

If you don’t have at least one spicy menu item, are you even a legit fast food establishment? Spice is such an interesting flavor profile — though technically just a pain signal by the nervous system — that people are willing to watch celebrities eat spicy chicken while being interviewed, even if the structure of the interview is the same every single time. Weird sadism aside, great spicy food hits you with a rush of heat that lingers and simmers on the palate, offering a slow burn of flavor so powerful that it tricks our brains into thinking we’re experiencing a change in temperature. It even causes us to break out into a sweat sometimes! That’s about as wild as a flavor can get. With all the different options of spicy food in the fast food landscape, we thought it might be helpful to take out some of the guesswork you might experience and create a list of each establishment’s best spicy food item. Before we get to the list though, we have a rule: The food must come spicy, no add-ons. Yes, if you modify a menu item with some spicy sauce, it’s going to be spicy. That kind of goes without saying. We’re looking for menu items that are inherently spicy, or else we’d just put our favorite salsa on everything (after all, it is literally the greatest condiment anyone could ever hope to eat). This rule has lead to some casualties, In-N-Out Animal Style fries with chopped chilis being a major one. But sorry, thems the breaks! Rules are rules, and without them, we’re just animals. Let’s get to the list and get you the best spicy menu item at every fast food restaurant!

Making a delicious chicken sandwich at home isn’t all that difficult, and if I’m crunched for time, there’s always Wendy’s —who makes a chicken sandwich almost as good. And I’ll take an almost as good spicy chicken sandwich (that doesn’t include a side of bigotry) any day. Carl’s Jr — Fiery Chicken Sandwich Ah, yes, the Carl’s Jr Fiery Chicken Sandwich, one of the few spicy menu items of which no decent pictures exist on the internet. Probably because the sandwich is hot garbage. The chicken patty is made from that weird spongy processed chicken meat that makes you say, “Well, I mean, I guess this is chicken, what else could it be?” The Fiery Chicken Sandwich does, at the very least, have a nice little kick when you bite into it and the spicy sensation definitely stays with you after you’re done with the sandwich. But other things stay with you too, less pleasant things. Like the memory of eating this sandwich. In terms of spicy menu items, Carl’s Jr is seriously lacking, and what they do have is awful. If this list was ranked, this would’ve been given the worst spot.

Del Taco — Pepper Jack Chicken Rollers The Del Taco Chicken Rollers are probably the most underrated item on the entire Del Taco menu — freshly grilled chicken wrapped up in pepper jack cheese, covered in a tangy green salsa-like sauce, and lovingly placed in a warm tortilla. Delicious! Unfortunately, it isn’t all that spicy, the pepper jack cheese gives a little heat but there just isn’t nearly enough to really feel it. It’s a shame that all of the Mexican-food-inspired fast food joints on this list are seriously lacking in spiciness — that’s the very thing that makes Mexican food so damn good. KFC — Nashville Hot Chicken View this post on Instagram It's hot but not too hot. Like that tasteful outfit you're wearing. A post shared by Kentucky Fried Chicken (@kfc) on Dec 29, 2016 at 10:52am PST KFC likes to say that their Nashville Hot Chicken is spicy, smokey, and crispy, but this is a terrible lie. It’s more like — wet. Just wet. Ordering your KFC “Nashville” style is a mistake. The Nashville Hot Chicken is simply not good. KFC seems to think you want your chicken served in a pool of sauce, they always use way too much, and it tastes, frankly, like someone mixed up the spices with their eyes closed. If you’ve partied hard enough to wander into a KFC (instead of just getting a burrito like a normal person), you’ve probably made enough mistakes for the evening. Take our advice and just get some normal chicken.