Sheetz Vs Wawa: Which Really Makes The Best Sub?

America: where a 90-minute drive is a moderate commute, a 30-ounce soda is called "medium," and dinner at the gas station commands respect. There was once a time when gas station snacks looked like bagged nuts and potato chips that were begrudgingly wolfed down on a road trip (the nearest diner is too far off the interstate, after all). But these days, a freshly made meal at the gas station isn't just the stuff of every road-tripper's wildest dreams.

If you're from the mid-Atlantic, specifically Pennsylvania, you're probably familiar with The Great Gas Station wars — no, this isn't about competing for the best fuel prices in town. Sheetz and Wawa, two of the most omnipresent fill-up spots in the state, are just as much cult-favorite fast food restaurants as they are a place to fill your tank on the cheap. Both gas station chains are known for their sandwiches, which earn them loyal followings across the Keystone State.

I've found that whether you're a Sheetz or Wawa loyalist is primarily conducive to proximity. That is to say, if you live near a Sheetz, it's probably your go-to sandwich spot, and if you're in Wawa's sphere of influence, you're probably always making the stop for a quick bite on your way home. But put them toe-to-toe, and which sandwich comes out on top? To finally put Pennsylvania's foremost debate to bed, I rounded up a selection of subs (aka hoagies, in Wawa-speak) from both convenience stores so I could compare them and choose a winner. So let's dig in, declare a victor, and force one chain to wave the white flag in defeat — this is a zero-"sub" game.

To taste-test Wawa and Sheetz's sandwiches, I picked up three from each chain and tried them together, one after another. I picked classic sub styles from each — Italian, turkey, and breakfast — and stuck with traditional ingredients. I opted for identical toppings between the sandwich styles from both chains so I could pit them against each other fairly. I also ordered them back-to-back so they were at the same level of freshness. However, I had a bit of a drive ahead of me after I picked them up, so I took that as an opportunity to assess how well each store's sandwiches held up during transit.

I judged the chains' subs based primarily on freshness of ingredients, quality, and value. I knew the winner would have sandwiches stacked with meat and cheese and toppings that were flavorful enough that they were discernible in every bite. Price didn't factor into my judgments in a way that meant the cheaper sandwiches got a leg up in the competition. Instead, I used their prices to determine which felt like the better deal. I also didn't pick the winner based on my personal preference; to determine whose sub game was stronger, I judged all the sandwiches as objectively as possible. All the subs came from Wawa and Sheetz locations in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Some of Sheetz's most popular menu items are its breakfast sandwiches, namely the breakfast subs. Normally, when we think of subs, we're not picturing eggs and bacon, but why not load up a hoagie roll with eggs and morning meats when a regular roll just won't cut it? I opted for just eggs, cheddar, bacon, and a smear of mayo on my Sheetz breakfast sub to keep it classic.

I was visually struck by the egg on this sandwich; it looked a little too yellow and just a tad too fluffy, like McDonald's famously fluffy eggs (or infamously fluffy, depending on your tastes). To accompany the notorious, fluffy, fast food-egg look, the eggs also had a weird chemical-like taste to them, suggesting they were born from some cheap egg mixture and not freshly cracked on a flat top. No matter — cheap eggs can still hit the spot, especially if the other ingredients in the sandwich are pulling their weight. (Spoiler alert: they weren't.)

There was no shortage of bacon on this breakfast sub, but it was anything but crispy. If it had been left to cook a bit longer, it would have had some promise. As far as quality goes, it was decisively mid-grade. The bread was too squishy, but in a way that sort of worked with the soft, hot breakfast ingredients, so I didn't mind. My favorite part of the sandwich was the cheese, which was noticeably sharp and melted evenly across the entire cheap-egg omelet.

When it comes to breakfast, most of Wawa's loyalists are all about the Sizzlis, the chain's grab-and-go breakfast sandwiches. For this reason, breakfast hoagies are put on the back burner, and that's a crying shame. The appeal of the grab-and-go breakfast is undeniable, but a hot-off-the-presses, made-to-order breakfast sandwich from Wawa is worth the roughly four-minute wait, if you ask me.

I got the same bacon, egg, and cheddar sub with a bit of mayo at Wawa that I got at Sheetz, and Wawa's version was noticeably smaller. Still, the bread was what really struck me as the biggest difference between the two breakfast sandwiches. Although I opt for both toasted, only Wawa's bread looked like it had ever seen the inside of a toaster oven. The outside had a nice crispiness, while the interior of the roll was pillowy soft. The crunchy bread made the breakfast sandwich taste less like an iconic New York-style bacon, egg, and cheese (which famously comes on a squishy kaiser roll) than Sheetz's version, but it was objectively better quality.

Not only was the bread superior, but Wawa's eggs — while still falling victim to that uncanny fluffiness — were much less sickly looking yellow than the eggs on the Sheetz sandwich. There was less bacon here, but it was cooked better. I would have still liked it a little crunchier, but that could be remedied with a simple "well done" request. There was just enough cheese to give the eggs a little bit of creaminess, but I preferred the thick layer of gooey, sharp cheddar on the Sheez BEC hoagie.

A turkey sub is always my go-to. It's neutral enough to customize however you want, and it's pretty hard to mess up. For this turkey sub, I chose some basic toppings: lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and Swiss cheese. Sheetz constructed my very run-of-the-mill order in a very, let's just say, creative way.

