13 Popular Applebee's Entrees, Ranked Worst To Best

Growing up in the Midwest, walking into Applebee's feels like coming home. The menu is filled with foods I remember eating from childhood through college, such as burgers, pasta, and loaded salads. Applebee's also has colorful cocktails (some better than others) and sweet desserts.

The chain has an enormous menu and constantly innovates, creating new twists on old classics, so when I was invited to try some of their most current popular entrees, I was immediately interested. Having now lived in New York for over 20 years, with new, delicious restaurants on literally every corner of the city, I very rarely visit my old stomping grounds — even when they remind me of home. I was excited to return to a previous favorite where I spent family dinners and nights studying with friends. As I evaluated everything from taste to presentation, I was looking for that perfect bite that could serve as a reminder that sometimes the most familiar establishments can still be exciting. To rank the entrees overall, I looked for the ones that would make me want to come back and order them again.

Some recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products the manufacturer provided.

While the name of this dish includes two items I enjoy separately, I'm sad to say the Quesadilla Burger ranks at the bottom of my entree list. I found it simply too wet—sauce leaked out of every crevice as I picked it up, making the tortilla bun soggy and messy to hold. The burger patty was also more of a smash-burger style, flattened to fit the smaller tortilla container, so it wasn't super filling.

The burger comes topped with lettuce, pico de gallo, shredded cheese, bacon, pepper jack cheese, and the aforementioned Mexi-Ranch sauce. Beyond the overall texture, there was just too much going on for me to get a cohesive sense of what the sandwich was supposed to taste like, as many of the toppings fell out the sides and the flavors were both overwhelming and masking each other.

Finally, the standard side is fries, which makes sense for a burger, but it felt oddly out of place on this Mexican-inspired dish. I would have preferred rice and beans, or something with a bit more heat to give the plate a more defined flavor. 

Take the Quesadilla Burger, put it in a skillet of hot, steaming cheese, and you have the O-M-Cheese-adilla Burger. This is the newest item on the Applebee's entree menu, and it gets one bump up the list because... who doesn't like melted cheese? The fries are swapped for tortilla chips topped with queso (although it hasn't been reviewed favorably in the past), pico de gallo, and cilantro.

The O-M-Cheese-adilla Burger has basically the same issues as the original Quesadilla Burger. It still contains lettuce, pico de gallo, shredded cheese, bacon, pepper jack cheese, and Mexi-Ranch sauce, so it's still pretty drippy — and now also coated in liquid cheese.

My dining companion and I agreed this was one of the messiest dishes we'd eaten; we wished we'd had a moist towelette. Also, as much as I loved the idea of the hot cheese base, I absolutely burned my tongue on a tortilla chip when I pulled it out of the skillet. 

In my opinion, the O-M-Cheese Burger is the best of the three in this series, as it keeps the melted queso skillet but changes the burger design to something more traditional and less soupy. I will say the best part of this dish is how fun it looks on presentation — the cheese is steaming and bubbling, and the side dish is loaded fries with more cheese on top.

My biggest complaint, however, is that if you let the cheese cool so you don't burn your tongue, it acts like a binding agent, effectively gluing the burger and fries to the bottom of the pan. You really have to dig at both with a fork to get at it, much like the Quesadilla Burger, which quickly falls apart and makes it hard to get one cohesive bite. The toppings include bacon, shredded cheese, Sweet Heat honey mustard, and American cheese, all on a toasted brioche bun. I'm not a fan of the processed taste of American cheese, but honestly, it didn't come through as much because the hot cheese around it overtook the burger. I also far preferred the tangy honey mustard to the Mexi-Ranch sauce. 

Moving away from the burgers (but not the Mexi-Ranch sauce), we come to the Fiesta Lime Chicken. Generally, I prefer a grilled chicken entree, so I was ready to like this one, since it also comes with the Mexican rice I craved with the Quesadilla Burger. While some of the elements delivered, the curse of the Mexi-Ranch soaking through the chicken once again dropped this entree further down the list.

The Fiesta Lime Chicken is a grilled chicken breast with a lime-cilantro glaze and melted, shredded cheddar cheese on top, served on a bed of tortilla strips with a side of pico de gallo, a lime slice, and Mexican rice. I found the sauce application too heavy, which made it hard to enjoy the glaze. When I found a bite of chicken that wasn't completely slathered, I thought the citrus taste was a nice acidic complement to the crunch of the tortilla strips, and I found diced jalapeño in the pico, which also added some spice. 

