The Best (And Worst) Fast Food Chains For Salads, According To Customers

Fast food chains have spent years convincing us they can do salads. Sometimes that means a genuinely solid, flavor-forward bowl that actually feels like a meal. And sometimes it means a handful of wilted lettuce tossed next to a packet while you say a quiet prayer you don't get food poisoning. If anything, the last few years have proven one thing clearly: Fast food salads are either shockingly good or aggressively disappointing.

And what makes this category special is how emotionally and personally people react to them. Fans will go to war over the one salad they swear is the best thing on the menu. Others hold lifelong grudges over discontinued ingredients. The comments are funny, angry, loyal, nostalgic, and occasionally existential.

So we went digging through customer reviews, Reddit threads, menu boards, and fast food lore to figure out which chains still make salads worth ordering and which ones are absolutely not worth risking a sick day over. These are the best, the worst, and the wildly "mid" fast food salads according to customer reviews.

When it comes to fast food salads, Chick-fil-A knows what it's doing. Fans often rank its lineup as the best among the big chains, and the Spicy Southwest Salad is the standout.

Part of what makes it so delicious is that the salad doesn't pretend to be a diet food. At around 680 calories, it feels like a full meal, complete with grilled spicy chicken, black beans, roasted corn, and enough cheese to remind you that you're still eating fast food.

Customers swear by it, calling it "top tier" and saying it's worth every cent of its $10 price tag. The salad is hearty enough that you could make two meals out of it, which with today's fast food prices basically makes it a smart investment. Compared to other fast food chains' limp lettuce, Chick-fil-A's salads actually feel composed, balanced, fresh, and built for flavor. The Spicy Southwest Salad isn't just a good fast food salad. It's a good salad, period.

Zaxbys doesn't do boring greens. They're called Zalads, and rightfully so, because they deserve their own category. When's the last time your salad came with an egg roll or a side of Texas toast? From the Asian Zensation Zalad with its sweet teriyaki drizzle and crunchy wontons, to the Blue Zalad topped with fried onions, blue cheese, and Buffalo Garlic Blaze, Zaxbys' salads are bold, messy, and built to fill you up. They feel more like a meal you'd crave after work than something you order out of guilt.

Still, you can keep it simple, and it's still great. The Cobb Zalad, loaded with bacon, egg, cucumbers, and crispy chicken, has earned a loyal following. One fan swears it's the best fast food salad. Another calls it the GOAT and prefers it over other fast food chain salads due to the addition of Zaxbys' fried chicken. Not every chain could pull off a salad with a side of toast, but Zaxbys makes it make sense.

Chipotle has trained you to think "burrito or bowl," but next time you're in the line, rehearsing your order, pick the salad instead. The salad bowl lets you load up on everything you love, like beans, fajita veggies, guac, your go-to protein, and the cult-favorite vinaigrette without the carb coma that usually follows. It's the kind of fast food salad that actually feels built to your taste and preferences, not forced into the "healthy" box.

As one customer put it, "The salad at Chipotle might be the best sleeper item on the menu." Another called it "one of the best salad bowls I've ever had." The  enthusiasm comes through loud and clear. For maximum freshness, avoid taking it to go. Some fans swear that dining in is a must because sometimes you have to leave the couch to let the greens stay crisp.

PDQ stands for "People Dedicated to Quality," and its salads live up to the name. Fresh greens, crisp veggies, and well-seasoned chicken make this establishment one of fast food's most reliable feel-good options.

The lineup includes the classic Chicken Salad, made with mixed greens, red cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, and a cheddar-Jack blend, as well as the Mediterranean Salad, topped with hummus, feta, and olive – both include chicken. One customer called it their favorite salad, noting that they get it every time, praising it for being fresh, filling, and light enough that you feel like you didn't eat too badly. They also mentioned that the spicy grilled version runs just a smidge hotter than the fried one. Though, of course, spice tolerance is personal.

Fans do complain that PDQ items are pricier than the competition, but others argue that the freshness and quality are worth the up-charge. Lately, however, some may have to travel farther to get one, as PDQ has been shuttering several locations. Still, when you can find one, its salads remain one of fast food's more underrated options.

El Pollo Loco originated in Sinaloa, Mexico, when founder Pancho Ochoa converted his shoe shop into a grilled chicken restaurant, utilizing his mother's citrus-marinated recipe. It worked well enough to eventually expand into Los Angeles in 1980, where that same fire-grilled chicken became the backbone of the menu, including the salads.

At El Pollo Loco, the salads feel built around the protein, rather than treating it like an add-on. There's the Classic Chicken Tostada, layered with seasoned rice, pinto beans, lettuce, sour cream, Jack cheese, and salsa fresca, all inside a crispy tostada shell. There's the Double Chicken Tostada that doubles down on the protein. And there's the Double Chicken Avocado Salad with two portions of that citrus-marinated grilled chicken over romaine and avocado.

And the fans go hard for them. One Reddit user said they'd pick the Classic Tostada Salad as their last meal, adding they'd want 16 packs of the cilantro dressing. Another declared the Double Chicken Tostada "diabolical," while another Redditor called it "the absolute GOAT of affordable, fairly healthy fast food."

It's called Whataburger, not Whatasalad, but maybe it should be renamed. The salads at the burger-focused fast food chain aren't your typical drive-thru greens: The Cobb Salad comes loaded with red romaine lettuce, bacon strips, egg, and grape tomatoes, while the Apple & Cranberry Chicken Salad mixes crisp fruit and grilled chicken.

