6 Best And 6 Worst Secret Menu Items

There's nothing like ordering a secret menu item from your favorite fast food restaurant to make you feel like a part if the "it" crowd. It's great to be in-the-know about what's available — even if it doesn't show up on the menu boards. But sometimes, ordering from the secret menu isn't all it's cracked up to be. 

That's right — not all secret menu items are gems. In fact, some are downright inedible, for many reasons, and should be relegated to the "do not ingest" pile. Maybe that's why they're not on the actual menu? Then again, there are some secret menu items that are so good, they may have you making your way to the drive-thru window day after day to get your fill. So how's a fast food enthusiast supposed to know what to order?

No worries, we've got your back. We've created this handy-dandy list of what we think are the six best fast food secret menu items out there... followed by the six that you just might want to stay clear of. 

Don't let the name scare you: This is one of the tastiest items Taco Bell has on its secret menu. The Incredible Hulk is really just the restaurant's regular Beefy 5-Layer Burrito — stuffed with well-seasoned ground beef, creamy refried beans, reduced-fat sour cream, and grated cheddar cheese — with one key difference. Rather than including the nacho cheese sauce, it is replaced with the praise-worthy guacamole. Not only is the guac a healthier option, but it reduces some of the dripping tendency of the regular Beefy 5-Layer Burrito.

If you're ready to go the distance, also consider getting rid of the reduced-fat sour cream which, let's face it, is waterier than the regular stuff and is a risk to your freshly-laundered shirt, and ask for the Fresco version to replace the sour cream with the fresh tasting pico de gallo, traditionally made with chopped fresh tomatoes, crunchy white onions, spicy green jalapeños, cilantro, salt, and lime juice. Be specific, though, because Fresco to Taco Bell usually includes getting rid of the guacamole, which would defeat the whole reason behind The Incredible Hulk. 

OK, look—the Five Guys Burgers and Fries Double Grilled Cheese Burger is in no way good for you. At all. So don't blame us if you go home with a wicked case of heartburn or weigh a couple of pounds more at the end of the week. Bring along a Zantac and spend another hour on the treadmill: this baby's worth it.

The Double Grilled Cheese Burger from the secret menu at Five Guys is for those of us who just can't decide on whether we want a burger or a grilled cheese sandwich. What's that now? We can get both? That's right, this dish is nothing less than two beefy burger patties placed between two grilled cheese sandwiches that act as the burger "bun." Right now, you're either drooling or feeling a bit sick to your stomach, we know. On top of that, you can add as many of the standard burger toppings as you can stomach. It's greasy, it's meaty, and it's delicious. Just don't wear your tight jeans that day.

Sometimes a person wants a pizza, but what do you do if the local mall close to you doesn't have a pizza place? Well, if there's a Subway around, all is not lost.

Subway has a Pizza Sub Melt on its secret menu. Those in-the-know can order this favorite that comes with tasty marinara sauce, spicy pepperoni, and cheese, and then top it off with any additional Subway fixings you fancy. Try it on an Italian Herb & Cheese or Parmesan Oregano bun, with mozzarella cheese as your choice, and green peppers, red onions, and a dash of oregano at the end. And don't forget to get it toasted. We know cold pizza is tasty, but this sandwich doesn't have the same appeal. (If you want to be really in-the-know, you can always head up to Canada, where the Pizza Sub Melt has been on Subway's regular menu for ages. What's up with that?)

KFC's classic Famous Bowl is a delicious blend that includes a mountain of mashed potatoes, sweet, crisp yellow corn, chunks 'o chicken — bite-size for ease of delivery to your mouth — and is smothered by salty-good homestyle chicken gravy, before a smattering of cheese is added to pull it all together. Already good, yes, but did you know that you can customize your bowl any way you want to make it even better?

Got a craving for mac 'n cheese? Add it to your KFC Build a Bowl. Want to cut down on the crispy chicken calories? Go for grilled instead. Prefer green beans instead of corn? Do it. Need some more spice in your life? Change it up with the Nashville Hot chicken tenders. You can even add another sauce in there to complement your chicken bowl creation... perhaps some Creamy Buffalo for dunking. Hey, it's your bowl. Do your thing.

Sometimes we need something in our tummies other than fast food... or food of any kind. Comforting, hot beverages are the bomb when we're not feeling our best (we're sure that the Double Grilled Cheese Burger couldn't be the cause). This is where Starbucks' Cold Buster drink from their secret menu comes in handy.

It's made up of health-boosting, bug-busting Teavana Defence Wellness tea — a white tea with hints of orange, lemon and just a smidge of cinnamon — and steamed lemonade. This hot bevvie can be made as sweet, or not, as you like with the addition of yummy honey. It is a soothing citrusy, tart drink that pairs well with a cookie of any sort, 'cause you deserve a cookie when you're not feeling well. It doesn't taste like it's healthy and medicinal, but you can still feel a bit self-righteous that you're doing a good thing for your body.

A lot of secret menu enthusiasts talk about Chipotle's Quesarito as being an off-menu fan favorite, but its sheer massiveness makes us a bit queasy. This behemoth is basically a burrito with a cheese quesadilla (also a secret menu item) enwrapping it in its cheesy shell. We say that's a bit too much candy for the dime. Sometimes those extras are worth the calories and cost, and sometimes it's just too much. Our favorite secret menu item from Chipotle is the more-sensible Chipotle Burritodilla.

So why are we talking about the Quesarito when we like the Burritodilla? Because, when describing the Burritodilla, picture a Chipotle Quesarito and then take half of the fillings out of the burrito. That's it. The Burritodilla is a mini version of the big one. You can still get your meat of choice, whether it's barbacoa, carnitas, or something else, cilantro-lime rice, black beans and mildly spicy tomato salsa, but it's something we can stand behind as tasty but less toxic than the el grando Quesarito.

