Bespoke Fast Food

Bespoke fast food is a great way to liven up your trip to a fast food outlet where your demands will either delight or annoy. If it is your lucky day, then you might get a creative student who really does rise to the challenge.

I used to be a dub dub at TGI Friday’s so can totally confirm this works there: always sub the celery for fries or the buffalo wings for example.

Of course there are lots of other ‘specials’ you can order if you know the fast food secrets - and hey, if you have other insider information, then please do share. Of course this goes way beyond the simple ‘have it your way’ at Burger King (they always fail to remove the gherkin) and into a whole new level of customisation.

McDonald’s Neopolitan Shake

Like the ice cream, this is a layered milkshake with chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla flavors in the same cup. AWESOME. I am going to ask for one tomorrow and see what happens. Excitingly there are myths of online McDonald’s employee communities where they share secret recipe information.

Wendy’s - The Grand Slam / Classic Quadruple / Meat Cube

McDonald’s - Fries with Big Mac Sauce

Simply yet effective sauce swap livens up your fries a lot more than traditional red sauce. It's unhealthy as hell, but tastes great, apparently.

Starbucks - The Red Eye

A cup of coffee with a shot of espresso dumped in. You can even upgrade this to two shots which is called a Black Eye.

Most Fish & Chip places - Batter Bits

This is the best thing in the world; you can get this in the UK too. My local chip shop will also deep fry anything you ask for, as they tend to get fairly bored during the week.

In N’ Out’s - Famous animal-style burger

In-N-Out Burgers say the key to their success is simplicity with only four food items on the menu: Hamburger, Cheeseburger, Double-Double and French Fries. But then of course there is the secret menu, proved by the till receipt.

The least ‘secret’ on this list is their burger, cooked in mustard with extra pickles, extra spread, and grilled onions. Reports are the ‘In-N-Out’ are the kings of bespoke fast food and do anything including 100×100 order (100 patties and 100 slices of dee-licious cheese - pictured looking less than tasty.) Brilliantly, the secret items actually outnumber the items legitimately on the menu.

Unlike some of the other items, this is REAL, ie you can order a Flying Dutchman and a "Flying Dutchman" prints out on your receipt, proving it’s in the computer. This rules and here is an example why;

Protein Burger

Any burger you want, wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun

You can click here to download a PDF of the secret menu.

Starbucks secret short cup

This is good and there is pictorial evidence. The smallest size on the Starbucks menu is a ‘Tall’ but there is a secret fourth size - the ‘short’.

If everyone loves it so much, maybe they should have happy hours where we can go in and fiddle with their menus.