We’ve heard a lot of big talk about these Wawa hoagies. Now it’s time to find out for ourselves.

The first Wawa in Alabama, and the first anywhere on the central Gulf Coast, opened Thursday in Fairhope to far more fanfare than you’d expect for what is, after all, a normal-sized gas station and convenience store. The buzz was driven largely by the fact that Wawa has amassed an enthusiastic following as it has built its empire of more than 1,000 stores. Its reputation for serving up an excellent array of sandwiches is one of several reasons devotees sing its praises.

The festivities in Fairhope provided the chance to take a first few bites and form some tentative impressions. At Wednesday’s preview, Wawa marketer Jerome Hunsinger stepped up to guide a newcomer through the process. At my request, he ordered a sampler of bestsellers tailored to show off the breadth of the menu. At Thursday’s grand opening, I tackled Wawa’s fancy hi-tech ordering system on my own to come up with two more sandwiches more tailored to my personal taste.

Is this the sandwich rapture? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say no. Throughout Lower Alabama, fast-food diners are spoiled for choice when it comes to subs. Prominent options include Subway, Jimmy John’s, Firehouse, Jersey Mike’s. If you’ve found something at one of those places that really floats your boat, Wawa isn’t necessarily going to make you change your stripes. And if you step up from fast food, this seafood-rich region abounds with mouth-watering shrimp, crab and oyster po-boys.

But is it really worth learning a new word for sub (if you live in most of the state) or po-boy (if you’re south of Atmore)? Yes. Yes it is. The hoagies are all right. And there’s some context that makes them even better.

My initial request to Hunsinger was for four subs, preferably some of the more popular items, that showed some range. He picked two cold hoagies, the Classic Italian and a turkey, and two hot subs, a meatball and a buffalo chicken cheesesteak. “Our Classic Italian and our Turkeys are by far the two most popular varieties and believe it or not, they’re almost equally split,” he said. “You would think, oh, maybe one is like 70%, one 30%, but they’re neck and neck for a cold hoagie.”

Since I was new at this, we didn’t get too fancy with the toppings and other options. The subs came home with me for family sampling.

In the process, Hunsinger demonstrated Wawa’s slick touchscreen ordering system. What you do is, you walk up to a kiosk in front of the deli counter and start making choices. What do you want? A Ciabatta sandwich, a panini a hoagie, a wrap? (Or even a no-bun hoagie, for the carb-averse?) What size hoagie, from the 4-inch Junior to the 10-inch Classic, and what kind of bread? Toasted? What kind of cheese, what kind of spreads, toppings, seasonings? When you said “mayo,” did you mean a little bit of mayo, regular mayo or extra mayo? Hunsinger added a new word of Wawa-speak to my vocabulary, “spo.” Rhymes with snow. Stands for Salt, Pepper, Oregano.

How about an upsell? Extra cheese, extra meat, avocado, pepperoni, bacon? Maybe it’s going to be a while before you eat these, and you’d like certain toppings on the side so the hoagies don’t all mushy? There’s a button for that.

As I watched Hunsinger zip through the menu, I was impressed both by how easy the system was to use, and by the among of back-and-forth dialogue it replaced. Bonus: The screen shows you your calorie count and the sandwich’s cost as you go. At the end, it spits out a ticket with a bar code and your order number.

“You take this up to the register,” Hunsinger said. “Maybe you go and get yourself a soft drink or a bag of chips. You go up and you pay. In that time that it takes you to kind of go around and do your thing, you come back [to the deli counter] and 90% of the time you’re ready to go.”

When you do get your hoagies, each one comes with a label on the wrapper. So there’s none of that open-it-all-up-to-see-whose-is-whose business.

My hoagie journey, from worst to first:

Round 1, Fourth place: The classic Custom Italian. I know this is going to make people spitting mad. I mean, Panini Pete told me the Custom Italian is his favorite, so I’m obviously just plain wrong here. But let me explain myself. Years ago, a Jimmy John’s opened within about 75 feet of AL.com’s downtown Mobile office. I wore it out for a while, until I got really tired of sandwiches built around an inch-thick stack of cold cuts. If you see me in Jimmy John’s these days, I’m ordering a veggie.

