The Hands-Down Best Viral Fast Food Chain Orders We've Ever Seen

Secret menu items generally have three different origins. Sometimes they're orders a restaurant is willing to make regularly, but for whatever reason, the company hasn't yet added the item to its menu. The restaurant advertises these recipes via word of mouth, but it otherwise treats them like conventional orders. Occasionally, those items do become part of the official menu. Other secret menu items are deliberately pushed by the restaurants as a form of marketing, giving customers the impression that they're part of a cool club if they know about the order. And, then there are orders that begin as customizations that a customer or employee figures out on their own. Those orders spread online as people realize how delicious they are.

People like to copy things that look interesting, especially if they're delicious food combos that are really satisfying to eat. With instructions that are easy to follow (you want to be sure an order is something employees will actually make for you if it isn't one you put together yourself), these can quickly sweep social media. We looked through Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms to see just which ones were doing that. Not every variation is going to be to everyone's tastes, of course, but these viral fast food chain orders are hands-down some of the best we've ever seen.

Most of the secret menu items at In-N-Out are so well-known that calling them secret is more of a tradition than a comment on their actual obscurity. But, people are still coming up with new creations, and one of them has become pretty popular. That's the In-N-Out burger salad, where you order a protein-style Double-Double and turn it into a chopped salad. Some variations use a protein-style and animal-style Double-Double, while others prefer a protein-style double-single with two beef patties and one slice of cheese. Order the burger, extra lettuce, and raw onion, plus peppers. Cut all of the ingredients up into small pieces and add a packet of the spread. If you want, you can add chopped tomatoes and pickle slices. Then you put fries on top.

This order appears to have made its debut in 2023 on TikTok on the account @_bookofelie. The account creator notes in the caption that their friend was an In-N-Out employee whose co-workers would make the salad. Whether that's the actual origin is unknown, but it certainly sounds plausible. Most reactions have been positive. While some comments push back at the creation, calling it either too much work or a burger with an added dish to wash, others love the idea. Some are already making their own variations. Sometimes you don't want to deal with keeping a huge burger together while taking a bite, and this salad makes the whole thing a lot easier to eat.

Some of these viral fast food orders are incredibly simple and leave you wondering why you never thought to create them yourself. That's the case with the Chick-fil-A hot honey chicken kale crunch salad, which has an absolutely tempting description built into the name. 

Order a chicken meal (nuggets and tenders both work), a kale crunch side instead of fries, and one to two packets each of honey and Texas Pete hot sauce. Pour the honey and hot sauce over the chicken in the box it came in, close the box, and shake it well so that the sauce coats the meat. Cut up the chicken, mix it with the salad, and top it with nuts. Note: Adding the sauce and honey to the box gets messy, so be careful shaking it.

The first appearance of this order was on TikTok on the account @smallersam_pcos. The hack is simple and affordable because you don't need to order a lot to make it. Nutrition counts vary, but the meal can contain anywhere from 33 to 40 grams of protein while remaining under 600 calories. That's not bad for fast food. The only disadvantage is that the sauce and nuts can end up everywhere if you aren't careful when mixing things together. Reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, with people creating copycat recipes at home. Even Giada De Laurentiis posted a version that uses sriracha sauce instead of honey and hot sauce on Facebook.

After chicken and a salad, it's time for dessert. Go to Dairy Queen, where you can order the hardshell toppings in a container on the side, and then dip spoonfuls of ice cream into the topping. At first, this seems like extra work, but there's a reason to do this. When you order hardshell on your ice cream, you only get that single coating on top of the serving. When you order it as a dip on the side, you can dunk every single bite of ice cream into the hardshell coating. Even better, you can order more than one flavor of the topping.

If you don't want to dip your ice cream by the spoonful, there are a couple of other Dairy Queen hacks to get some extra hardshell. One is to ask for the ice cream in a cup (no cone) and pour — nay, flood — the cup and ice cream with hardshell topping when you're inside the restaurant. This lets you avoid constant dipping and a soggy cone while getting a lot more topping. The other variation is the hardshell mix-in hack, where you order a Blizzard with the hardshell broken up and stirred into the ice cream. A video from HellthyJunkFood on Facebook shows a Dairy Queen employee asking if the shell should be on top or mixed in, so this sounds like it's a known order.

This is not a new viral order at all, but people are still posting about it, so it's worth mentioning. And, it's really one of the best viral fast food orders out there. When you go to Panda Express and get a bowl or plate meal, you can split the sides half and half, meaning you can order half-portions of two different sides. Whether you can't decide between side order options or you don't like that a regular side order gives you too much of one item, asking for half and half sides is the solution. Those half sides don't cost anything extra, and some people have said they feel like they even get a little more food for their money.

It's a great one from a nutritional standpoint because you're not stuck with just a large heap of rice or way too much chow mein (if that's even possible). If you order half vegetables, half chow mein or fried rice, and then vegetable-heavy entrees (the Broccoli Beef is one of the best non-greasy fast food items out there), you can mix up a pretty satiating and nutritionally balanced meal. It gives you more veggies than you'd get in a lot of other places, while still letting you enjoy some tasty carbs. 

