Get Go Sandwich Standoff: "West Coast Chicken Sub" vs "Parma Mia"

Recently I decided that my stomach (and heart) had enough of a break since my last gastrointestinal undertaking at GetGo, so I headed over to the local purveyor of diesel fuel, fine foods, and gasoline to to try their New Yorker sub. Unfortunately it was a limited time offer, and time was up... but they did have this new great looking sandwich, the West Coast Chicken Sub.

According to the GetGo Cafe website:

"Our exclusive West Coast Chicken Sub is stacked with tender, juicy chicken, crisp bacon, melty Swiss, fresh spinach, tomato and guacamole, all on a multigrain sub roll baked fresh in-store!"

I ordered a 3.5" straightaway, and I also picked up a Parma Mia (GetGo's over-the-top take on a Chicken Parmesan sub).

First impressions: what I ended up with looked quite a bit different from the picture in the store. Not quite "stacked with" anything, really. I got a slice of tomato, 4 spinach leaves, about 3 tiny strips of grilled chicken, and one piece of bacon. I could taste a dash of guacamole. There might be cheese? I can't be sure.

Comparing the promotional picture to the one in front of me reminds me of something...

This sandwich is likely to have lifelong self esteem issues due to failing to meet its high visual expectations.

The flavor? Actually not bad, but the filling-to-bread ratio is messed up... there's not enough here. The proportions are all off. The effect is like they made a tiny sub, then put the sub inside another bigger sub.

Is it subception?

Also, it's too toasted. What's with this sandwich toasting? It makes eating the bread like crunching sharp gravel. There might be easier ways to carve up the roof of your mouth but this definitely does the trick. Subway does the same thing, but at least they ask before submitting you to mouth torture.

Every $5 toasted footlong comes with a 1 day supply of oral agony!

Regardless, I did finish it. That's a plus. There weren't many flavors, but the ones that are there are pretty good. You could try ordering the 14" version and just throwing out half of the bread - that might do it.

Next up: the Parma Mia. GetGo has a great picture of it on their website.

This is what mine looked like:

Much like adulthood, the reality falls far short of expectations.

I couldn't find information on their website, but I believe the ingredients are fried chicken strips, tomato sauce, parmesan cheese, and mozzarella sticks.

I started in. First bite, bread. Second bite, bread. The third bite was bread with a little breading. Fourth bite: bread, breading, and a hint of some cheap canned sauce like Prego. Wait... the fifth bite includes chicken (shocking!). Six bites in and I get to the whole experience.

How do they hide the fillings so deeply in the sandwich? I think it's magnets.

It's... edible. Mostly, everything just tastes like breading, but not crispy - it's soggy breading. I'm assuming that the chicken and mozzarella sticks are microwaved. It reminds me of sad vending machine lunches under fluorescent lights in some corporate breakroom. The overwhelming number of fried things makes it all congeal together. The mozzarella sticks are the most disappointing. They don't taste like anything other than salty cheese. Honestly, it could've been just regular old mozzarella cheese instead of fried cheese sticks and it would've tasted about the same, maybe even better.

It's not the worst thing I've eaten, but I've had much better chicken parmesan subs, and it actually reminds me a lot of The General - a few things that are OK on their own but the combination is somehow less than the sum of its parts. I gave the rest of it away, I didn't want to finish it.

The West Coast Chicken Sub gets the win here, even though it's almost like they're fighting in different divisions. The puny bit of healthy stuff on the West Coast Chicken Sub somehow beats out the giant, sturdy mass of microwaved fried frozen bar food on the Parma Mia. Reminds of a Bible story or a boxing game or something.