ROUND 3: The Touch-Screen of Wonderment

Sheetz has this cute little way of adding “Sh” to the front of their Made-To-Order foods, and if that doesn’t make phonetic sense then they will throw a “Z” on the end of the item. Bagels become Shmaglez, Quesadillas are Queszadillaz, and even Garlic French Fries become Fryz. The menu is wide-ranging but not very adventurous. You’ll find typical fare such as hamburgers, hot dogs, hot and cold subs, even salads and some sides.

Breakfast is perhaps the MTO’s strongest move in this round. A wide range of breakfast items interchange breakfast meats, cheeses, egg, and a variety of toppings ranging from tabasco to pesto sauce and sandwich options such as English muffins and pretzel rolls. At the top of the MTO breakfast mountain is the Shmonster - a glorious two egg, double meat, double cheese heart stopper that can’t be topped or easily digested.

A fan favorite for many is the Mac-and-Cheese offerings and Sheetz also offers via the touch screen a premium coffee and latte menu branded under “Sheetz Bros.” at most locations. Limited time promotions come and go and feature such favorites as pulled pork sandwiches, pizza, and panini-style Ruben sandwiches though every now and then Sheetz wanders in to bad culinary territory (spicy burritos, blts, and fried chicken) causing you to experience overpriced flavor abortionz.

Wawa really knows how to make touch screen ordering as stress-free as possible. Not only does Wawa feature a spread of food options, they allow orders to be placed with customizable specifics such as “just a lil’ bit of mayo”, or on the side, and there is even a button to call out a special request if the pages and pages of buttons don’t give you what you want.

Wawa’s Hoagies surpass the quality of subs offered at Sheetz. Hoagie selections include diced chicken breast and bacon carbonara and the bread is always soft and warm. If you order your sandwich with a lot of goodies on top Wawa goes the extra step of putting a layer of plastic over the sandwich so it doesn’t leak out and seep through the paper wrapping around the hoagie.

Wawa’s variety is quite good also. Wawa avoids the temptation to offer crappy burgers and hot dogs and instead provides soups, chicken strips, rice bowls, and wraps. More significantly Wawa offers healthier options such as sliced apples, flatbread low-carb sandwiches, and for the real asshole patron there is even hummus.

Although Wawa doesn’t have a breakfast behemoth to pit against the mighty Schmonster (EDIT: There is a breakfast hoagie that may just be a contender), Wawa does have the greatest seasonal item of all the land - the Gobbler. The Gobbler combines all of the greatest toppings from your Thanksgiving meal (turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce) and puts it all on a warm roll for you to inhale as its gooey amazingness spills out of all crevices.

ADVANTAGE: Leaving price aside, Wawa squeaks by on their consistent great taste, wide variety and special limited time offerings.

Click Here to Continue to Tomorrow’s Round: The $20 Test

Now let’s see how Sheetz and Wawa diverge. We explore in this round the “culture” and feeling of each establishment in Round 2:

Sheetz has been called the convenience store that gives you that crack-of-dawn feeling when you’re on your way somewhere far away and its your first reward for waking up early. You even tell your stomach “get on the road by 7 AM and I’ll treat you to a Breakfast Shmuffin.” Sheetz is the kind of place where you park your truck and don’t even get gas.

Wawa on the other that last stop before you leave the beach. You have sand on your toes, bikini-strap sunburns and dry hair. Its the last taste of freedom you have as the sunset melts away in the final moments before twilight just before you return back to a boring workweek on Monday. The warm glow of the convenience store almost tells you that the sun will never set on the weekend. You get gas at Wawa - a full tank, and take extra time wandering the store as to prolong the inevitable drive home.

The feeling inside the stores is somewhat similar. Staff at both businesses are usually very nice, the touch-screen machines make fun and quirky noises, everything is well lit, shiny and clean. Bright colors overload your mind as you walk around the store (especially when you have just woken up or are wasted) and the aisles are shallow and wide with plenty of room to get around and see the things you have no need for.

