Welcome to the second annual Uproxx Golden Bag Awards — a celebration and roast of all the best and worst fast food to drop this year. When you don’t think about fast food to an obsessive degree (like us), it’s easy to miss everything that happens at your favorite fast food restaurants in any given year. We’re here to refresh you!
And what a year it’s been. New burgers, new sandwiches, expanded menus, and yes, a few duds — 2023 had it all and we were here documenting (and eating) it and separating the good from the bad. Last year’s Golden Bag Awards featured 10 different categories. This year, we’re still keeping it to 10 but we’ve remixed a few of the category titles.
A large majority of the food we’re going to be talking about in this article is still readily available for your eating pleasure, but since this an overview of the entire year there are a few dishes that were only available for a limited time and you can’t get your hands on anymore. That’s not as big a loss as it sounds, if it was a limited offering it probably wasn’t delicious enough to earn permanent menu status anyway.
Here is all the best and worst of fast food in 2023.
Why It Deserves The Award:
I’ve written a lot about this burger this past year and that’s because it is easily the best new cheeseburger to hit any fast food restaurant in 2023 and is my go-to pick for all-time best cheeseburger for as long as it sticks around on the menu.
The build is genius, it features a smashed patty seasoned with a hot pepper blend, melted American cheese, fried onions, cherry peppers, and Shack Sauce, providing bite after bite of savory and beefy flavors with an unbeatable crunch and a mild vegetal spice.
Find your nearest Shake Shack here.
Why It Deserves The Award:
Shake Shack is two-for-two! Aside from the best burger the fast-casual restaurant also delivered the best chicken sandwich all year. And it was up against some steep competition, too — especially from Popeyes (the Blackened Chicken Sandwich) and Chick-fil-A (The Honey Pimento Chicken Sandwich). Spice is king, though, and thanks to that hot pepper blend this chicken sandwich takes the award.
The unceremoniously named Hot Chicken sandwich features a light and crispy fried chicken breast filet seasoned with a hot pepper blend, topped with a cherry pepper slaw and thick-cut pickles. Each bite is a mix of spicy sensations, a bit of brine-y tang, and a mild heat that builds on the tastebuds as you make your way through the sandwich.
Find your nearest Shake Shack here.
Why It Deserves The Award:
Don’t let the straight-up disgusting way this dish looks dissuade you from ordering this Taco Bell newcomer, it’s packed so full of flavor that we’re willing to give its appearance a pass.
The Grilled Nacho Fries features Taco Bell’s delicious french fries (if you aren’t aware, Taco Bell makes ridiculously good fries) topped with ground beef, nacho cheese sauce, a three-cheese blend, and chipotle sauce.
This is comfort food at its finest, it has crunch, it’s salty as hell, sports four different distinct flavors of cheese, and wraps it all together with that distinct Taco Bell flavor we all know and love.
Find your nearest Taco Bell here.
Why It Deserves The Award:
Celebrity meals in fast food are pervasive. What we don’t expect is for them to ever be good, because quite frankly, 99.9% of the time they’re garbage and little more than cash grabs (see last year’s Shaqaroni Pizza). But Snoop Dogg’s Jack in the Box Munchie Meal just hit differently. And no I’m not just saying that because I was stoned when I ate it, though that certainly helped.
The Snoop Dogg Munchie Meal was a big box of food that features curly fries, a chocolate brownie, and monster taco, and a spicy chicken strip doused in white cheese sauce, JiB’s Good Good Sauce, and ranch and served inside of a hot dog bun.
This celebrity meal worked because it featured a new dish, rather than a remix of pre-existing menu items — looking at you, Cardi B & Offset meal (which given recent news, aged horribly). Plus, Snoop’s box actually reflected the celebrity it was honoring.
Find your nearest Jack in the Box here.
Why It Deserves The Award:
Fast food going viral can be a mixed bag. You can get a Popeyes Chicken Sandwich situation where a single menu item is such a hit that it completely transforms the fast food industry, or you can have a Grimace Shake situation, where a simple throwaway dish turns into a living meme.
Who can forget that week when all our TikTok feeds were flooded with DIY horror movies made by teenagers who for whatever reason decided to turn McDonald’s concept of Grimace’s Birthday into something weird?
Here’s the thing though, the Grimace Shake was good — no one knows that though, because they were all spending time spitting it out of their mouths and drooling all over themselves instead of, you know, drinking it. And because of that McDonald’s will probably never bring it back.
Find your nearest McDonald’s here.
Why It Deserves The Award:
This frozen drink from Dunkin’ wasn’t just a cash grab capitalizing on the popularity of arguably rap’s biggest star right now, it was also straight-up gross.
The Ice Spice Munchkins Drink featured frozen coffee blended with donut holes resulting in a sweet mess of a drink with the worst texture you can ever imagine. It was like drinking sweetened gravel. Truly an awful experience.
Find your nearest Dunkin’ here.
Why It Deserves The Award:
This year Wendy’s released their version of the Egg McMuffin — dubbed the “Sausage (or bacon), Egg & Cheese Muffin — and it changed the game. McDonald’s has held the crown for best fast food breakfast sandwich for a while now… but Wendy’s version is markedly better.
Better meat in both cases (the sausage is savory with an herbal depth, and the bacon is smokey and delicious), a browned butter spread on each end of the sandwich offers more nuttiness and some sweetness to the finish, and a much better fried egg that isn’t all texture like the McDonald’s rendition.
Both versions are currently the best breakfast sandwiches in all of fast food.
Find your nearest Wendy’s here.
Why It Deserves The Award:
Popeyes has had a rough year. The chain hasn’t had a big hit since the chicken sandwich (right now they’re experimenting with sauced wings for some reason) and they discontinued their very delicious chocolate beignets and replaced them with… these things?
These strawberry biscuits are awful. They have a strong artificial perfumed strawberry aroma and flavor and are incredibly dry. Eating one of these is a choking hazard.
Here is to hoping Popeyes has a big hit again soon.
Find your nearest Popeyes here.
Why It Deserves The Award:
We aren’t awarding just one brand for this category, but three! Taco Bell, El Pollo Loco, and Del Taco all added birria to the menus this year, and despite none of the three capturing the magic of authentic birria, all the brands did a pretty good job at making some tasty dishes.
Of the three chains, I’d say El Pollo Loco had the best consomé, and Del Taco was by far the most inventive thanks to its Birria Ramen. While there is a definite hierarchy here, at the least all three made delicious dippable tacos.
We’re excited to see how each brand continues to explore birria in the future.
Find your nearest Del Taco, El Pollo Loco, or Taco Bell.
Why It Deserves The Award:
Giving the Best Overall Brand award to Shake Shack this year was the easiest choice I had to make for this list. Cheeseburgers and fried chicken sandwiches dominate fast food and if you want the best of each you need only visit one establishment. How could we pick any brand but Shake Shack?
But it wasn’t just the chicken sandwiches and cheeseburgers that impressed us. All year long Shake Shack has dropped new milkshake flavors — our favorite is the ridiculous-looking Trolls-themed shake — as well as new french fry dishes, and what is currently the best veggie burger in all of fast food.
Shake Shack was on fire this year, no other brand even came close to matching what the brand gave us in 2023.
Find your nearest Shake Shack here.
