For some people, fast food is a treat — a rare indulgence. And when you don’t eat fast food regularly and instead consider it an exception to your dietary rules, you don’t want to be disappointed. Because let’s face it, a lot of times, fast food can be pretty disappointing.
This is why we’ve started an ongoing series where we highlight the five absolute best menu items at a specific restaurant. We’ve done Taco Bell, McDonald’s, KFC, and Jack in the Box and now it’s time to take on the Shack. We’re talking about Shake Shack (sorry to the Crack Shack fans out there whose heart rate started to skip).
Shake Shack is a tough restaurant to break down into five undeniable classics because everything the restaurant does it does pretty well. Except for the fries. Shake Shack also tends to have a few limited-time-only items on its menu, like last summer’s Spicy Burgermeister (or this month’s Korean BBQ Burger), which we named the best cheeseburger of 2023.
For this review, we decided to leave off all limited options and only focus on food on the permanent menu. That means we’re going to leave some interesting stuff on the cutting room floor but… it is what it is. Let’s dive in!
Shackburger
Why We Love It:
If there was a Mount Rushmore of cheeseburgers, the Shackburger would be on it. It’s an all-time great, one of the best, if not the best double cheeseburgers in the vast fast food universe.
What sets this burger apart from the competition is the meat patty. It’s beefy, juicy, and has that wonderful carmelized crust across the surface and those lacy edges, that help lock in the savory flavor. The beef patty melts in your mouth. It’s delicate, sumptuous, and puts all other burgers to shame.
And that’s just the beef! Joining that is some great produce as well. Thick green leaf lettuce that has a subtle hint of bitterness, ripe juicy tomatoes that add an umami burst of flavor with every bite, and Shake Shack’s Shake sauce, which offers a nice savory tang to the finish.
We couldn’t improve this one if we tried!
The Bottom Line:
The Shackburger just might be the best cheeseburger in all of fast food.
Roadside Double
Why We Love It:
We love the classic Shake Burger, but at the end of the day it’s just a cheeseburger, and if fast food is a rare treat for you, you might want something a bit more elevated. Enter the Roadside Double, a decadent spin on the original that combines Shake Shack’s amazing melt-in-your-mouth beef patty with a double dose of nutty Swiss cheese, dijon mustard, and beer-simmered caramelized onions.
Biting into this burger is an explosion of bold, sweet, and savory flavors with a sharp tang finish. There is something satisfyingly luxurious about this burger, it has the richness of a BBQ burger without the smokey and overly sweetened notes.
The Bottom Line:
Rich, decadent, and subtly sweet. There is a lot of depth of flavor here that makes this burger addicting.
Avocado Bacon Chicken Sandwich
Why We Love It:
The chicken sandwich is one of the most competitive dishes in fast food right now. And there are a lot of good ones out there (Popeyes and Chick-fil-A immediately come to mind) but as good as those sandwiches are, none of them taste as elevated as Shake Shack’s.
The chicken breast filet here is tender and juicy, breaded in a light and crispy breading which, when paired with the bacon, results in an exceptional audible crunch with every bite. The avocado does a lot of work here to deepen the flavors, offering a buttery savoriness that makes this sandwich as satisfying as a juicy cheeseburger.
The pickles are thick and have a nice amount of snap, and the herb-infused mayo wraps all the flavors together. That mayo is the weakest element here, so if you don’t like mayo on your sandwiches feel free to ditch it — the avocado elevates the flavor enough.
The Bottom Line:
Hands down Shake Shack’s best chicken sandwich.
SmokeShack
Why We Love It:
No fast food burger menu is complete without a great bacon burger, and Shake Shack has one in the SmokeShack. But because this is Shake Shack, whose whole concept is roadside dishes meet premium ingredients, this isn’t your average bacon burger.
The build consists of bacon and beef, joined with chopped cherry peppers, and Shake Sauce. Those chopped cherry peppers add brightness to the smokey and beefy character of the burger, with a mild heat and vegetal sweetness that serves as a nice counterbalance. Wrapping the flavors together is a thick layer of Shake Sauce.
It’s not quite as decadent as a bacon burger tends to be (compare this to the Wendy’s Baconator or the Carl’s Jr Western Bacon Cheeseburger), but it’s refreshingly unique.
The Bottom Line:
A subtle and interesting bacon cheeseburger that tastes unlike the competition.
Malted Chocolate Shake
Why We Love It:
This is Shake Shack so we couldn’t create a list of the five best menu items without shouting out one of the shakes. And when it comes to shakes, the Shack has a lot of them including a Cookies and Cream shake, Maple Snicker Doodle Shake, Coffee and Donuts Shake, and even root bear floats. So why are we going with the standard chocolate shake instead?
Because nothing, and I repeat, nothing tastes more satisfying and rich than a good malted milkshake. To be clear, Shake Shack doesn’t default to a malted milkshake, it’s something you’re going to have to ask for, or you know, select on the app, and adding malted milk powder to your shake adds so much to the end result that it’s almost criminal that all fast food shakes aren’t malted.
One sip of this will introduce your tastebuds to a world of rich cocoa and brown sugar flavors with a hint of nuttiness with a rich finish that is enough to make you say “goddamn!” after drinking it. What other fast food milkshake can deliver the same experience?
The Bottom Line:
Fast food’s greatest chocolate milkshake. Get it malted (always get it malted) and thank us later.