If you've read my ranking of Wendy's chicken items, you'd know about my love of chicken. That said, I was hoping the Chicken Tenders Platter would be a ringer for me. It's truly difficult to screw up a chicken tender, as far as my palate is concerned. I've been eating them since childhood, and it's my go-to at home when I need a late-night snack or a quick protein boost.

Despite my general affinity towards them, the chicken tenders at Applebee's are lower on the list because they're simply... fine. I found them lacking real crunch and seasoning, unfortunately, so while they were an average snack, nothing really elevated them above the middle of this ranking. They come with a Honey Dijon Mustard sauce for dipping (although you can substitute something else, if you'd like), and the standard sides are coleslaw and fries. I'm not a big coleslaw person, so that was a miss for me too, but I did like the dipping sauce, and the fries complemented the tenders well.

If you need an easy dish for your children, or you're visiting during happy hour and want something quick, this is a perfectly acceptable choice. However, if you're looking for something a bit more substantial and interesting, these chicken tenders didn't work for me as an entree. 

I'm not usually a cream sauce girl when it comes to pasta; I prefer a hearty marinara or even a simple drizzle of olive oil. So for years, I've avoided Alfredo when I see it on the menu, mostly because I remember the sauce sitting heavy in my stomach and making me feel too full. Still, I was willing to give this pasta a go, since it had two other components I liked — grilled chicken strips and steamed broccoli — plus a buttery breadstick on the side.

Overall, this pasta tasted a bit bland to me, so I'm sad to report I haven't been converted back to white-sauce pastas just yet. I didn't detect much salt or pepper in the sauce, so it tasted very rich and dense overall, and the dish I was served had only about half a dozen broccoli stalks for the entire plate, so there wasn't much variety in bites, either. That said, the fettuccine pasta was al dente, with a generous portion of parmesan cheese melted over several well-prepared grilled chicken strips, so I still preferred it to the earlier cheesy burgers. 

The first thing I can say for this salad is that it's massive. I've had "entrée salads" before that leave me hungry an hour after eating, but this salad is absolutely loaded. It includes avocado cucumber salsa, grilled chicken, shaved parmesan cheese, chopped bacon, and tomato slices over a lettuce mix, dressed with Lite Italian dressing and drizzled with balsamic glaze.

I also thought this salad looked appealing—all the ingredients are laid out in designated lines across the salad, so you can have a bite of tomato or a bite of chicken without having both together, if you want. However, while it's aesthetically pleasing, I personally prefer my salad a little more mixed up in advance so I can get all the flavors together at once, and the dressing was poured on heavily, which made it pool at the bottom of the bowl. I will also say that in my salad, while the chicken was perfectly juicy, the avocado seemed to be missing from the salsa — it was much more cucumber-forward (which I do like). 

I definitely preferred the Blackened Shrimp & Andouille Sausage Penne to the Classic Broccoli Chicken Alfredo. It simply has more flavor and texture overall, and the Cajun cream sauce tasted almost like a spicier macaroni and cheese sauce (complimentary). The pasta dish also includes Andouille sausage, red and green bell peppers, grilled onions, and sautéed shrimp, all with seasoning and parsley sprinkled over the penne pasta. It also comes with a garlic breadstick on the side.

I'd say this dish may not be for everyone if you're spice- or pork-averse. I thought it was an interesting mix of tastes, with the peppers' crunch and the sausage's smokiness balancing the shrimp's briny taste. My dish also wasn't heavily coated in cream sauce, which was ideal for me, but creamy lovers may want a heavier helping. 

The second salad on this list made the top five. Maybe it's the current weather (sunny and hot), but something about this salad felt perfect for summer. The Strawberry Balsamic Chicken Salad has almonds, diced tomatoes, red onion, sliced strawberries, and grilled chicken over a lettuce mix, tossed with a Lite Italian dressing and topped with balsamic glaze. While it has fewer ingredients than the California Grilled Chicken Salad, it still felt like an appropriate size for dinner.

The strawberries were fresh and sweet (even at the end of the season), which pleasantly complemented the tender chicken and crunchy almonds and onions. The salad was lightly dressed and glazed, so there felt like just enough dressing without overwhelming the fruit and vegetables. I would absolutely order this salad again, and enjoy it on a patio with a nice, crisp glass of white wine. 