However, Sheetz clientele is likely to be much more redneck than Wawa’s usual crowd. In a Sheetz you’ll often find avid hunters in full camouflage refilling their 120 ounce coffee before returning to their diesel fed raised axel pick-up truck with chrome balls hanging from the tow hitch. Wawa doesn’t do much better by attracting complete Jersey scum to their stores. I’m not talking about the funny and lovable Jersey Shore guidos either, but rather the glue-sniffing baby-dropping homemade-tattoo douche fags Jersey retards with butterfly knives on the outside of their pant-shorts escorting bleached blonds with cinderblocked faces and bone skinny arms.

ADVANTAGE: Consider it the ying and yang, the dawn and dusk, the Adam and Andy LaRoche, you get the idea. Its a TIE here too.

Click Here to Continue to Tomorrow’s Round: MTO vs. Touch and Go!

It may seem like a silly debate to some, it may be the most serious affiliation a person can declare to others, and to a casual observer there may be no distinguishable difference between either of them at all…

It is a battle over which East Coast mega convenience store is best: Sheetz or Wawa? (Don’t even bother mentioning Royal Farms or Rutter’s in this argument, they are the Canada of the G7 in this debate)

Most Wawa people wouldn’t turn their back on Sheetz if all that was available at the exit was infact only a Sheetz, a Blimpie/Exxon, and an outdated Texaco. Likewise Sheetz fans would happily break mold and jump in to a Wawa for a coffee and pack of smokes if its a closer walk to their beach rental.

The question is which one do you pick when both are side by side on a green “facilities” highway sign? Do you drive a few extra exits on an empty tank - passing two Sheetz locations - to get to the Wawa? Do you have all of the Sheetz exits memorized on Route 81? Or do you (know the difference enough to) go to the “good Wawa” when there are two in one town on your way to go skiing in West Virginia? If that’s how seriously you take your Sheetz-obsession or Wawa-devotion. then this debate is for you.

Over this next week I will examine these two gas-convenience behemoths in an effort to finally determine who is the number one king of the 99 cent coffee and loaded hot dog mountain. Each morning this week I will post a new round in the battle leading up to a final conclusion and announcement of the winner at the end of the week.

Feel free to contribute your thoughts in the comments section - I haven’t written the final post to determine the winner and I can say that its basically a dead heat at this point so make your voice heard. Now let’s get ready to rumble - the bout begins now…

ROUND 1: Let us consider first how Sheetz and Wawa are similar:

• Both feature large, well-lit 24-hour retail space
• Each offers a wide variety of prepared to order foods purchased via a touch screen interface at reasonable prices
• Most (see future rounds) offer gasoline at or around the cheapest prices in town
• Each carries countless brands of soft drinks, bottled beverages, candies, chips, jerkies, and otherwise general convenience store crap
• Each has around a dozen flavors of coffee and specialty lattes available
• Sheetz and Wawa are constantly reinventing themselves and you can see new “versions” of their stores every few years, making you proclaim that THIS is now the “money Sheetz” or the “nice Wawa“
• Both are found in abundance along major highways in the north east and can also be found randomly in small towns
• Both have bathrooms that don’t require keys, are generally clean, and have multiple stalls

ADVANTAGE: Well these are the ways the two are similar so of course round one is a TIE

Click here to continue to Tomorrow’s Round: “The Feel”

After waiting an unacceptably long time I finally managed to get a taste of the Dulles Airport Chipotle Breakfast menu.

I arrived at Dulles Airport over 90 minutes before my flight departed (which is a massive diversion from my usual 30 minute race to the gate) but since I knew Chiptotle Breakfast was on the line I treated it as if I had a flight to a foreign nation with heightened security screenings.

I made it through security and walked underground to the B terminal (my flight was in C) to reach the Chipotle storefront. As I came closer my pace quickened. Once I was upon the front door I was likely somewhere between a full-stride run and an all out sprint. The entire restaurant was empty except for two smiling employees welcoming me in to the gates of Oz. They were the gatekeepers of my breakfast burrito bliss standing from behind a glass, stone and sheetmetal counter.

