined to go back on a less crowded/more staffed night to give them another shot.

Wing Tour, Stop 1: The Candlewyck

Location: 

The Candlewyck

Route 413 & Route 263

Buckingham, PA 18912

What I ordered: Plate of 25 standard hot wings, and some beer that I can't recall.

The wings at the Candlewyck were nothing new to me.  Back in high school, it was the thursday hangout for their five cent wings.  Now, 4 years later, I believe the wings are something like 15 cents a wing.

The 'wyck's wings are really hard for me to judge because I've been eating them for so long, and they don't really take me by surprise anymore, I know exactly what I'm getting. As they were my first real wing night experience, they set the standard for what a buffalo wing should be.  Pretty traditional wings with hot sauce, spiciness was right about where a chicken wing should be.  Overall, I'd say about a 7/10.

Update: Went there tonight and snapped a few new pictures

Thanks for stopping by

My name is Bill, and I love buffalo chicken...it's probably about 80% of my diet.  A year or two ago, some friends suggested to me that I start a blog reviewing buffalo chicken.  At the time I was pretty busy so I filed the thought away in the back of my mind...  

This summer, when I met up with my cousin Dan at a local bar for some beer and hot wings, we hatched a plan to go on a tour of the local bars of Bucks County and sample all the wings we could.  A few places later, and I decided that a blog might be handy to document our wing trials.

Stay tuned!