My Lord am I getting senile in my old age: At a quick glance during a frustratingly long (and overly expensive) trip to Walmart, I half-blindly grabbed a couple of these breakfast bowls as an option for lunch at work. In my exhaustion, I thought I was grabbing one bacon and one sausage, but as it turns out, the second kind was actually a sausage and gravy breakfast bowl! I don’t know why I’m telling you this long-winded story, because the only moral of the story is that I’m even more excited to try it now.
Prepwork consists of popping it in the microwave for 4 minutes (thirty seconds more than the bacon version), letting it sit, then enjoying. Pretty straightforward and simple; perfect for a quick breakfast on the go—and smart to eat as a breakfast food because it gives you all day to work off the excess calories.
Oh yeah, this one hits the spot. The gravy is a delicious country gravy that doesn’t really taste like “standard” sausage gravy even when mixed with the sausage crumbles, but it does add quite a bit to the flavor that the regular bacon bowl is missing. And speaking of sausage, there is a ton in this bowl; there’s enough that you can get some in every bite all the way up until the end, which is a somewhat welcome surprise, considering some of them tend to be skimpy. Also, even though each bowl is technically 7 ounces of food, I still feel like sausage is a much heartier, more substantial and filling breakfast meat than the little scraps of bacon served up in their other variety, so I walked away feeling much fuller. And fatter.
It’s also apparently “healthier”, with “only” 340 calories, 25g of fat, and 215mg of cholesterol per bowl. High numbers, to be sure, but somehow still smaller numbers than those found in the bacon bowl. The excessive grease of the bacon bowl also didn’t seem to be much of an issue here, although it’s possible that maybe I just didn’t notice it thanks to the coating of gravy. Either way, it didn’t feel as “heavy” as the bacon did, giving me just enough food to fill up for breakfast.
The more I eat of it, the better it gets: I’d go out on a limb and say that this is better than most fast food breakfasts, and certainly better than almost all fast food sausage gravy’s…the texture is perfect, and although it looks like it might be a little “snotty” and off-putting when first looking at it, actually comes off as much more smooth once it’s all mixed together and the bites start ending up in your mouth.
As someone with borderline high cholesterol, these don’t fit into my diet very often at all (though judging from my other reviews, it certainly doesn’t seem like I pay much attention to it, haha), and it’s going to stay that way. But as a once-in-a-while convenient breakfast, or for those in a much better health situation than I am, these are a delicious concoction that are way tastier than I would have expected, and for a pretty solid value.
Overall: 8/10. These are surprisingly good, and coming in at just $2.00 per 7 oz. bowl, offer up a decent value that at least rivals fast food breakfasts in terms of taste and “quality” (term used loosely). The gravy is the difference-maker here, adding in some additional texture that prevents the potatoes from being too dry, while also contributing an extra flavor missing from the bacon bowl. I won’t get these all the time, because they’re pretty horrendous for you, and I should probably at least start taking my health into consideration, but as an occasional treat, I would definitely grab these again if I find myself at a Walmart store. God forbid.
