Fatburger Sandwiches Ranked Worst To Best

Most customers at Fatburger are likely to opt for the signature style of burger with which the chain shares a name, but for the burger-averse, the Fatburger menu offers a number of sandwich alternatives. For what it's worth, Fatburger's menu applies the term "sandwich" relatively loosely — alongside a few chicken sandwich variations, also listed in its sandwich category, for example, is a relatively standard burger with thousand island dressing.

For this ranking of Fatburger's sandwich menu, I tried every true alternative to a beef hamburger that the chain offers. Simply put, if it includes at least one hamburger patty, I considered it a burger for the sake of this exercise. Each item someone might order in place of a burger I considered a sandwich. Not included in this ranking, therefore, are the 1000 Island Burger, the Western Bacon BBQ Burger, and the low-carb Skinnyburger. The official company website also mentions a Veggieburger, but online ordering menus for multiple locations lack that Veggieburger. Since it appears to be phased out and is impossible to order, the Veggieburger is ineligible as well.

Eligible for this list, then, are the Impossible Burger, the Turkeyburger, the Grilled Chicken Sandwich, the Crispy Chicken Sandwich, and the Cajun Chicken Sandwich. After trying each of those five items, here's how they stack up against one another.

Fatburger offers three variations on the chicken sandwich that became standard at fast food restaurants during the chicken sandwich wars. The Crispy Chicken Sandwich is the closest item on the menu to the style of chicken sandwich that comes default at chains like Popeyes and Chick-Fil-A. Its base is a fried chicken breast and a standard hamburger bun. Rather than the larger list of ingredients included in "the works" that's standard on a Fatburger, its only additional ingredients are lettuce, tomato, and mayo.

Of the three different styles of chicken available on Fatburger sandwiches, the fried chicken breast on the Crispy Chicken Sandwich is hands down the least enjoyable. While the chicken itself is juicy and of a decent quality for fast food, its outer coating is under-seasoned and occasionally biting into it can be a little difficult. Coupled with a relatively negligible contingent of additional ingredients to supplement that somewhat bland chicken, the Crispy Chicken Sandwich is noticeably lacking in the flavor department. Especially when this style of sandwich is better executed at plenty of other chains, there's little reason to opt for the Crispy Chicken Sandwich at Fatburger.

The Grilled Chicken Sandwich is effectively the most basic and straightforward chicken sandwich option at Fatburger, consisting of a grilled chicken breast, a hamburger bun, lettuce, tomato, and mayo.

While grilled chicken sandwiches are typically intended to serve as healthier alternatives to fast food-standard fried chicken sandwiches at chains like Chick-Fil-A, Fatburger's Grilled Chicken Sandwich happens to outshine its greasier counterpart. That's because its otherwise plain chicken breast picks up a satisfying charred flavor presumably from the flattop grill that the chain uses to prepare its burger patties and other sandwich proteins. That said, the Grilled Chicken Sandwich suffers from the same issue as the Crispy Chicken Sandwich — the lettuce, tomato, and mayo included with that chicken patty don't quite do as much work as they should to keep the sandwich from becoming relatively bland overall. It's nice that the chain's somewhat health-oriented chicken sandwich option has at least one standout quality, but Fatburger still offers a few better sandwich options than the Grilled Chicken Sandwich.

Fatburger's Impossible Burger is, of course, the closest approximation to the single-patty Original Fatburger on the chain's sandwich menu, one of the best fast food hamburgers around. Ordered as-is, it's compositionally identical to its beefy counterpart, simply subbing out its meat component for an Impossible patty. Included by default on the Impossible Burger, then, are a standard hamburger bun, mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, relish, and mustard.

While this may be a good or a bad thing depending on the individual consumer, the Impossible patty in Fatburger's Impossible Burger is essentially a non-factor in the sandwich's overall flavor. That's because the blend of bold ingredients that comes standard on all of Fatburger's burgers and burger-style sandwiches — namely pickles, onion, relish, and mustard — combine to overpower the Impossible patty. That patty is still the closest possible textural approximation of real beef, as well as the only vegan protein on the Fatburger sandwich menu, making for two valid reasons to order the Impossible Burger. However, presumably because Impossible meat is more expensive than ground beef, the patty is a little on the small side, meaning this sandwich lacks the heft characteristic of even Fatburger's smallest beef burger.

Compositionally, Fatburger's Cajun Chicken Sandwich is really just a slight variation on its Grilled Chicken Sandwich. Its protein component is likewise a grilled chicken breast, but seasoned with a Cajun seasoning blend. Save for that one particular element, it's functionally identical to its closest counterpart, consisting of a standard hamburger bun, lettuce, tomato, and mayo.

The reason the Cajun Chicken Sandwich ranks higher on this list than its two closest counterparts is that the Cajun seasoning flavoring its chicken breast does a good amount of heavy lifting. While heat-seekers will consider it firmly on the milder side, the Cajun chicken breast is, at least, noticeably spicy. So, while the lettuce, tomato, and mayo are somewhat negligible just as they are on Fatburger's two lesser chicken sandwiches, that Cajun spice blend helps pick up some significant slack in the flavor department. It would still benefit from a better mix of supplementary ingredients, however, and it's unfortunately not quite on the level of Fatburger's hamburger offerings, keeping it out of the No. 1 spot on this list.

The Turkeyburger is the most explicitly health-oriented item on the Fatburger menu. While it's mostly just a hamburger-style sandwich that subs out beef for turkey, it happens to be the only sandwich that comes standard on a whole wheat bun. Included by default on the Turkeyburger is "the works" — mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, relish, and mustard.

Fatburger's Turkeyburger is akin to its Impossible Burger in that both are meant to approximate a standard hamburger. What helps the Turkeyburger shine over its meatless cousin isn't even necessarily that turkey tastes better than Impossible meat, but that it contains a better ratio of ingredients. Simply put, there's a lot more of everything on the Turkeyburger. Supplementing that large turkey patty is a generous helping of "the works," substantial enough to become almost like a hot salad in its totality. In fact, the flavor of the Turkeyburger is predominately an amalgamation of those additional ingredients rather than its turkey patty, but coupled with the significant meatiness the turkey adds, that tangy, vegetable-y flavor is plenty satisfying.

The whole wheat bun, meanwhile, is lateral to the standard hamburger bun, helping give the sandwich a unique character but not affecting its flavor all that positively or negatively. Ultimately, it's the fact that the Turkeyburger is the closest non-beef approximation of the Fatburger the chain does so well that earns it the No. 1 spot on this list.

For the sake of ranking Fatburger's sandwich menu, I ordered all five items at Fatburger that can be considered sandwiches and not hamburgers. I opted not to modify these items in any way — that meant they all came cheese-less, since adding cheese to a burger or sandwich necessitates an extra cost. I picked them up from the closest Fatburger location to me and brought them home.

Since eating five full sandwiches in one sitting isn't all that feasible, I ate as much of each sandwich as I felt was necessary to assess it. That meant at least half of every sandwich and sometimes more. On the chicken sandwiches especially, some of the vegetables were distributed unevenly, so in those cases, I made sure that the halves I ate included multiple bites with every ingredient. My ranking is based predominately on this one Fatburger trip rather than past experience with the chain.