I looked over the long counter and down at the meats, salsas and toppings. I normally would be looking for which meat looked the tastiest that day but I knew for sure that I would be getting the breakfast-exclusive menu items. I went for the new meat, Chorizo- a peppered sausage meat offering, on this first breakfast trial. I also made sure to order a burrito to get the full effect - though I’m sure a bowl would have gone over just as well. In addition to the Chorizo I piled on ALL of the available breakfast ingredients (scrambled eggs, potatoes, onion-jalapeno salsa) and added my traditional toppings (black beans, pico, corn, sour cream, etc).

As you can see it is otherwise business as usual down the burrito making production line. Once you pass the initial breakfast offerings all of the same Chipotle toppings and salsas are available - further compounding the number of potential combinations you can create for your foil wrapped masterpieces.

I watched and drooled a bit as my burrito was wrapped in foil and was then plopped in to a red basket. I ordered a soda cup, later to be filled with iced tea and lemonade, and grabbed a bottle of Chipotle Tabasco. The cost was no higher for the breakfast offering than a lunch counterpart (and surprisingly there wasn’t an expensive airport premium) and so less than 9 dollars later I was sitting down ready to take my first bite. The first bite seemed strange at first… out of place with the new flavors… but after a few chews the new taste began to settle in as a perfect Chipotle melting pot of hearty spice and sweet.

And before I knew it the burrito was gone… and it was damn tasty. I mean it was warm, fluffy, spicy, and huge. How this hasn’t happened sooner and at more Chipotle locations is beyond me. I’d rank it as one of the best Chipotle burritos I’ve ever had… and that’s in the company of 1000+.

Understandably I had high expectations for the breakfast burrito, and my own personal stock in Chipotle was on the line, but I can say the experience exceeded my lofty target and I plan to make the C.B. stop a mandatory inclusion on every trip I make out of Dulles Airport. Bravo A.M. Chipotle, bravo.

More drastic than expected building renovations, town permit delays, and cold weather has slowed the opening of Virginia Tech’s new Chipotle location. With paper covered windows it is hard to tell exactly what is going on within the 308 to 316 North Main Street structure, but it sounds as though there will be little similarity to the old layout used by Joe’s Barber shop (though we can still hope that young single mothers will be there to rub their breasts against our ears) once the doors open and welcome students to Blacksburg’s second chain burrito establishment.

What was once a potential New Year opening has turned in to a mid-Spring opening for the soon-to-be best restaurant in town. Still, with all the renovations I was hoping it would be open for the spring game and now it looks like that may not be the case.

Its surprising too, when you consider that after an extensive upscale building project fell through at the new Penn State location (another college I called home), Chipotle simply improvised by buying up an old 5 screen movie theater in the heart of  downtown State College and converted it to a mega-Potle. However, if standing in a 30+ minute wait during a particularly bad lunch rush at Chipotle has taught us anything - its that those burritos are worth the wait.

In much the same fashion that Virginia Tech dismantled the Miami Hurricanes on the football field, Seth Greenberg and the Hokies men’s basketball team took a beating stick to the Miami basketball team on Wednesday night.

Helping to heal the pain from a collapse against UNC, the Hokies came out of the gates and lapped their second ACC opponent early on and shot 62 percent in the first half to extend their led to 50-23 at the break. Miami (ranked 23rd in the AP poll) had lost only one game before falling hard to the Hokies and may catapult the team in to a top 25 position come Monday.

Even with a 30+ point lead I still never felt truly comfortable. Miami came on strong in the second half but ultimately the lead was just too great for the Hurricanes to overcome and the Hokies saved the win, and kept my face from bashing itself in to the drywall.

Every year I like to put down my holiday wish list for the upcoming year as it relates to Virginia Tech athletics. This year the list looks pretty similar to years’ past… I guess some things are just worth the wait:

A Peach Bowl Win: Even without the assistance of Stephan Virgil I still have a decent amount of confidence heading in to our New Years Eve bowl game against Tennessee (but nothing is certain). The game is significant - mainly because the ACC needs to show some power against the dominant SEC and to keep our 10-win season streak going, but I also want a win for those die-hard Hokie fans that may be returning to Atlanta for a third time in four months after seeing the team lose on their first two attempts. Stocking stuffer: Finishing the season with a top 10 ranking.

