Fast Food Egg Sandwiches, Ranked Worst To Best

I remember a time in the not too distant past when a fast food breakfast was difficult to come by. Now, it seems all fast food places offer breakfast sandwiches, and in that crowded marketplace, there's plenty of chains trying to set themselves apart from the crowd.

As a regular Starbucks breakfast sandwich customer, I must admit that even I wasn't completely in love with the offerings the siren offers. So, sampling many different sandwiches from several chains was one delicious and worthwhile bit of research.

As I assembled my list of egg sandwiches, I was keen to select sandwiches from several different fast food chains. This way, I would get a more complete picture of the egg sandwich landscape. Then, over the course of a couple of mornings, I picked up these sandwiches for my husband and me to try and rank. After assessing the texture and flavor of each, I've discovered a whole new breakfast egg sandwich that is definitely a hidden gem.

I remember a time when waking up in time for McDonald's breakfast was a major accomplishment. Fighting the disappointment when just missing that exact time McDonald's switches from breakfast to lunch is a longing I remember well. My favorite breakfast sandwich was the Steak, Egg, and Cheese Bagel (the only truly great breakfast bagel), but it hasn't been on the menu for some time now. In the meantime, when I've visited McDonald's during breakfast, I've looked for something that hits the same way. Unfortunately, I haven't found it, and it's not going to be the sausage McMuffin with egg, either.

This basic breakfast sandwich is just about as simple as it gets. You have the English muffin with sausage, egg, and cheese. It was quite dry to taste, but it was also dry to hold, so like Dunkin's sourdough, it would make a good road trip breakfast sandwich. The McMuffin part of the sandwich had a gummy feel to it, like some of Starbucks' bread quality. Whether it was from the heating of the muffin or the way it was packaged and stored was tough to decipher. Aside from this bread texture concern, the biggest reason I ranked this one as my least favorite was because it was just far too simple. With zero interesting happenings, the flavor itself wasn't anything you're going to want to enjoy regularly, especially with better items on the menu. Not to mention, I nearly finished my whole iced coffee trying to wash it down.

When road tripping, it's become something of a tradition for my family to stop at our local Starbucks on our way out of town. Normally, I get a super jazzed up Starbucks drink, and my husband and I both get sandwiches. This Double-Smoked Bacon, Cheddar & Egg Sandwich is one of his favorites. So, I'm fairly familiar with this croissant, and I must say, on several occasions, this croissant has been much better than it was on the day I did this sampling. But that's a problem — inconsistency is never ideal with fast food. After all, serving food exactly the same way is one of the central tenets of such chains.

While the Wendy's croissant sandwich was very soft, rather than flaky like I like to enjoy with my croissants, the croissant for Starbucks' attempt at a croissant sandwich was just dry. Very rarely do you actually bite into a croissant that runs on the dry side, but this somehow accomplished it. The croissant was missing that light and flaky feel, and there was just a whole lot of dense, thick bread. This overabundance of non-flaky pastry really dropped the sandwich in my rankings.

When this newer Starbucks breakfast sandwich hit the scene, I tried it pretty quickly. I've always been a fan of pesto, so I was eager to try it with egg. The first time I ordered this sandwich, I enjoyed it. The textures were enjoyable and the mix of ingredients was ideal. However, in this latest tasting, it wasn't quite the same experience.

Whether I had a sandwich with too much pesto or not, I found the green stuff to just be way too strong. It was the only flavor I was getting, if you love pesto, that's probably an ideal option, but it had all the rings of that TikTok about The Pesto Lady disliking store-bought pesto. There was a nice amount of sponginess to the bread as well, and if you like soft sandwiches, this might be a bonus, but if, like me, you can spot that microwaved sandwich feel a mile away, you're gonna notice it immediately. Granted, baristas are not assembling these sandwiches from scratch behind the counter. Instead, they are frozen and then cooked to order. That's part of the reason that you can't ask for any single part of the sandwich to be removed, it's already pre-made. The over-pesto flavor is what dropped Starbucks' Egg, Pesto & Mozzarella Sandwich in my rankings, but I'd be willing to give it another try, under the assumption that maybe I just got a bad sandwich.

I'm sort of a sucker for any sandwich that says it comes on a croissant, like Wendy's Bacon, Egg & Swiss Croissant. There's also bacon, an egg patty, and cheese sauce. The sandwich is less expensive at $3.99 than the Baconator, which was the other Wendy's sandwich I tried (and enjoyed much more).