Here's a controversial confession for eating at Applebee's: I've only had ribs maybe three or four times in my life. So when a full rack of baby back ribs, slathered in an ooey-gooey honey barbecue sauce, was presented to me, I didn't know where to start. I watched as my friend showed me how to cut off a rib, suck the meat off the bone, and throw the remainder to the side.

Once I got the hang of it, I could actually enjoy the taste — and the Double Glazed Baby Back Ribs were quite good. The meat was tender and falling off the bone, the sauce was the right mix of tangy and sweet, and the full rack was large enough to be hard to finish. We also swapped the standard fries and coleslaw for garlicky green beans and steamed broccoli to offset the ribs' decadence, which was the right move. The only reason this platter didn't make the top three was really my own biases, given how messy the whole process was and that the beans were a bit overcooked. 

Now we're getting into my real favorites among the entrees I tried, starting with the last of the three salads on this list. The Oriental Chicken Salad has been on the menu since I was in college, so it really felt like a welcome back from an old friend. It contains almonds, crispy chicken bites, and crunchy noodles mixed with Asian greens, tossed with an Oriental dressing, with a golden-brown breadstick on the side.

What I love about this salad is that it lets you enjoy the best of both worlds: the crunchy, salty fried chicken and the lighter, chilled greens. All the flavors come together to give every bite a delightful, crispy texture, with the slightly sweet dressing, and nothing was skimped on — the salad was full of every ingredient, including an overload of chicken. Not only did I take some of it home for lunch the next day, but I look forward to coming back and ordering it again one day.

This burger does it right. My number two pick is the most standard-sounding burger on the list, the Whiskey Bacon Burger. It's loaded with delicious toppings: bacon strips, fried and raw onions, lettuce, pickles, tomato slices, and pepper jack cheese, topped with a whiskey-infused sauce, all on a beef patty on a brioche bun. This patty was also the closest to medium/medium rare of all of the burgers I tried, which is my preferred temperature, so that was a win as well.

The Whiskey Bacon Burger just tastes great — if you can get a whole bite in your mouth. It's piled high with the aforementioned fixings, which can also fall out of the bun occasionally; if you cut off a bite as I did, it may look silly, but it provides the best overall taste. The whiskey sauce is a bit sweet, but so much more appealing than the Mexi-Ranch on the other burgers, and the onions, bacon, and pickles help keep the burger crunchy. I was definitely more than satisfied with the amount of burger on the plate — plus it comes with fries — and felt quite full after eating just half of it. 

Here it is: my number one pick for the best Applebee's entree I tasted. I loved the Bourbon Street Chicken and Shrimp because it hit many of the qualities I look for in a delicious meal. It had a variety of textures and flavors; it was filling without being excessive in size; and it included several of my favorite ingredients on the skillet plate. The Bourbon Street Chicken and Shrimp is a grilled chicken breast topped with sautéed shrimp, served on a bed of grilled onions and seasoned mushrooms, drizzled with a garlic butter sauce, and paired with a side of garlic mashed potatoes.

In many ways, this meal felt like one of the lightest, despite how much it actually contains. The garlic butter sauce is rich, but the flavor didn't overwhelm the chicken. Plus, the grilled vegetables were perfectly cooked and were a nice accompaniment to the protein. My only small complaint was more of a preference: the mashed potatoes were almost too smooth, but still better than any I'd make myself. I will definitely be returning for this one!

I was invited to try all thirteen of these entrees at the Applebee's on 50th Street between Broadway and 7th Avenue in Manhattan, the largest Applebee's in the world. Knowing I'd be trying so many entrees in one sitting, I brought a friend, and we ate only a few bites of each so we could fully enjoy all the dishes without feeling overwhelmed or too full.

I asked the restaurant staff to course it out for us so everything would arrive at the right temperature. We started with salads, moved on to chicken dishes, had the baby back ribs and the pastas, and then finished up with the four burger options. I considered presentation and taste, and with this experience in particular, I kept asking, "What do I want more of?" We were offered boxes to take the remaining food home, but I didn't want seconds of much of it — even as someone who hates food waste. The entrees I did take home made it in the top three. I tried all of the food first, so I wouldn't be influenced by any of my friend's reactions, although we were pretty aligned when we compared notes later — and he gladly took the remaining ribs with him.