This is another viral order that's been around for several years. It just keeps resurfacing, which is a testament to how good it is. This is the Taco Bell Doritos Locos tacos quesadilla, and there are a couple of variations. One is the large version, in which you order two to three Doritos Locos tacos and a large quesadilla. Place the tacos inside the quesadilla and fold it up around them. The order gets kind of messy, but reactions to the taste have been universally positive. 

At first, this sounds like you're just making your own Cheesy Gordita Crunch, except with a tortilla instead of the thicker flatbread that the gordita uses. On TikTok, however, @eatdrinkbemandy said that the order wasn't the same as the Cheesy Gordita Crunch because she couldn't order the gordita in the company's app with Doritos Locos tacos instead of the regular taco shell. However, other people have still compared the concoction to the gordita.

A smaller viral variation of the "genius hack" uses one Doritos Locos taco and a mini quesadilla, which, unfortunately, is no longer available in the U.S. However, that doesn't have to stop you from getting the taco to-go and then making a mini quesadilla at home.

One of the more popular viral orders over the past few years has been the Philly cheesesteak pizza from Domino's. This isn't a specialty pizza, but rather a pan pizza with many toppings. That's an important detail because one person on Reddit reported trying to order it online as a specialty Philly cheesesteak pizza and being unable to; the key was to use the build-your-own option for a pan pizza instead.

The order includes extra garlic parm sauce and extra cheese, additional cheddar cheese blend, Philly cheesesteak, and bacon. Ask for the whole thing "extra-baked." The result is a loaded, crispy, cheesy, meaty pizza that's super rich and creamy.

Not everyone has been thrilled by it. One online forum was filled with people complaining about the smell and warning people about how greasy and salty it was. Even people who loved it admitted it was not the healthiest pizza around. Interestingly, one person on TikTok, @iamtytyjones, noted that the combination of ingredients was better than the toppings when ordered individually, saying, "I'm not a fan of most of this stuff on the pizza, but it is pretty damn good."

Burger King used to sell a cherry ICEE float that fans loved. For whatever reason, the chain discontinued the float, and people have since posted online, begging the company to bring it back. Until this happens, there are a couple of DIY Burger King ICEE hacks floating around the web. In one, you take a Frozen Coke or one of the other frozen drinks and combine it with vanilla soft serve. You can blend them if you want, or you can alternate spoonfuls of each ingredient into another cup. You might not get the cherry flavor you crave, but it's a close copy texture-wise.

Another option is the DIY soda float. Burger King Japan added a Dr. Pepper float in 2024, and U.S. fans have taken to creating ice cream floats with the vanilla soft serve and a cup of Dr. Pepper. The texture and flavor are obviously not the same as a cherry ICEE float. But, you still get that combination of ice cream and soda that can hit the spot on a hot day.

The Whopperito was a real menu item at Burger King around 2016. It was exactly what the name implied: A Whopper cut up and wrapped in a tortilla like a burrito. The one other change was that the cheese was queso, rather than American slices. Reactions were mixed. It wasn't anything amazingly different, and some reviews noted that the filling wasn't enough to fully load the tortilla. But, for fans who liked Whoppers and burritos, it was a delicious, convenient combo that Burger King sadly discontinued.

But that doesn't mean the item is gone forever. Fans on YouTube have been hacking Whopper orders and making a viral version of the Whopperito themselves. There's no official way to do this, and most suggestions have been to ask for a Whopper in a tortilla instead of a bun. You'll have to remember to ask if queso is available. You can also buy a Whopper to go, grab a tortilla, and put the Whopper filling inside the tortilla with your choice of cheese, folding it up either burrito or taco style, depending on your preference. On one hand, it sounds like a really basic, kind of boring switch. But, in another way, it's nice because the tortilla does hold all the ingredients in place, making it easier to eat with one hand.

Finally, here's a viral order that originates from the fast food chain itself. Some locations of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue sell bulgogi fries, but not all do — and customers have been seeking this dish out for over a decade. Bulgogi fries have barbecue beef on a bed of fries mixed with cheese and garlic, with a topping of sriracha mayo, green onions or scallions, and sesame seeds.

Customers adore the fries. One YouTuber notes that all the textures and flavors — from the super-crispy fries to the beef and spicy sriracha — blend very well together. Why this is only sold at a few locations instead of on all menus throughout the chain isn't clear. If you want to order the bulgogi fries, though, just call the location and ask if they serve it, or check that location's specific menu online. Some individual locations have their own websites and post different menus from the company's main site.

If you're going to look for viral fast food orders, no place is better than social media. We looked at TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, and Facebook to see which ultra-customized fast food orders were traveling from account to account. We factored in ease of ordering and creation, plus how popular the order seemed to be, especially if it was something limited by location, like those bulgogi fries. We also looked at how much people loved the orders after trying them; in other words, something that everyone was disgusted by wasn't going to make this list. The viral orders had to be ones that people decided were actually amazing.

As you can see, we included DIY customizations, limited-location items from restaurants, and basic ingredient substitutions. All of these methods of creating and obtaining the orders produced some pretty tasty dishes. We had limited space and couldn't cover everything, so when you're done trying these orders, seek out additional secret menu items and viral fast food customizations to curate your own list. Maybe you'd prefer Chipotle's Secret Burritodilla or some hacks for ordering at Arby's. And, of course, see if you can come up with some new viral fast food orders of your own.