As a vegetarian, Subway is really not a restaurant I frequent often.
With their business model largely revolving around cold cuts and vegetables on bread, Subway just never really had options vegetarians could call a full meal.
Enter Subway’s new Cauliflower Fritter Signature Wraps and Cauliflower Dippers, the restaurant’s new menu items designed to target vegetarians looking to feed themselves for under $10. The chain is testing the new products in Baltimore and Seattle.
Before last week, I hadn’t set foot in Subway in at least two years and I live just a few blocks away from one in Baltimore. So the chain’s Baltimore based trial run served as a perfect opportunity to skip my usually fast food stops and try out the cauliflower wraps for myself. I skipped the fritters because they’re the same thing, but snack-sized and for dipping.
The wraps come in two varieties: ranch and curry. The curry version comes in a spinach wrap while the ranch option comes in a tomato basil wrap, although both of mine were made with the spinach wrap.
The two versions of the wrap come with lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, banana peppers and red onions, which is pretty standard fare.
Both are pretty good.
The wraps themselves are pretty hearty and heftier than snack wraps from other fast food restaurants, again aided by the inclusion of four fried cauliflower patties.
As for the harvest of vegetables, outside of the banana peppers adding some crunch and a taste that doesn’t really help the wrap’s cohesion, their inclusion neither wows nor disappoints.
My fellow Baltimore Sun reporter Hallie Miller, a pescatarian who says she could just eat tuna fish all day, and I agreed the curry version is the superior one. The spice of the sauce gave the wrap a more unique flavor, as opposed to ranch, which felt more like a concession to those who don’t like curry flavor.
For about $7.50, it’s also a pretty decent option for vegetarians on-the-go. They’re surprisingly good, if not exactly great.
The curry version gets seven cauliflower florets out of 10. The ranch version gets a 6/10.
This story was updated to reflect the wraps are not vegan, as their breading contains mozzarella.