The turkey sub from Sheetz is sort of open-faced, but not quite. The meat and cheese are stuffed into the bottom of the sandwich, which, if it were sitting upright, would be the inside corner. The toppings make up the bulk of this sandwich, clearly. In fact, I had to search for the turkey when I went in for my first bite. The pickles and onions were kind of stacked on top like an afterthought, so I had to keep stuffing them back inside as I ate. It was a messy experience, literally and figuratively.

This was not an easy sandwich to eat, folks. My first couple of bites were all toppings, and some bites were all bread, while only a handful of mouthfuls felt like they had any turkey or cheese. The Swiss was so bland that I had actually forgotten there was any cheese there at all. I'm convinced that whoever makes Subway's infamous bread dough is also making it for Sheetz — it has that same chewy, slightly tough (dare I say, yoga mat) consistency.

Wawa's turkey sub fell victim to the same toppings failure that Sheetz's did, albeit to a lesser extent. I had to keep stuffing the tomatoes back into the sandwich with every bite, which made me glad I was at home and far from judging eyes. The quantity of toppings was much more suitable, especially compared to the amount of turkey and cheese. I was a little disappointed in the mushy lettuce, but the tomatoes were very flavorful (hooray for tomato season!), and the pickles weren't cheap-o jarred dills — they were half-sour, like real, bona fide deli pickles.

Wawa's turkey hoagie was much easier to eat than Sheetz's, and although it was absolutely stuffed to the brim with fixings, it was balanced nicely. I counted a whopping nine layers of sliced deli turkey (a far cry from Sheetz's three), and I detected much better quality in the meat compared to the other store. The cheese was minimal and bland, but the stacked deli meat really made up for it.

The cherry on top of the sandwich was the bread, which had a nice buttery taste that complemented the salty meat and tangy pickles. Even though it had sustained some travel time, it wasn't even close to soggy; maybe a little softer than it would have been fresh off the line, but it was hardly noticeable.

Maybe it's just because I'm a New Yorker who grew up on prosciutto and salami, but when I think "sub," I think of an Italian sub, the most iconic Italian-American sandwich of all time. Naturally, I had to try both Sheetz's and Wawa's take on the classic. I chose lettuce, tomato, onion, pepperoncini, provolone, oil and vinegar, and mayo to accompany the Italian-style deli meats, which looked like just ham and pepperoni on this Sheetz sub.

I couldn't go in for my first bite without addressing the elephant in the room: The top part of the bread was completely soaked through, to the point that it was pretty much inedible. My guess is that the oil and vinegar were applied directly to the top part of the sandwich, which allowed the soft, sponge-like bread to completely absorb them. Even though I chose toasted bread for my sub, it seemed that it couldn't vanquish low-quality bread's two major foes: time and condiments.

I peeled away the soggy layer of bread before I went in for my first bite, although I'll admit that my appetite was already ruined at this point. Like Sheetz's turkey sub, it was hard to get a bite that wasn't all veggies here, especially diced onion, which was piled on excessively. Once I got to the meat, stashed away in the corner like an ugly secret, I didn't get that mouthful of layer upon layer of salty, peppery cold cuts that I was looking for. It was more like a hint of sad, floppy ham.

I could tell just from looking at Wawa's Italian sub that it was going to blow Sheetz's out of the water. The provolone cheese was sliced thick, and it was just the tiniest bit melted over a variety of deli meats. I even spotted some mortadella — okay, Wawa, I see you.

One of the most underrated aspects of a sandwich is how well everything is distributed. Wawa got the topping, meat, and cheese distribution down pat, so that every bite had just the right amount of each ingredient. It wasn't stacked with multiple inches of layered Italian meats as you'd get at a New York City bodega, but it was a respectable amount of meat for the price of the sandwich. There were a few too many pepperoncini, giving each bite a potent vinegary punch, but this wasn't too severe a faux pas.

Again, the bread really was the perfect finishing touch on this balanced hoagie. The exterior was crisp while the inside was soft and only a tiny bit gummy from the travel time. It wrapped up the meat, cheese, and veggies like the perfect starchy blanket, with a buttery and toasty taste that complemented the salty ingredients.

There's a reason so many Americans claim that Wawa is the country's best convenience store. Sure, it's a lot more widespread than many gas station chains (the stores stretch across the mid-Atlantic, treading into the Southeast, and Florida is littered with them), while Sheetz locations are limited to about half of the mid-Atlantic states. But ubiquity aside, Wawa is the clear winner in this sub-off — and really, it wasn't even that close.

What really sealed the deal was the bread. Each store's bread could not have been more different from one another. Sheetz's was chewy, tough, and in the case of the Italian sub, completely soaked through and beginning to disintegrate. Meanwhile, Wawa's bread was buttery and nutty-tasting with the perfect crispy-to-soft ratio. The speckled dusting of cornmeal on the bottom of the rolls gave them a bakery-fresh taste and added a slight sweetness to the sandwiches that I really enjoyed.

Bread aside, Wawa's sandwiches were constructed with more care so that every bite had a nice balance of ingredients. Meats, veggies, cheese, and eggs all tasted much fresher and higher-quality than Sheetz's ingredients. It appears that Sheetz attempts to stuff sandwiches to the brim with toppings to give the appearance that it offers an impressive sub for a great value, but as soon as you take that first bite, you'll realize that looks can be deceiving. All told, each chain's subs kind of reflect the vibe of the stores themselves: Sheetz is all flash yet nothing to write home about, while Wawa is the humble, unassuming underdog that ends up taking home the gold.