Philadelphia Magazine’s restaurant critic Jason Sheehan is asking people to get off their high horse and embrace Wawa pizza for what it is—pizza from a convenience store.

Wawa pizza’s being called the worst. Here’s why those critics are wrong, Sheehan wrote for Philadelphia Magazine.

He and his family ate their first Wawa pizza after they got flu shots.

“No one felt like going anywhere else. None of us wanted to cook. So we got a pizza (and a Gobbler, natch) and ate it on the couch while watching cartoons,” he wrote. “This is the way a Wawa pizza is meant to be consumed, and it’s important to understand that going in.”

Wawa pizza is like chicken wings, cheap sushi, and pie.  The intent, environment, and expectation matter as much as the taste.

Sheehan’s pizza was perfect; not good, not artful or special, but perfect because it was precisely what Wawa promised.

There are better pizzas in your neighborhood. There are higher-quality pizzas. There are more thoughtful pizzas from people who take their pizza-making very seriously, he wrote.

“But you aren’t at any of those places, are you? No, you are not. You’re at Wawa,” he wrote.

Read more insights into Wawa’s pizza from Jason Sheehan in Philadelphia Magazine.

Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on DELCO Today in November 2023.