Wendy's Meat Cube is just that: A one-pound cube-shaped burger with all the trimmings. If all you want in your diet is burger meat, well, this is the one. It's big, meaty and squarish, and consists of four Wendy's beef patties, with two pieces of cheese, and maybe a few onion slices, pickles and lettuce leaves so you can get your greens. Oh, and there's mayo and ketchup, too. If you're feeling particularly daring, you can add cheese to each patty and pray for morning to come. It ain't healthy. If you order it with four pieces of cheese, what you're really asking for is a Dave's Triple to be made into a Quadruple.

Saying this, we recognize that the Meat Cube might appeal to meat purists. If that's you, ignore us and dig in because what you can expect to taste more than anything are those tender, ground beef patties with a hint of cheese. We'd rather enjoy the whole burger, thanks. 

The In-N-Out Burger's Animal-Style Fries from their not-so-secret-menu sound innocent, even playful, until you see it and get into what makes up this fry extravaganza. At first, it sounds great. Golden crispy fries, slathered with cheese (good) mixed with caramelized onions (fabulous)... and then things take a dark turn. The final ingredient added to these fried fat bombs is a mound of thick, reddish-hued sauce, innocuously named by In-N-Out as its "spread." Looking suspiciously like Kraft Thousand Island salad dressing, the spread just looks unappetizing when piled on what would be glorious fries without it.

We realize many of you adore Animal-Style Fries and, hey, that's your jam. We're just not all comfortable adding all that saucy goop to fries. On a burger? Yes, please! The tomato-ey, creamy sauce with wee little pickles is a lovely addition to a famously good In-N-Out Double-Double. On the fries, it's like one of these things just doesn't belong. 

All we can say is you better be hungry.

Burger King's Suicide Burger (more pleasantly known as the Quad Stacker) was added to the restaurant's menu briefly in 2006 and then taken off a few years later. The Stacker line was remodeled and brought back again in 2019 and is sold as a single, double and triple version. The quad is still nowhere to be seen (except in Canada), so you may have to explain to the server exactly what you're looking for, and it's this: four—count 'em—four char-grilled burger patties, four slices of American cheese, bacon and loads of Stacker sauce (also similar to Thousand Island dressing), all on a toasted sesame seed bun. 

It's (too) gigantic. It's (too) sloppy. And it may cause heart failure, although we can't prove that. According to Burger King, the Triple Stacker King burger is a whopping 1,370 calories, so we can only imagine how many calories this behemoth carries with it. Ingest cautiously. It's called the Suicide Burger for a reason.

We didn't think it was possible, but McDonald's Land, Sea and Air burger is an even larger sandwich than Burger King's Suicide Burger. It may have a lofty name (and it is lofty in height), but it is, simply and heartily, a sandwich within a sandwich within a sandwich. We're talking a Big Mac, a Filet-O-Fish, and a McChicken — all re-combined to form a new, massive sandwich, the likes of which the world has never seen. 

Let's break it down. This sandwich, then, is comprised of two beef burger patties with all of the Big Mac fixings: American cheese, pickles, onions and that Big Mac special sauce. Plus, there's the McChicken addition, that burger-sized fried, crispy chicken patty with mayo on it, and, finally, the Filet-O-Fish patty with yet more cheese plus tartar sauce. Deepnding on how it's assembled, you're probably going to get a bun bottom, cheese and the lettuce, onions, pickles and secret sauce toppings, a beef patty, a Filet-O-Fish patty with its tartar sauce, then a middle bun with more Big Mac fixings, beef patty number two, another layer of cheese and sauces, the McChicken filet and, at last, it's finished with a sesame seed bun. To us, it's goopy and it's trying to please everyone thus not pleasing anyone. Just... no.

The reason why In-N-Out Burger's secret menu Tomato Wrap made our list is simply because it isn't practical. It's pretty much a bun-less burger, with tomatoes in place of the bun. How do you eat this thing?! And it's not just one tomato slice on the top and one on the bottom. There are two tomato slices on the upper and lower levels of the "burger," meaning it is sorely lacking in friction. There's nothing holding everything together. It slips and slides through your fingers with the greatest of ease. Protein-style burgers, commonly wrapped in lettuce leaves, make more sense. We think this is taking the less-carb movement a smidgen too far.

The whole thing is made up of two tomato slices, lettuce, a beef patty, then cheese, onions, another beef patty with cheese on top, and is covered by those last two tomato slices. And don't forget the oodles of secret sauce spread in between everything. A thousand napkins should do it if you order this one.

If you like plenty of tomatoes on your regular bun burger, you may like the taste of this one, but we think it's a bit too tomato-ey in its execution. We'll stick with the In-N-Out Double-Double, please.

Funny story, true story — back in 2014 Arby's was predominately known for its roast beef sandwiches, so the restaurant chain launched an ad campaign to let people know that they carried more than beef on their menu. They created a poster showing all of the various hunks of meat they sold so we'd get the idea that they were about so much more then beef. Well, next thing you know, customers started showing up at Arby's asking for the gargantuan sandwich they saw in the ad.

And we do mean gargantuan. The appropriately-named Meat Mountain has, working from the bottom up, a bun (like you're ever going to be able to pick this sucker up), two chicken tenders, slices of roast turkey, smoked ham, Swiss cheese, corned beef, 13-hour smoked beef brisket, Angus steak, cheddar cheese, roast beef and, as the final artery-plugging ingredient, peppered bacon found just under that other bun half. And if you ask nicely, you might even be able to get it with fish.

If we didn't approve of the Meat Cube, we're certainly not okay with the Meat Mountain. We have the meat sweats just thinking about this one, so this puts it at the bottom of our list.