Secret Off-the-Menu Items to Order at Your Favorite Chains

This popular Italian dinner house chain is famous for its Alfredo sauce. Other house options, though, include mushroom, marinara, and bolognese-style meat sauces. Can’t decide? Ask for the chef to combine two (Alfredo and marinara work particularly well together, blending into a nice pink sauce), or order your pasta plain with two sauces on the side and dress it yourself.

No, there’s no official McGrilled Cheese at McDonald’s, but they’ll almost always make one to order. It’s just American cheese grilled inside a hamburger bun, and it’s been delighting kids for years.

Sonic used to sell these loaded potato tots but retired them from the menu. You can make your own, though, by enhancing an order of chili cheese tots (still available) with sides of jalapeño slices, sliced onions, and ranch dressing.

One of the most famous secret menu items anywhere, this is a caution-to-the-winds creation that piles servings of virtually all the chain’s meat offerings onto one bun: sliced steak, roast beef, corned beef, brisket, ham, roast turkey, chicken tenders, and bacon. As long as you’ve gone this far, you might as well add Swiss and cheddar cheese.

Can’t decide between coffee and tea? Ask the barista for a chai latte turbo-charged with a shot of espresso.

This is the chain’s Original Chicken Sandwich turned into a club with the addition of bacon, cheese, and tomato.

The tacos are famous here, and a number of breakfast items are also available, but for some reason a breakfast taco isn’t among them. To correct this oversight, order a Grande Sausage Breakfast Burrito and ask for it to be served in a taco shell instead of a flour tortilla.

There are numerous ways to customize coffee and chocolate drinks at Dunkin’, but one of the best is this simple enhancement of mint hot chocolate with a shot or two of coconut flavoring.

The brightly seasoned Cajun fries here need just one thing to convert them into a secret menu delight: a generous application of the chain’s rich gravy on top.

It might not pass muster in New Orleans, but an order of Red Lobster’s popcorn shrimp heaped between halves of one of the chain’s well-loved Cheddar Bay biscuits makes a really good sort-of po’boy sandwich.

Nachos aren’t offered officially here, but Chipotle has all the fixings — tortilla chips, beans, meat (the barbacoa is best for the purpose), salsa, and of course cheese.

This preparation is so well-known that it frankly isn’t much of a secret anymore, but it isn’t on the menu, so it counts as a secret. It’s one of the chain’s justly renowned burgers topped with mustard, Thousand Island dressing, pickles, and caramelized onions. (You can get an order of fries animal-style, too.)

Mongolian beef, made with sliced flank steak in a sweet soy glaze, along with garlic and scallions, is a popular entree here. For a change of pace, ask for it made with one of the restaurant’s several preparations of chicken instead.

The emblematic French-Canadian specialty called poutine consists of French fries topped with cheese curds and gravy. There are no curds at KFC, but when their legendary Double Down is on the menu, as it is from time to time, they do have cheese, and you can get some, along with some gravy, over an order of “secret recipe” fries.

Though it’s best-known for its burgers, Shake Shack began as a hot dog cart in a New York City park, and they take their franks seriously. They’re served Chicago-style, with relish, mustard, cucumber, onion, pickles, tomato, celery salt, and peppers. If you’re more of a burger eater, order a classic ShackBurger and ask for all the condiments that would ordinarily go on a dog.

Another item that’s very much an open secret, this is a hefty overdo-it-yourself sandwich involving alternating layers of burger, bacon, cheese, and spicy chicken filet.

This classic burger variation doesn’t show up very often on chain restaurant menus, but at Five Guys, you can make your own. Just ask for a grilled cheese sandwich (served on a griddled inside-out bun) and add a burger patty and grilled onions.

One of the most popular “secret” Dairy Queen offerings, this is just a traditional float, consisting of vanilla ice cream in a cup filled with root beer.

Order a steak or chicken quesadilla and ask for it to be double-grilled. The process crisps up the exterior so that it’s almost like eating a large, flat taco.

The regular menu here offers a perfectly good chicken club sandwich, a piece of grilled chicken breast with Colby Jack cheese, bacon, lettuce, and tomato on a multigrain brioche bun. What could make it better? Ask for it with a piece of crispy golden-brown fried chicken breast instead.