A trip to the NCAA Tournament: Sitting 10-1 things are looking favorable for the Hokie Bball team. Strangely though this is something I ask for every year and never seem to get. Perhaps the price is low enough this year and I have been an extra special Hokie so I’ll finally get it under the tree. On the horizon are two tough games for the team: a game against a one-loss Seton Hall squad that shares a common loss with VT (Temple) on January 3rd, and the ACC opener against UNC in Chapel Hill one week later. Stocking stuffer: Delaney winning the 2010 Bob Cousy Award.

October 2, 2010: The date that the Hokies take on Boise State at FedExField can’t come soon enough. To anyone who attended the USC FedEx Game several years back you know just how incredible it is to go to a game in Washington DC’s backyard with 90K+ Hokies (sure there will be a few fans from Boise State - but don’t count on them making much of a dent on third downs). Stocking stuffer: Is it too soon to start beating the BCS Championship drum? Pa ra pa pa pum.

The Last Good Condo at “Legends”: So this may be my “Daddy I want a Pony!” gift but there is only one condo left on the top floor of the soon-to-be-built-but-probably-never-will condo complex located in the shadows of Lane Stadium. It features a balcony, one bedroom, and is a much better location than “The Colosseum” project down 460. In a world where money is no object I would love to rain foamy Natty Light shotgun spray down 4 stories before a game with my friends on a balcony. However, if the gameday attitude of Platinum-Diamond-Encrusted-Cock status Hokie Alum are any indication of how your neighbors would be, expect to have the cops called perpetually and banging on the walls if you cheer loudly, or even stand up, at any point while living in the condo. Stocking stuffer: Returning to Hunter’s Ridge (Phase I) for a semester.

Biff’s picture has spread far and wide on food blogs as the first “in the wild” proof that Chipotle was serving breakfast burritos. I’m pleased to share that the breakfast experiment continues here months later.

I stopped by the IAD location (unfortunately during dinner hours) and found out a bit more about the newest breakfast delicatessen in the B Terminal and closest restaurant to the soon-to-be-opened Dulles AeroTrain stop.

The staff led on that starting in January the breakfast menu will be expanded to include Chicken along with the current breakfast meat options and an additional rice-based ingredient unique to breakfast will also be added. For now it seems like the response has been positive especially if they are thinking of expanding the menu further.

And no worries if you don’t plan to make it to Dulles anytime soon - the inclusion of the breakfast-specific menu is actually written in to the lease at the Dulles location. We knew Dulles required all restaurants to operate breakfast hours but now it sounds like they require breakfast items during those early morning hours (6AM to 10AM), even if Five Guys just cheats by throwing an egg on a double stack.

The next time I make a comment on the breakfast burrito I promise it will be after actually eating one…

The Hokies men’s basketball team got revenge on PSU tonight, avenging a “Big 10/ACC Challenge” loss back in 2007 which stuck out as one of the worst loses of the season, keeping the team out of the march tournament. I would also point out that the Hokies have beat two Big 10 opponents this year, something Duke should be envious of.

The Hokies have are 8-1 as they approach the in-conference schedule and the last 2/3rds of the season. Compared to previous seasons this is one of the best starts in recent memory for the team.

There is obviously much more basketball to play and the team will have to show up well against the stacked ACC to make it to the big dance, but one difference from years past is that the Hokies don’t have a tarnished early season resume and that should help push them in over the bubble if they can hang out with the rest of the conference and win against the weaker teams. And the team has been able to accomplish that for in-conference games since Greenberg took the team in to the tough ACC forest.

ACC opener: @UNC on 1/10/2010

Fight For Old DC is hosting a FBI kiddie porn sting operation Hokie Photoshop Contest and I know that the four many readers of DT can put up some good Hokie-related photoshop bits to suck compete for the top-prize.

Send any entries to me an I will send them on to the contest admin and post a copy in this blog entry. Entries are due by December 19th.

Entry 1 by D.G.

Entry 2 by J.P.

Entry 3 by B.G.