I must admit, like Starbucks' croissant, this sandwich had a strange texture issue. I expected a certain amount of flaky texture from the croissant, but the croissant on this sandwich was a dense soft bread rather than one that was more flaky. It felt like it had been over-steamed in the wrapper. Part of me wonders if this was as a result of the time of day I ordered. Since the breakfast menu at my location only goes until 10:30 a.m., and I picked up the sandwich at almost 10 a.m., I was probably getting some of the last sandwiches the kitchen was turning out. There's even a good chance it may have been sitting under a warming lamp for some time. In any case, the texture was odd, but the flavor was quite good. I enjoyed the mixture of the cheese sauce with the croissant and bacon, but I felt the texture was significantly lacking — I found it too hard. My husband wasn't as put off by the texture of the bacon, but we both agreed that it could use some improvement.

When it comes to Chick-fil-A, one of the things I am consistently impressed by is how well the chain has its drive-through oriented. I visited on a pretty busy morning, and I was greeted with not just smiles, but a drive-thru that ran like absolute clockwork. Chick-fil-A carhops were taking orders and directing traffic to let cars know who they were behind so the orders wouldn't get mixed. Not only that, but there was an outside lane that cars could leave through in case they were handed their order before the cars in front of them. There is so much that other fast food restaurants could learn about the way Chick-fil-A does its drive-thru when you're picking up sandwiches, especially at breakfast when you're trying to beat the clock before Chick-fil-A stops serving breakfast.

In terms of the Egg White Grill, I found this was a great option for someone who wants a healthier breakfast choice. The chicken is lean and even has those grill marks on it. It's not fried in any way, and the egg white is nicely folded on there too. While this sandwich is going to do the job of getting you fed in a leaner sort of way, it's not going to be something that you'll crave. That's what the fried chicken sandwiches are for.

I've always been more of a Starbucks fan than Dunkin', and with sampling experience that I've done on several occasions, I'm reminded why that's true. However, Dunkin' might just be onto something with its breakfast sandwiches.

Looking at the Sourdough Breakfast Sandwich, I noticed that the serving was pretty substantial. The bread slices were nice and thick, and there were two egg patties. My issue was that the whole thing just felt pretty dry. The bread wasn't toasted, and it needed a lot more cheese on it in order to make it more enjoyable, but the flavor of it wasn't bad. I would definitely order this one with extra cheese. Since the bread wasn't super flaky or crumbly, it would probably be a great option to eat in the car, which is a solid consideration to make when road tripping, for example. What took this one down in my overall ranking is that it just had a very dry quality. Sometimes sourdough can be a little bit uncomfortable to eat because of that tough crust, and that was true here as well.

I'm always surprised how much I enjoy biscuit sandwiches. I don't typically think of biscuits because they feel like they'll be on the small side. Some biscuits prove me wrong, but the Sausage Biscuit with Egg from McDonald's unfortunately fell into this category.

While a decent tasting biscuit, it wasn't very flaky, and it didn't taste super fresh. It did feel like a step up from the McMuffin, but like the McMuffin, there was also an overly dry quality. I've pulled better frozen breakfast sandwiches from my freezer and enjoyed them more than this one. I can say that there was a nice ratio of ingredients in total, making the balance of this one pretty good. The dryness is what kept it from a higher ranking overall.

For a few years, I was a vegan. It was difficult at first, but once I learned how to finagle menus to work in my new diet, it became much easier. For example, when Impossible meats came out with a quality replacement for meat, the process became much easier. Unfortunately, Starbucks' Impossible Breakfast Sandwich, though containing Impossible meat, is not vegan, as it contains both egg and cheese. I would really like to see Starbucks move in the direction of making this one plant-based to include something like Just Egg and a plant-based cheese instead. Having a vegan sandwich on the menu feels like a given with so many plant-based drinks on the menu.

Though the Impossible meat isn't as good as a real sausage patty, I must admit, it gets pretty close. The ciabatta-like bread with the sandwich can be a little inconsistent, and I've had it both too hard and too soft. Thankfully, for this sampling, the bread was perfectly cooked. When I bit into the sandwich, I noticed that all of the flavors seemed to blend together rather than feeling distinctive in any way. While I can say the quality of the sandwich for this sampling was really good, it lost points for not having flavors that stood out or felt distinctive. The inconsistent quality that I've noticed with the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich doesn't help, but when it's good, the Starbucks Impossible Breakfast Sandwich is hard to dislike.

