Discontinued Fast Food Fish Sandwiches We'll Probably Never Eat Again

One of modern life's little but particular grievances: When a fast food place you only like because of one particular menu item gets rid of that very menu item. One no longer has any reason to go to that place, the one that offered something different enough from the competition and all the usual fast food fare to stand out and lure in hesitant customers. And then, for whatever reason — usually poor sales, or that it requires too many resources to prepare on a large scale — the entire chain excises that product. These kinds of food memories can last for years.

It's especially annoying in the realm of alternative fast food choices. Most quick-serve restaurants offer multiple hamburgers or chicken options but precious few fish sandwiches. For those who don't like red meat, don't eat beef for health or ethical reasons, or are observing the fish-permissive religious period of Lent, fast food fish sandwiches are a welcome convenience. There are many things you need to know about McDonald's Filet-O-Fish, like how it reigns supreme over this sector, so much so that all of the Golden Arches' competitors at some point or another have tried to introduce their own fish sandwiches. Very often, they've failed, rolling out seafood on a bun or roll, getting customers into it, and then snatching it away. Here are some long-gone fast food fish sandwiches unlikely to ever return to the menus.

McDonald's must have been feeling particularly emboldened in 1996 when it decided to add a second fish sandwich to its menu. The three-decades-old Filet-O-Fish, a simple build of a fried pollock patty with a slice of cheese and tartar sauce on a small bun, was joined by an even more adult-skewed sandwich with the arrival of the Fish Filet Deluxe.

A very big sandwich, it consisted of a fried fish patty 150% the size of the one used on the Filet-O-Fish, along with tartar sauce, a cheese slice, and lots of tartar sauce. The Fish Filet Deluxe wasn't just a different take on the Filet-O-Fish, but a spinoff of the Arch Deluxe. McDonald's spent tens of millions of dollars trying to pull in older customers with more refined palates to its thousands of stores in the mid-1990s with the Arch Deluxe, a burger topped with bacon and a peppery mayonnaise sauce. If the Arch Deluxe was a new spin on McDonald's burgers, the Fish Filet Deluxe was a revamp of the fish sandwich. Neither "Deluxe" sandwich hit big — the Fish Filet Deluxe started to disappear from McDonald's stores in 1998 in advance of the Arch Deluxe, which McDonald's could resurrect despite it being its biggest failure.

Chick-fil-A has been all-in on boneless, battered, and fried poultry since its inception, claiming to have invented the now commonplace chicken sandwich. Chicken factors into nearly every entrée sold by the fast food giant, from various sandwiches to nuggets to strips to soup. Only very rarely has Chick-fil-A attempted to sell proteins besides chicken, namely its Traditional Fish Sandwich and the Deluxe Fish Sandwich. The former resembled a regular Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich — buttered bun and pickles but with two pieces of battered cod — while the former benefitted from the addition of lettuce, tomato, and American cheese.

Sold during Lent, the 40-day religious observance before Easter during which Roman Catholics eschew meat on Fridays, Chick-fil-A's fish offerings were only ever seasonal, bowing off the menu by summer each year. In 2021, neither fish sandwich took its annual place at Chick-fil-A, and it hasn't been back since. According to employees on Reddit, the sandwich led to kitchen issues. "Fryer capacity restraints," one worker said, which meant that the average location would lose one chamber used for cooking waffle fries to devote to the fish sandwiches, which were never all that popular to begin with.

Jack in the Box joined the unofficial annual Lent fast food fish sandwich wars with the introduction of its Deluxe Fish Sandwich. A towering, extra-large selection on the sprawling and varied Jack in the Box menu, it was certainly one of the largest fish sandwiches ever served by a major fast food chain. Jammed between two halves of a bakery-style bun came two thick fish filets breaded in light and airy panko breadcrumbs along with two slices of melty American cheese, a mound of shredded lettuce, tomato slices, and tartar sauce.

The Deluxe Fish Sandwich first popped up in the early months of 2020, and returned to Jack in the Box every Lent (and only for Lent) in each subsequent year. But then in 2024, the chain didn't revive it, and without notice, leaving only a regular, standard-issue single-filet fish sandwich on the menu. "The fish sandwich that's selling now tastes exactly like McDonald's," one unhappy Deluxe Fish Sandwich fan griped on Reddit.

