Marc Lore’s Wonder: Fast Service, but Ordering, Food Need Work

This Wonder location opened in July and sits near the intersection of 14th Street Northwest and U Street Northwest — a place with lots of apartments and townhomes nearby, as well as a lively nightlife scene.

It’s the first of several locations that Wonder plans to open in the Washington, DC area.

As I (Alex) walked into this Wonder location, I found it bright, clean, and easy to navigate. There were tablets for placing orders to the left and a pick-up area with shelves to hold orders on the right.

Through a doorway between the two was the kitchen. Wonder uses a single kitchen to prepare food from many different menus — a setup similar to a ghost kitchen.

After scrolling through the options, I decided on M’s Spicy Fried Chicken Deluxe Sandwich Combo with Streetbird Slaw and a bottled lemonade ($13.95) from Streetbird by Marcus Samuelsson as well as a Sirloin Steak ($28) from The Mainstay by Marc Murphy.

When I tried to look at items from Bobby Flay Steak, I got a message saying that the restaurant was “closed.”

I’m not sure what this meant. Wonder relies on a single kitchen to make orders at each location, and the kitchen here was clearly open.

There was enough seating at this Wonder food hall for around a dozen dine-in customers. I was visiting on a weekday night just before 8 p.m., and the location wasn’t busy.

The seats were comfortable, but it didn’t feel quite like a “food hall,” which conjures up images for me of chefs preparing food in front of you or some other visual entertainment as you wait for your food.

The design of this Wonder food hall seemed optimized for delivery. Workers from the kitchen brought out orders destined for delivery customers, while a steady stream of drivers came in and out of the store.

I barely had time to wash up in the restroom and snoop around the store before my steak and sandwich were ready. The wait time was shorter than many of the experiences I’ve had at fast-food restaurants in the last few years.

The steak and sandwich were warm and obviously fresh out of the kitchen as I took them out of the bag. This spread cost just under $50.

Unlike a lot of fried chicken sandwiches at this price point, this one used a whole cut of chicken instead of a processed patty. And while I could’ve used a little more spice, the sauce was flavorful.

The steak, which I ordered to be cooked medium, felt slightly rarer than that.

More importantly, it had hardly been seared, which meant that I didn’t get that beefy hit that even cheap steaks can provide. Perhaps I should’ve paid a little more to smother it in one of the optional sauces.

As a home chef, I know that good steaks don’t take long to cook. I would’ve loved to watch how Wonder’s staff prepared this one.

I appreciated that the coleslaw wasn’t too wet or sweet like some fast-food versions of the dish are.

Wonder seemed to be saving time and work by offering drinks in bottles, cans, and other packages. There weren’t any soda fountains in sight.

I (Ashley) used the Seamless app to place my order mid-afternoon on a weekday. More than 20 Wonder “restaurants” seemed to be available during lunchtime.

Most of them weren’t labeled Wonder brands, though, so it wasn’t immediately obvious without checking the address.

I ordered from a location in Staten Island, New York.

Each menu had a handful of starters and entrées unique to the restaurant, along with the same selection of kids’ options (chicken tenders or Mac and cheese), beverages, and desserts.

The limited menus made it hard to find something everyone in my family of three was excited about. We settled on shawarma from Maydan by Wonder (one of five I saw with Wonder in the name).

We ordered lamb shawarma, vegetable shawarma, and a sea salt chocolate chip cookie. It came out to $47.50 before tax, tip, and the app service fee. Even with the $7 credit I got for spending at least $35 on my first order, it was steeper than I’d usually pay for shawarma, of which there’s no shortage of spots nearby.

While Wonder says that it offers a wide selection of mix-and-match meal options from its different menus, ordering through an app like Grubhub, which Wonder bought in January for $650 million, or its sister app Seamless, limits you to a single restaurant.

When I tried to add items from more than one Wonder menu to my order on the Seamless app, I got a prompt indicating that I would need to place a separate order.

A spokesperson for Wonder said that the company’s own app or website “is the most seamless way to enjoy the full mix-and-match experience across our menus.”

“Seamless and Grubhub currently list each of our brands individually, and we’re actively exploring ways to improve that experience,” the spokesperson said.

I ordered at 2:08 p.m. and was given a 29 to 44-minute delivery window. When I checked the app at 2:37 p.m. to see the status of my order, it had already been delivered.

Though it sat on my doorstep in the rain for a few minutes, the food arrived warm and well packaged. A trio of sauces I’d selected came included with each shawarma.

The meal itself looked a bit sad, with the herbs wilted and the vegetables overly soft.

But I was pleasantly surprised when I bit in. The vegetables tasted fresh and well seasoned, and the sauces were flavorful.

One of my dining partners said that the lamb shawarma was a bit one-note. The lamb didn’t have the characteristic shaved texture of shawarma, but it was fine overall.

The chocolate chip and sea salt cookie was large, soft-baked, and very good — it better have been for $5.