If you’re not familiar with Jollibee’s game, you’re seriously missing out. The restaurant is the largest fast food chain in the Philippines and is making a pretty active play for the US market, with 80 stores nationwide across 14 different states, most of which are currently in California. The restaurant is mostly known for its fried chicken and spaghetti (a perfect combination of foods, don’t knock it until you try it), but has been branching out with chicken sandwiches, and this year, cheeseburgers.
Even though we’re big Jollibee fans, when the cheeseburgers were first announced, our interest was admittedly pretty low. It’s not that we didn’t have faith in Jollibee, but generally when fast food brands do both chicken sandwiches and cheeseburgers, they rarely knock it out of the park with both dishes (Wendy’s and Shake Shack being the rare exceptions).
But — spoilers for the full review — these cheeseburgers are f*cking delicious. They’re so damn good that we feel like we need to re-do our cheeseburger ranking to properly place these. We’ll get to that eventually, but first let’s talk about what makes these burgers a must-eat.
Jollibee Angus Cheeseburger Review
Currently, Jollibee has three different burger builds — the Angus Cheeseburger, Angus Deluxe Burger, and Angus Aloha Burger. The base cheeseburger features a certified Angus beef patty smash seared on the grill and topped with American cheese, thick-cut pickles, thinly sliced red onions, ketchup, and signature sauce. The Deluxe features the same build plus tomato and lettuce, and the Aloha Burger ditches the pickles and onions and adds grilled pineapple, bacon, and Jollibee’s Aloha dressing.
Since the Cheeseburger and Deluxe are essentially the same build, I skipped the former and ordered the Deluxe, as well as the Aloha Burger.
When I bit into the Deluxe I was surprised to find a thick patty of sumptuous beef that practically melted in my mouth. This burger is juicy and perfectly salted, with nice ripe produce and a soft buttery bun. This burger is a leap above the top of the line burgers at places like Jack in the Box, McDonald’s, and Burger King, easily.
What stood out to me was the signature sauce. The sauce is much less tangy than a typical burger sauce, with that tang replaced by sweet floral notes that are almost honey-like. It adds a savory umami quality to each bite that had me sufficiently addicted by the burger’s end.
With how much I enjoyed the Deluxe, I was pretty amped for the Aloha — but it missed the mark for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good, but I think the Deluxe dunks on it. My main issue with the Aloha was the grilled pineapple, which was a bit too thin (and not charred enough) to really stand out, so instead of adding a noticeable fruity tang note, it just sort of made my burger taste a bit off. The bacon was also undercooked to the point that it was chewy. These are easily tweakable ingredients though, so it could just be a case of quality control.
But despite being disappointed by the Aloha, I still have to hand it to Jollibee on the burger’s Aloha Dressing. I’m not sure what is in this stuff, but it tastes like a simplified version of banana ketchup. If you’ve never had banana ketchup, it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. It tastes strikingly similar to ketchup, but with a sweeter, less umami-focused finish. It’s like ketchup, without the tang!
It adds an interesting fruity-meets-savory quality to the burger that makes it truly unique. It’s rare that we get a fast food cheeseburger that tastes miles apart from the competition, but Jollibee has done it. While the Aloha wasn’t our favorite, it was definitely the most unique and interesting burger we’ve had all year (take that Shake Shack).
The Bottom Line:
Last year Jollibee didn’t even make a cheeseburger, and this year they’re making one of the best in all of fast food. The Angus Cheeseburgers are worth an immediate trip to your nearest Jollibee. We place this one neck and neck with Wendy’s (maybe a touch higher) and leaps and bounds better than McDonalds, Jack in the Box, Burger King, and other drive-thru assisted big burger chains.
