the Greats of Wrap

When I was in high school, I was a member of the Future Homemakers of America (FHA). They changed the name when I was a senior in high school, just in time for me to fill out college applications. Not that I’m demeaning the name. It’s important to make a home for oneself and for one’s family, but people still think of it as an old-fashioned cookie baking club.

Well, it wasn’t. It offered an opportunity to complete service projects and present them on pretty display boards and compete at the local, state and national level over who had the most meaningful project/the coolest display board. I did this every year that I was in high school and I always made it to state competition, which was held in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The hotel in Greensboro was next to a mall, a convenient diversion for the hundreds of teenage girls who came to town for competition (yes, there were a few boys too). And it was in that mall that I had some of my most formative food court experiences. There was this restaurant called Great Wraps, and I always ate there. We were there for like 2 or 3 days, and we ate all our meals in that food court, and I ate all of mine at Great Wraps. I had never seen one anywhere else, so going to Greensboro not only evoked excitement about competing, but I always got pretty excited about going to Great Wraps.

Then, my senior year of high school, I went to that mall, and Great Wraps was gone. I can distinctly remember thinking, “Well, it’s a good thing I’m graduating. Because I never ever want to come to this godforsaken town again,” or something like that. Luckily, I wasn’t deprived long, because shortly thereafter I went to college in Atlanta, and there in the food court was a Great Wraps. Yes, that very same food court that now is the subject of the Great Food Court Project.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a Great Wraps outside of the southeast, so those three years in Seattle were three Great Wraps-less years. But now, I work but 15 minutes away from a Great Wraps, and today, I could bear the wait no longer. Today, I went back to Great Wraps as part of the Great Food Court Project.

First off, I’d like to say that my visit was marred by two things. One thing was that the woman at the table next to me was loudly talking about Miley Cyrus. Doesn’t that woman read my blog? Doesn’t she know that I am sick to death of hearing about Miley Cyrus? The second thing was the hard-to-see placement of the Great Wraps menu (a recurring problem in this food court), which left me kinda squatting right in front of the guy waiting to take my order as I tried to find the thing I wanted to order on the menu.

Because, oh man, did I know what I wanted to order—a cheesy chicken wrap. I remembered it as being the only thing on the menu, but maybe it’s just the only thing I ever ordered. Their menu does seem to be a bit bigger now. It has wraps, salads, and chicken fingers. The sides are curly fries and two other things that I can’t remember but it doesn’t matter because you should get the curly fries.

Anyway, I found the cheesy chicken wrap which had been renamed something silly. They’ve basically renamed all the wraps after places, such as Woodstock Hummus and Vegas Caesar Wrap. Another new addition that I noticed was a wide variety of fry seasonings available. Unlike the newly named wraps, this is a great addition. I didn’t have time to take down all the flavors, but basically you can sprinkle your curly fries with various seasonings, such as ranch and cajun.

The wrap…the perfection of the cheesy chicken wrap will never be adequately captured in words. It’s this warm, thick pita that embraces chicken, melted cheese, honey mustard sauce, carmelized onions and lettuce. These ingredients come together in some sort of magical poetic harmony that makes you feel like your life is going okay after all. What I’m trying to get across is that this wrap was blessedly as wonderful as I remembered it.

While I was in line, I briefly wondered if I might prolong the Great Food Court Project by eating every single thing on the Great Wraps menu and reviewing it, because if the cheesy chicken is so heavenly, then probably everything else is too, right? It’s an idea, but it’s hard for me to contemplate eating anything other than the cheesy chicken. It’s a perfect meal.

Now, this brings me to a larger point. If you have been confused about why I’d pursue eating at food courts, then I’d wager it’s likely that you don’t have a Great Wraps. Or a Great Wraps emotional equivalent. By that I mean a restaurant that you love that can only be found in a mall. Chick-fil-a used to be like this to some extent, but now they have a lot of stand-alone stores (God, I can only hope that Great Wraps becomes a popular franchise also). But for me, the experience of walking into a food court and spotting a Great Wraps is one of the reasons I like to eat at malls. It really is possible for food courts to offer something special that you can’t get in the outside world. And if that something special is drenched in honey mustard sauce, so much the better.