I still remember when McGriddles hit the scene. It was a little tough to wrap my head around because I couldn't understand how someone would eat a stuffed pancake as bread and still be able to hold everything in the sandwich. Of course, the reality of it is that the McGriddles on the top and bottom of the sandwich are infused with syrup rather than actually filled with it.

To get an even field for all of the different McDonald's sandwiches, I also ordered this one in the sausage variety. While the other options from McDonald's were pretty dry, this one was moist. It also had an overly mushy feel to it like biting down just gave you a texture-less bite of a bunch of different breakfast flavors. It felt like I was grabbing a fork full of breakfast food off of a plate that had been sitting at my table too long bathing in syrup. I enjoyed it because it was a little different from other sandwiches, but the texture was a little too mushy.

Have you ever gotten into a deep debate with someone about what actually constitutes a sandwich? I have. There's no real discernible answer, but by adding this Crunchwrap to the egg sandwiches lineup, I just know I'm in for a rekindling of this conversation. I fully acknowledge that I'm playing fast and loose with the definition of a sandwich by including the Breakfast Crunchwrap Sausage here, but it just seems to fit the category, so I included it among my sampling.

Although the Taco Bell closest to me doesn't have the best reputation for creating a quality product, the flavor was pretty spot on, even if the wrap itself was very oddly shaped and assembled. The Crunchwrap has a pretty basic flavor that needs some of that Taco Bell sauce added to it. I've noticed that most Taco Bell items feel like they are created with the intent of adding sauce on top, so this wasn't necessarily out of the ordinary for Taco Bell. I also loved the Crunchwrap because it came with a very self-contained eating mechanism. This is another road trip breakfast that is perfect in terms of mess. The only reason it's not rated higher is because the flavor could be more substantial, requiring less sauce.

Although Chick-fil-A did an excellent job with the drive-thru, the actual wrap of sandwiches, especially on this one, left a lot to be desired. Although it certainly wasn't super cute to look at, I was willing to forgive it because the flavor and texture of this Chicken Egg & Biscuit was pretty impressive.

The biscuit appeared plump and crumbly, like an ideal, Southern, buttermilk biscuit. The top was a little disheveled and pushed off to the side, but the flavor was still excellent. The chicken didn't take up the entire area of the biscuit and left some bites without chicken, so there were a few bites where I didn't necessarily get all the flavors together. However, the ones that included everything were moist and tender. This is another substantial sandwich that is going to feel like more than just a basic biscuit sandwich.

I will be the first to admit that I was not super-impressed when I tried Wendy's new breakfast menu when it was released a few years ago. Granted, I sampled a chicken sandwich, and there was no egg on it, so there's a good chance that was the major issue. For the purposes of this ranking, since I am focusing on egg sandwiches, the Breakfast Baconator felt like the most iconic of Wendy's breakfast sandwiches, so I gave this one a whirl, admittedly, reluctantly. I could never have guessed how tasty it would be.

The Breakfast Baconator comes on a pretty basic hamburger bun with breakfast sausage, American cheese, bacon, egg patty, cheese sauce, and bacon. It is one of the few sandwiches I tried that had a sauce on it, so I'm now left wondering if this might just be the secret, well, sauce, to having the perfect breakfast sandwich. There's very little to complain about with the sandwich, which means it's right at the top of my favorites. It feels like the perfect mixture of a Wendy's burger and fresh breakfast sausage. I anticipated that the sandwich would have more of a hamburger feel to it, but it accomplished the feat of feeling like a quality breakfast sandwich, not a greasy burger. Most sandwiches make you choose between bacon or sausage for the included protein, but Wendy's has both on its Baconator. My Wendy's location happens to be right next to Starbucks, and with the comparable prices, I might just be changing one of my favorite places to stop for a breakfast sandwich.

Over the course of a couple of days, I purchased breakfast sandwiches and brought them home for myself and my husband to sample. While we munched, we discussed such important aspects as flavor and texture. We also found that a sandwich's relative messiness or cleanliness during the eating process also felt important since many breakfast sandwiches are eaten on the run. These were three factors that helped my overall ranking. For flavor, I wanted a nice mix of familiar flavors and new ones but without a baseless blob of food taste. There should be some definition here. A similar point as texture, which should also have different aspects working together rather than smashing down into one mushy bite. Ideally, the sandwiches would also be able to be on the road, all while keeping your car as clean as possible.