Soup Friday: Wawa - Chicken Corn Chowder
Despite its best efforts, a grueling day at work failed to deter my enthusiasm about getting soup from a convenience store. Of course, we are often able to obtain soup in a convenient manner from most places that sell it. Nevertheless, I desired to try it for the first time from a place that primarily sells gas, fried apps, and cigs. I first considered going to Sheetz due to its ubiquitous nature. Just like the excessive number of Sheetz menu items that end in the letter z, the number of Sheetz locations in my area was already too many and now they’ve just recently completed the construction of three additional locations. I hopped on the Sheetz app and started an MTO order to the closest location. Remarkably, Sheetz does not sell soup. You can order brisket tacos, a breakfast flatbread pizza, and even a cup of meatballz, but soup somehow is not on the Sheetz menu. Luckily for this soup reviewer, the one Wawa location within twenty minutes of him contains multiple soup options on its menu. Would soup be the pivotal factor in cementing Wawa as the top PA convenience store? I had to find out.
When it comes to the age old Sheetz versus Wawa debate, geographic location and familiarity are typically the determining factors for how Pennsylvanians decide their stance on the matter. Unfortunately for all Pennsylvanians, both stores have increased their food prices while decreasing their food quality. As someone who has lived on both sides of the Keystone State, I’ve always taken the timid centrist approach of preferring Sheetz for fried apps and Wawa for hoagies. Despite more familiarity with Sheetz due to decades of living in Central Pennsylvania, I still have a deep appreciation for Wawa for two reasons. The first and foremost being the gobbler. Thanksgiving dinner served on a hoagie roll. No notes! The second being the Yellow Submarine-styled, hypnotically joyful Hoagiefest commercials that would appear on my television screen as I watched the Phillies dominate in the early 2010s. They featured the altruistic Hoagie Man flying a hoagie blimp as he would hand out hoagies to the people and make them aware that Hoagiefest has begun. Today, a third reason emerged with the presence of soup on the Wawa menu.
Just imagine Shane “The Flyin Hawaiian” Victorino just made a sick catch in Center Field and the Fightin Phils are coming up to bat in the bottom of the third, but before that happens, this dude pops up on your screen.
Despite it being a warmer January day with a temperature that hovered fifty degrees, the depressingly gray winter clouds that covered every inch of the sky were able to maintain an imposing soup weather vibe. An irritating light rain developed on my drive over to Wawa. A type of rain that can’t be maintained by using the lowest windshield wiper setting and using a moderate setting feels like overcompensating as the wipers condescendingly mock you with their high-pitched squeaking laugh. The melancholy world outside my car developed further as I entered Enola, the closest area to me that has a Wawa. While it’s not a bad small town, days like these transform places like Enola into settings of a Stephen King novel. During your drive through Enola, on your right, you’ll see train tracks that follow you on to nowhere and on your left, you’ll see the beige boxy buildings that haven’t been updated since the Carter administration. Though they may look eerie, these towns usually have the best soup.
A twenty-minute commute brought me to Wawa, the third most popular spot in Enola on a Friday evening. The top two of course being Al’s Pizza of Enola, the town’s watering hole, and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s Driver’s License Center, the town’s premier location for wanting to put a hole in your head. Fortunately, most of the fine people of Enola only needed to get gas or some form of tobacco, so it didn’t take long to access one of the self-ordering kiosks. With it only competing against chicken noodle and chili, the chicken corn chowder easily separated itself to become the choice for the day. I ordered a medium sized serving that set me back five bucks and 320 calories.
During the five-minute wait for my soup, I took time to appreciate the sad convenience store staples I always eschew. These include the donuts in the display case that look like they’ve been sitting there for two days and the overpriced healthy to-go options. If you’re at a place like Wawa and your top choice for a snack without any dietary considerations is a $6 small plastic container of grapes, there’s a 94% chance you’re a psychopath. An employee shouted out my number. I headed back to my car with a white bag containing a goose logo on the outside and my chowder on the inside.
We were very close to Soup Friday being cancelled due to the soup nearly falling on my lap as I bravely took this photo.
I stayed in the parking lot to enjoy my meal. Other Wawa customers walked by confused as I snapped a quick photo of my red bowl sitting in a precarious position on the edge of my dashboard. My first spoonful produced an overwhelmingly positive response on my tastebuds. Surprisingly, the peppers came out of nowhere and quickly showcased their value as they were able to amplify all of the other elements into an appealing taste. Furthermore, I admired the lingering small kick that the peppers were able to produce on their own. Unsurprisingly, the cheese also shined as a prominent complementary role player.
Eventually, one of the chowder’s main characters distracted me with its shape. I understand the practicality behind why a convenience store chain with over a thousand locations along the I-95 corridor would need to utilize automation to efficiently cut its chicken into a cube for soup, but it just felt too artificial for this soup reviewer. Using a shredded chicken substitute instead would have been a more suitable choice for this particular chowder. And I’m sure the meat cutting robots could adapt to this minor modification in a seamless manner. This, however, was not the only complaint I had regarding the freshness of this soup. While I appreciated the roles the starches played in this chowder, I felt like I could taste the cans that the corn and potatoes were shipped in. With all its noticeable preservatives, a canned version of the chicken corn chowder might be the next great business venture for Wawa.
Swoop, Wally Goose, and the Hoagiefest Men gift Fletcher Cox a Fletcher Cox jersey.
No matter how you might consume it in the future, this is a good soup for a wet winter’s day. Now it’s time for the important question: Did it do enough to help Wawa eclipse Sheetz in my personal rankings? Yes, it did for now. At least until I start Cup of Meatballz Wednesdays!