11 Wendy's Secret Menu Burgers You'll Wish You Knew About Sooner

Wendy's burgers are famously square, with a pretty simple baseline choice. You can get one of Dave's burgers, with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, ketchup, and mayo. Or you can get some variation of Baconator, which features — you're not going to believe this — bacon and mayo. This is a good thing. A fast food place should make the basics taste good, and we're big fans of how Wendy's executes the fundamentals of meat, cheese, bun, and sauce. From there, it's a simple choice of bacon or veggies. Can this Dave/Baconator binary be broken, though? Once the basics are mastered, shouldn't creativity flourish? We don't think so, we know so. Almost every big fast food spot has a secret menu or, if you're willing to get creative, you can dream up some pretty interesting ideas yourself.

On a personal note, as a former Taco Bell worker and lifelong Wendy's enthusiast, I know how customizable fast food menus can be. Some of these burgers are things I found on the internet, but some of them are things I've tried myself. Also, before you ask, yes, it's one of the great sadnesses of my life that I never got to try the fancy Japanese Wendy's burger with lobster, but here are some secret menu Wendy's burgers that might help scratch that itch.

This monstrosity is an upgrade — a very high one — of the Dave's Triple. You might say a Dave's Triple is the square root of a T-Rex Burger, because the end product features nine beef patties. Don't worry, though, it will still have lettuce and tomato. You can't eat all that beef without some balance, right? That single leaf of lettuce and slice of tomato are the only things standing between you and a full confrontation with the fact that you're eating nine burger patties.

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According to one poster on Reddit, the T-Rex Burger has to be rung up as three triples in the point of sale (POS) system, so expect to pay three sandwiches' worth of cash for three sandwiches' worth of beef. Listen, though, there's no judgment on our end. Wendy's burgers are wonderful. That fresh, never-frozen beef that Dave Thomas used to brag about in commercials is on full display with the T-Rex Burger. All that said, nothing else on this list is quite as extreme.

This item is still in the POS system, according to one employee on Reddit. Ordering should be a breeze, but no worries if your local Wendy's is unfamiliar. This burger is a Jr. Cheeseburger, with the patty smothered in the melty cheese sauce normally reserved for baked potatoes, instead of toppings or ketchup. It's a rich, molten delight that you'll probably have to eat still wrapped. If your local Wendy's won't splash the cheese sauce directly on your burger, you can always order a side of cheese sauce and assemble the sandwich yourself.

There's nothing wrong with eating a plain burger. Meat, cheese, and sauce are the most important elements, after all. If you wanted to add some flavor dimensions here, though, you've got options. Remember: What kind of sauce goes on the bun informs what kind of toppings pair best. Some pickles will add some nice sour acidity to cut through the cheesy richness. Onions, too — either the raw onions that normally go on a burger, or the fried onions that go on the Ghost Pepper Ranch Chicken Sandwich. If there's a limited-time item with jalapeños, you can add jalapeños and have a sort of burger/nacho combination. We wouldn't necessarily recommend lettuce here, as it gets soggy in the cheese sauce, but any topping that can hold its own amongst all that beef and cheese could take this burger to the next level.

You might be able to order the Wendy's chili cheeseburger by name, if the worker at your Wendy's knows about it. It's a permanent menu item in Australia, after all. If not, you can always order the burger of your choice and a side of chili, then ladle a couple of spoonfuls under the top bun. Alternatively, you could forget utensils and go full starving carnivore mode, dipping your burger directly into the bowl of chili. We're not here to judge — good food should be enjoyed enthusiastically. The Wendy's workers should give you napkins, anyway. We should forewarn that dunking is a move that might make the lettuce wilt, but chili drenching any pickles, onions, or tomatoes on the burger? That's quality stuff. 

This is low-key a way to get a double cheeseburger, of sorts; Wendy's chili is made with unused beef patties. Some people might think that's strange, but come on, everyone from home cooks to the executive chefs at the fanciest restaurants is looking for ways to minimize food waste. So order a chili cheeseburger, and feel good about doing your part to cut down on what goes in the landfill.

Formerly a limited-time-only menu offering, this one is fortunately pretty easy to hack. Simply order a Big Bacon Classic with no lettuce, tomato, ketchup, or mayo. Make sure to also order a side of barbecue dipping sauce. This leaves a cheeseburger with onions and pickles, all but begging you to lather some barbecue sauce on the top bun. If you'd like to really emulate the official BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger, ask to swap the raw onions for crispy fried onions. This can also be done with a Baconator, but you won't get the pickles, which you will sorely miss.

The open secret of many fast food limited-time items is that they're often remixes of existing items and ingredients that are already on the line. It's understandable, since adding something new to the line disrupts workers' habits and muscle memory. A cynical person might argue that remixing ingredients already on hand and packaging the result as a new item is a devious tactic, but a person who's culinarily adventurous would take this knowledge as a challenge. So let it be known: Whatever combinations you can think of involving burgers and dipping sauces that would normally come with chicken nuggets? You can totally assemble those yourself. The BBQ Bacon Burger is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Obviously, Wendy's Barnyard Burger is made for meat lovers. Come on, though. Just from a pure, mind-of-a-kindergartener conceptual standpoint, this is one of the more fun secret menu items there is. You simply think, "What could be in a barnyard?" and then add that to the burger. Beef? Check. Bacon? Check. Chicken? Check. Call Old MacDonald and sing some vowel sounds. It's fun, and food should be fun!