In the early 1970s, Burger King tentatively introduced a fried fish sandwich called The Whaler. Billed in print advertisements as a "golden, tender fish sandwich served on a toasted bun with lettuce and tangy tartar sauce," the item was only sold at Burger King outlets that wanted to give a non-beef entrée a try. About a decade later, Burger King revived The Whaler as a nationally available item, and in a 1983 ad campaign, aggressively positioned it as not a Filet-O-Fish ripoff, but as a superior challenger to the McDonald's industry standard. This time, The Whaler consisted of a crispy fish filet made from whitefish and served on a sesame seed bun that was as big as the star protein and not overwhelming to the fish, like McDonald's product did, as the ad stated.

The Whaler didn't sink the competition, and by the 1990s Burger King had rebranded its fish sandwich as the Ocean Catch, utilizing a different breading technique and bun. Burger King revamped the fish-wich once more — today it's called a Big Fish, and it's made with wild-caught pollock, breaded in panko, and covered in tartar sauce and pickles and served on a brioche bun. The spicy counterpart, the Fiery Big Fish, isn't much of a catch.

The vast majority of fast food fish sandwiches use a heavily battered and oil-cooked filet. Carl's Jr. (and its eastern U.S. counterpart, Hardee's) tried to stand out from competitors' heavy, brown, crispy offerings by attempting one of the few non-fried fast food fish sandwiches in history. In 2013, the Charbroiled Atlantic Cod Fish Sandwich debuted. Introduced for that year's Lent observation, the fish was a whole, real, single-origin piece of meat taken from just one cod, prepared with fire and arriving to diners on an also novel sesame honey wheat bun. Other than that, it employed the usual fast food fish condiments of tartar sauce, lettuce, and tomato.

Letting the fish speak for itself proved unpopular with regular customers of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. The seafood-forward, slightly healthy sandwich lasted just two Lent seasons before the parent company decided to ditch the non-fried filet in favor of the more traditional and familiar looking Redhook Beer-Battered Cod Fish Sandwich.

Wendy's has always set itself apart from the other burger-based mega-joints with some alternative menu items not widely seen in fast food, like chili, a line of baked potatoes, and in the 2010s, a high-quality and carefully curated fish sandwich. In 2019, Wendy's unveiled the Wild Caught North Pacific Cod Sandwich. "What do you eat on Friday during Lent?" ads for Wendy's rhetorically asked, explicitly laying out its marketing intentions with the item while also simultaneously suggesting it wouldn't be a product that would earn a permanent menu spot. The build: a large, soft bun containing a thick filet of cod caught wild in the colder regions of the Pacific Ocean that was breaded in panko breadcrumbs and topped with lettuce, pickle chips, and a creamy take on tartar sauce.

The Wild Caught North Pacific Cod Sandwich is no longer offered at Wendy's, not even on a seasonal basis. In the 2020s, Wendy's stopped buying cod in favor of Alaskan pollock. The new, annually available Crispy Panko Fish Sandwich is much like its predecessor, except that it's made from a different variety of whitefish and includes a slice of cheese, while still utilizing the same bun, sauce, and toppings as the long-gone Wild Caught North Pacific Cod Sandwich.

Looking back at KFC's oddest menu items, the Fish Snacker certainly mentions a merit on account of how it doesn't involve in any way the fried chicken for which the chain is world famous. A version of a standard KFC Snacker — a single chicken strip on a small sandwich roll — the Fish Snacker consisted of a fish-stick-like fried and breaded filet along with tartar sauce on bread. Debuting on Ash Wednesday in February 2007, the first day of Lent, KFC aggressively courted any potential Roman Catholic consumers with a publicity stunt. It publicly asked Pope Benedict XVI via a letter to bless the Fish Snacker.

KFC did away with the entire line of Snackers around 2012, which weren't terribly profitable for the company at a 99 cents-per-sandwich price point. That marked the last time to date that the chain once known as Kentucky Fried Chicken flirted with serving seafood. The fans haven't forgotten, however. In 2019, KFC customers started a petition on Change.org, urging KFC to "bring back the KFC Snacker" line; the chain couldn't be persuaded.

Popeyes has made a name for itself primarily with fried chicken, but its shrimp is also well regarded, as are its Southern and Cajun-style items. To that end, around 2010, the chain unveiled a big new sandwich very much in its wheelhouse: the Catfish Po' Boy, also called a Deluxe Catfish Sandwich in some locations. Prepared in a traditional, Louisiana style, the item began with a long french roll which was stuffed with two Cajun-seasoned, fried, and breaded filets of catfish along with shredded lettuce, pickle slices, and tartar sauce. While fish is generally regarded as a healthier fast food choice, the Catfish Po' Boy was loaded with calories and fat — 800 and 51 grams, respectively.

