Nothing tastes better than a secret fast food menu hack. Knowing you’re eating a combination of food that’s not technically offered to customers makes your burger-and-fries lunch all the more exciting. An Arby’s sandwich stacked with every kind of meat the kitchen has on hand? Fun! A Big Mac with an egg round on top, just because? Order up!
Of course, you can always turn to the trusty ol’ internet or your fast food exploration needs and troll sites like HackTheMenu for something that sounds good…or you could get your advice directly from the mouth of someone who’s been in the trenches and has their own tried-and-true non-menu favorites.
I was recently chatting with a friend of mine, who used to work at Sonic. (As per her request, I’m keeping her anonymous, “I don’t need my prior boss getting mad.”) After she told me about the grilled cheese sandwiches she and her co-workers used to create in their downtime — made out of whatever cheese the store had on hand — I decided it would be fun to press her for more details (journalism!).
And she delivered. First of all, feast on this custom monster: the “Triple Bypass Burger” made of “four pieces of Texas toast, bbq sauce, habanero, three meat patties, three pieces of cheddar, three pieces of Swiss, onion petals, and bacon on top.”
Next on her list of secret favorites: the “French Toast Sausage Toaster Sandwich,” which is sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiched between Texas toast fried in egg and dipped in syrup.
There’s also something called the Purple Orgasm Drink — “Sprite with a shot of Powerade, lemonade, and cranberry.” (“That one is more commonly known,” she told me. And indeed: it’s there on HackTheMenu, under the name Purple Sprite. On Instagram it’s easier to find under the hashtag #purpleorgasm.)
https://www.instagram.com/p/W2JUgzDVCl/
One more delicious-sounding drink: the Sweet Tart Slush. Because, “If you mix every flavor, it tastes like a Sweet Tart.” Yum. She also used to make chicken quesadillas for herself, using picante, chicken, and shredded cheese — because quesadillas are always a smart play.
When I asked my friend how difficult it would be to get workers to make her menu hacks for me as a paying customer, she said the odds are good. “You can customize almost anything…We did burgers on lettuce buns and could make any drink if you knew what to order shotwise. I even had a customer who requested cherries on a hotdog.” (Which, why? She did it for the customer by the way. But why?)
The sad news in this: you probably aren’t going to get anything completely custom from the grill until you don a Sonic shirt and start running orders out to customers. As she said, “The french toast and quesadilla aren’t going to happen.”
But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try making that french toast sandwich at home. Because even if I don’t get to taste the victory of ordering it off the secret menu, it still sounds ridiculously delicious.