Employees are likely to know about this not-so-secret item, but just in case you need to build it yourself: Order a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger and a Crispy Chicken Sandwich, then just add the chicken patty to the burger. That's our recommendation, anyway. You can also get a larger sandwich by starting with a Baconator, or incorporate different flavors by ordering an Asiago Ranch Classic Chicken Club. The cheapest and least wasteful way to make this sandwich is to get a Biggie Bag with a Jr. Bacon cheeseburger, then add the chicken nuggets to the top of your burger like they're meaty pickles. Whatever you order, just make sure that either the burger or chicken sandwich has bacon. It's not a barnyard without some porkers.

Sometimes referred to as a meat cube, this burger could, in fact, make a 3-D shape of Wendy's squares. Whether you prefer your burger in mathematical terms or baseball terms, the essence is that a Wendy's Grand Slam Burger is a stack of four patties. Beyond that though, it turns out there are different schools of thought here. Everyone agrees on the four burgers — after all, a grand slam nets you four runs in baseball and a cube has four sides — but people disagree over the amount of cheese. Some think the sandwich should come with two slices of cheese, one on top and one on the bottom. Others argue there should be a slice on top of each beef patty. We're not here to take a side. We'll just tell you to be specific when ordering.

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If you want four patties and four slices of cheese, the best way to order this is to ask for a Dave's Triple with an extra patty and an extra slice of cheese. Again, we're not taking a side, but the four slices of cheese do help glue the cube together. It's a bummer to order extra patties, only to have one shoot out the back of the sandwich while you're eating. 

A lot of people don't realize the Asiago Beef Burger even exists and that's a genuine shame, because as far as secret menu items go? This is one of the more straightforward examples on our list. All this burger takes is to order an Asiago Ranch Classic Chicken Sandwich, but substitute a burger patty for chicken. The funk of the Asiago pairs really nicely with the richness of the beef.

The Asiago Ranch sandwiches are a menu mainstay, but it's worth noting that the principle behind this hack applies to other specialty items too. Wendy's is great at limited-time offers that cater to more mature tastes. If the Monterey Chicken Sandwich or any other forgotten '90s Wendy's menu items ever come back, it's definitely a good idea to mix up the patties and see what taste combinations you can unlock.

What's better than one Baconator? Two Baconators, but only one bun. Yes, you're making a double of a double. To get this sandwich, you might be able to ask for it by name. In all likelihood, one of the grill workers has already experimented with this. If you're met with blank stares, the easiest thing to do is order a Baconator and ask for two extra patties and extra bacon. Of course, you should be prepared to pay for that extra meat, but then, a Quadruple Baconator is not for the austere, is it?

Listen, though. We'd be remiss if we didn't offer a word of caution with this one. That's a massive amount of meat. No fast food item is going to be perfectly healthy, we know that, but consider that when we wrote about three monster burgers that were Wendy's unhealthiest items — every burger on that list is smaller than the Quadruple Baconator. We're not going to spend the time to look up the exact nutrition facts. If you're ordering this, you likely already know what you're letting yourself in for. You should also know that it's probably a bad idea to order one regularly.

It seems that the Ghost Pepper Ranch Chicken Sandwich has graduated to being a permanent menu item. This is great news, because that sandwich rocks. Unfortunately, there is no burger counterpart — or at least, none officially listed. Order a Ghost Pepper Ranch Chicken Sandwich, but ask for a beef patty instead of chicken. See where your tongue goes.

The spicy sandwich packs a ton of kick. Reportedly, it's part of an appeal to Gen Z, and it's fine by us, we love spicy food. The component that really meshes with the burger, though, has to be the seasoned fried onions. Ghost pepper cheese and ghost pepper ranch are great and all, but a juicy fast-food burger practically cries out for those fried onions. The extra crispness adds a whole new textural dimension, and the way onions accentuate the natural umami of the beef and cheese is next level.

It takes a little effort to get this sandwich. At Wendy's, they won't let you have salad dressing in your burger. What you can do, however, is order a side of salad dressing. This, as you might imagine, opens a lot of possibilities if you also order a burger without mayo, mustard, or ketchup. One of our favorites involves ordering a Bacon Double Stack with no ketchup or mustard. The remaining toppings are onions, pickles, and bacon. These are wonderful ingredients to introduce to Pomegranate Vinaigrette dressing, borrowed from the Apple Pecan Salad.

This flavor pairing favors the bold. Bacon and sweet vinaigrettes are practically made for one another, and here, the tart acidity of the pomegranate cuts through the richness of the bacon, cheese, and beef. You probably already know this, based on salads you've eaten. All we're saying is to take that sweet, tart, bacon flavor mixture, and apply it to a delicious fast food burger. Different? Yes. But sophisticated.

Another adventure with salad dressings gets this creation by ordering a Dave's Single with no ketchup or mayo, with a squeeze of Caesar dressing over the burger accouterments. We advise sticking to the Dave's burgers to pair with Caesar dressing, as the lettuce, tomato, and onion pair nicely with the dressing.

Does Caesar salad dressing really go with a beef burger? It's totally understandable if you're asking your computer screen that question right now. Obviously, grilled chicken is a great addition to Caesar salad, and Wendy's has even served up a Chicken Caesar Wrap before. Well, close your eyes and pretend you're at a steakhouse. Consider how well Caesar salad serves as a side for steak. The tang of the Caesar dressing cuts through the buttery richness of the beef, providing just enough acidity that your tongue isn't overwhelmed by beefy lusciousness. Now open your eyes. This is not a steakhouse, this is a Wendy's, and it's a place where your beef and Caesar dreams can come true for a far more affordable price. Enjoy your secret menu burger, you clever dreamer.