Within a couple of years, Popeyes eliminated seafood from its menu entirely, including catfish filets sold on their own or in the Po' Boy. In 2023, the chain restored fish in the form of fried shrimp and a flounder-based fish sandwich, which didn't quite cut it for some customers. "I act like everything's ok but deep down inside... I wish Popeyes would bring back po boys and catfish," @KarterMcFly wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022.

One doesn't really think of seafood when they think of Wienerschnitzel. And while the "World's Largest Hot Dog Chain" might head into more towns in the coming years, it certainly didn't make many inroads into the hearts and minds of fast food seafood lovers, and it won't expand with the help of its fish sandwiches. In 2023, the hot dog company tried to diversify its menu a bit by utilizing some of its buns for the Shrimp Po' Boy Sandwich. Into that bun, employees assembled an open-faced sandwich containing small breaded shrimp, some sliced tomatoes, a Louisiana-style remoulade sauce, and something called "ragin' flavor."

Introduced in early 2023 to get ahead of the meat-free Lent season, when its business for hot dogs goes way down, Wienerschnitzel opted to not keep the Shrimp Po' Boy around beyond a seasonal offering, and then not at all. It didn't come back in 2024.

Arby's was once a restaurant that sold very little besides sandwiches piled high with thin-cut roast beef. Over the years, the chain has added things like chicken sandwiches, Reubens, wraps, and gyros to the mix, proudly proclaiming, "We have the meats!" in its television commercials. But when Arby's figured its overall sales may drop considerably during the annual observation of Lent, in which many Roman Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays, the restaurant decided to not have the meats for a change and add fish-based sandwiches to the national menu. The Crispy Fish Sandwich — a lightly breaded filet with tartar sauce and lettuce shreds on a bun — returns to Arby's annually around Lent, as does the King's Hawaiian Fish Deluxe Sandwich. That one subs out the standard sesame-seed bun for a sweet one made by the King's Hawaiian bakery and adds a slice of American cheese and some tomatoes.

While those products have reappeared with some frequency at Arby's, the Spicy Fish Sandwich hasn't been spotted much after its 2022 introduction. This one was an altogether very hot spin on the Crispy Fish Sandwich. Made with the original version's triangular patty of breaded and fried whitefish so big that it stretches out of every side of the diminutive sesame-seed bun upon which it's been placed. Arby's also seasoned the fried fish with an orange-tinted "Fiery Seasoning" and topped it with a heaping amount of diced fresh jalapeño peppers.

Among the discontinued Subway menu items we'll never eat again: crab sandwiches. Subway has long offered a tuna salad for sandwich filling at its thousands of stores. While a lawsuit alleged that the concoction was a mix of various fish and animal meats, it remains available at Subway, which for decades sold a second fish-based salad for use on its sandwiches. By the early 1980s, the chain's menu offered a Seafood & Crab sandwich, which proved so popular that in 1990, Subway launched the Seafood & Lobster sandwich.

The Seafood & Lobster sandwich didn't last, but the creatively and confusingly named Seafood & Crab (crab is seafood) did, only with the new vague title of Seafood Sensation. According to Subway, it was made of "sweet, tender chunks of seafood blended with creamy light mayonnaise," much like the Seafood & Crab scooped onto bread. No matter the name, the filling consisted of mayo and imitation crab meat, a processed, shaped, formed, and colored protein product made from less than 2% actual snow crab and mostly Alaskan pollock, Pacific Whiting, cornstarch, potato starch, egg whites, and various flavorings, fillers, and preservatives. Subway quietly phased out the Seafood Sensation in its mainland U.S. stores, but sandwiches made with the fake crab mixture are still available in some outposts in Australia and the Virgin Islands.

Even Long John Silver's — the most famous, industry dominant, and pre-eminent fried fish-focused restaurant chain in fast food history has had trouble getting customers to take a risk, passing up their usual orders of fish and chips and grabbing a seafood sandwich, instead.

In early 1985, the company then known as Long John Silver's Seafood Shoppes underwent a major menu and marketing overhaul, all built around a new version of fried fish filets it called Kitchen Breaded Fish. Served in different permutations in the Long John Silver's menu, the oblong, extra-long, crunchy fish flats dominated the Fish Fish Sandwich. The double name reflected the makeup of the sandwich — it included a stack of two filets, along with lettuce and tartar sauce on a hoagie-style wheat roll. The fish sandwich that looked like a seafood-based combination of a Burger King Original Chicken Sandwich and a double cheeseburger didn't last long at Long John Silver's. As of the 2020s, it sells just one sandwich, a pollock and tartar sauce product named simply the Fish Sandwich.