So, this Custom Italian didn’t do a lot for me. It was okay. The bread was fresh, the layered meats flavorful. That it didn’t make more of an impression was mostly my own fault: I’d asked for a basic sandwich with minimal frills. This had a little oil and vinegar, provolone cheese, spo, tomato, pickles and lettuce. I could see how I might turn it into something better, next time: More sauce, more cheese, have it toasted, pile on more veggies. (I bet it would be really good with some olive salad, like a bastardized muffuletta, but that’s not an option. Give ‘em a minute. They haven’t been open here for very long.)

But it wasn’t just me. From this sample bag of hoagies, the Italian was the last one to be finished.

Round 1, Third place: Oven Roasted Turkey. Once again I was a victim of my own decision to keep things basic. But at least I had called for chipotle sauce and pepperoncinis along with the tomato, lettuce and spo. And the turkey made it seem just a smidge healthier. Next time, same deal: More sauce, more cheese, more veggies, and toast that sucker.

Round 1, Second place: Buffalo Chicken Cheesesteak. Here’s where Wawa started to impress. Its hot chicken cheesesteak sandwiches use chicken in a medium-chunk format that has a more substantial texture that shredded or sliced chicken but is more spreadable than strips. It’s tailor-made to soak up the flavor of whatever you dress it up with, which in this case was buffalo sauce, pepperjack cheese and jalapenos. Alternative pathways include chipotle, marinara and barbecue. This was a genuinely flavorful sandwich and was the favorite of one of the guinea pigs in my three-person focus group and a runner-up for the other two.

Round 1, First place: the Meatball. Look, y’all, Wawa makes a mean meatball, and they’ll pile a few of them into a sandwich for you if you ask nicely. The meatball sub is one that doesn’t need to be dressed up, and this one won our hearts with just provolone and grated parmesan. How good was it? It’s a hot sub that we ate cold, and it was still the top pick for two of us.

Now, this was all food for thought. Going back to Fairhope for the grand opening on Thursday, I was ready to lay hands on those touchscreens and build some things to suit my tastes. The system worked as advertised: I ordered my subs, got my ticket, found a beverage and some chips, checked myself out, and only had a few more minutes to wait before my subs were ready. It had been about 10 minutes since the order was placed, which is pretty impressive when you consider that grand opening celebrations were in full swing at the time. Walk-out price for everything – almost a full meal for two – was $23.56.

Round 2, Second place: Cheesesteak. The chicken cheesesteak had impressed me, so I figured the steak cheesesteak had to be even better. And it was, dressed up with garlic aoli, provolone and extra meat, toasted, then topped with salt and pepper, tomato, pickles, caramelized onions and lettuce. This was an excellent, savory hoagie and I’d order the same thing again in a second, probably with more cheese and peppers. As it was, the extra meat and caramelized onions added $2 to the $7.99 starting price.

Round 2, First place: Honey Hot BLT Club Sandwich. Yes! I’m cheating! My new favorite Wawa hoagie isn’t a hoagie. Sue me. The club sandwiches looked good on the touchscreen and I wanted to try one. There’s a slew of flavorway options including chicken salad, buffalo chicken salad, roast beef, spicy turkey and bacon avocado. They all sound good. I went with Honey Hot BLT on multigrain bread with mayo, spicy mustard, American cheese, bacon, grated parmesan, lettuce and tomato, and a dash of Old Bay seasoning just to make it weird. This was an excellent club sandwich and an excellent BLT, whichever way you prefer to look at it, and the format just felt a bit lighter and crisper than the sandwiches built on the hoagie rolls. It really made the freshness of the ingredients pop.

So: Are Wawa hoagies going to change your life? Maybe not, if all you do is punch in a plain-Jane stack-of-meat-on-white-bread order. But if you seize the opportunities afforded by the ordering system to really tailor a sandwich to your heart’s desire, maybe so.

Meanwhile, there’s the aforementioned context. The prices are good, the staff is cheerful, and the general environment is pleasant. Wawa seems to do for convenience stores what Chik-fil-A does for bland drive-thru chow and what Foosackly’s does for the chicken-finger market: In a field where service tends to be mediocre and frequently marginal, they offer a customer experience that won’t leave you loathing humanity.

That is some pretty special sauce.