One Reddit user wrote that "Whataburger's salads are underrated!" and included a photo of Apple & Cranberry Chicken Salad that looked more like a crafted bowl and made you forget you were in the Whataburger Subreddit. Another Reddit user commented on the post with, "I have always said apple cranberry grilled chicken is the best salad you can get. Don't forget to add bacon. It's not cheap but really worth the price." You also can't go wrong with the Cobb salad, as one Reddit user mentioned, "I tried the Cobb salad with a spicy chicken patty and jalapeno ranch ... I found my new Whataburger regular."

Every fast food chain eventually goes through its "trying to be grown-up" phase. For Taco Bell, that's the Cantina menu. The menu is a collection of "elevated" items meant to look fresher and fancier. The Cantina Chicken Bowl captures the experiment perfectly by trying hard, landing somewhere in the middle.

On paper, it appears to be a solid upgrade. It has slow-roasted chicken over seasoned rice with black beans, pico de gallo, purple cabbage, lettuce, sour cream, guac, cheese, and a drizzle of Avocado Ranch, plus a packet of Avocado Verde Salsa. But the consensus is that it's just fine. Not bad; just aggressively mid. One Redditor posted, "I tried the new Cantina Bowl, it was mid. $9 for worse chicken ... is it still healthy? Sure. In the same way that plain rice is healthy." Others agreed with the "mid" sentiment. Another said the whole Cantina menu feels the same as the regular menu, but with the addition of purple cabbage.

Another Redditor put it perfectly: "I appreciate it being on the menu, but they're not really trying." Just like everything else on the Cantina menu, the bowl looks promising, but it just can't quite live up to what it wants to be.

If this list were written a year or two ago, Wendy's would be sitting comfortably in the "best salads" group. The Taco Salad used to have a quiet cult following. The kind of item people would find themselves thinking about the next day. One Reddit user wrote, "WHY is the Wendy's taco salad the greatest food on this earth? I had it for dinner last night and I still can't stop thinking about it."

Then came the warning: "Enjoy it while you can. Wendy's will be updating the Taco Salad very soon." And then came the update. The new version swaps tortilla chips for crispy tortilla strips, adds fire-roasted corn, and replaces the traditional salsa with a creamy salsa dressing. It might not sound dramatic, but for longtime fans, it was catastrophic. "You do not replace salsa with some salsa dressing crap," one Redditor wrote. Another posted they hadn't ordered it since the change and probably never will. "They killed a good thing, IMO. Bye Wendy's." Like anything, it still has defenders. But the Taco Salad that once had people obsessed is not the Taco Salad served today.

Ordering salad from Domino's is like ordering a fancy cocktail at a dive bar. Sure, you'll get one, but you might regret it halfway through. The pizza chain's two salads, Classic Garden and Chicken Caesar, feature the basics of romaine and iceberg lettuce, grape tomatoes, carrots, red cabbage, red onion, and brioche croutons, accompanied by your choice of ranch, balsamic, or Caesar dressing. The Chicken Caesar adds roasted white meat chicken and Parmesan cheese, which sounds nice, until you see the real thing.

One Reddit user posted a photo of a nearly empty bowl that another user called "the saddest looking salad I've seen in a while." Others were more direct, saying that "if you're ordering salad from Domino's, you've made some seriously wrong choices." The issue isn't the ingredients so much as the execution, since they arrive at the store prepackagedand most stores simply throw them in the bag and call it a day. So, why go to Domino's for a salad when you can get prepackaged salads at any grocery store for much less, and they'll probably taste better?

There was a time when Culver's salads were a hit. They were fresh, hearty, and honestly kind of impressive. Then, in 2023, everything changed.The spring mix that made the salad what it was disappeared, like other beloved Culver's items, and it was gone in the blink of an eye when it was replaced with a cheaper iceberg-romaine blend. 

Fans immediately noticed the downgrade. One user on Reddit wrote, "Culver's was the only place that had good salad lettuce. Now it's the same cheap crap you can get anywhere." Another Reddit user totally gave up on going to Culver's: "Used to be my favorite salad and also the only thing I'd eat from Culver's. Now I don't go there, and it's so disappointing." Even employees admitted that customer complaintsand refund requestsbegan immediately after the change occurred.

In case you're still interested and feeling brave (or just out of better options), the current lineup includes the Chicken Cashew Salad (grilled chicken, roasted cashews, mixed greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheddar),the Cranberry Bacon Bleu Salad (chicken, bacon, dried cranberries, bleu cheese, mixed greens),and the Garden Fresco Salad (grilled chicken, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheddar, croutons). But don't say we didn't warn you.

DQ's Crispy Chicken Strips Salad's official site description is practically a sales pitch featuring terms like "cranking up the flavor," "bursting with protein," and "perfectly placed chicken strips." It's the longest salad write-up in fast food, and it feels more like a warning than anything.

The salad comes with crispy white-meat chicken, bacon, cheddar, lettuce, and Hidden Valley Ranch dressing. Sounds fine until you open the box and find a few stray leaves and some lonely croutons, like a recent Reddit user posted. One customer put it bluntly and said "it's more of a sad salad" than a side salad. Another Redditor said the salad used to be great, "Getting the crispy chicken salad from DQ was a thing back in my day. It was LOADED. Bacon, cheese, and tons of veg."

Jack in the Box once had salads that people were genuinely obsessed with, which is surprising for a chain known for its cheap drive-thru tacos. The Club Grilled Salad (RIP), which came stacked with grape tomatoes, cheddar cheese, bacon, and croutons, and the option to add ranch dressing, was a favorite. "Nothing else came close in terms of value or flavor," one customer said on Reddit. 

That is, until the chain "simplified" things, ditching the Club salads.The pared down and not as popular Garden and Southwest salads remained,which weren't nearly as exciting and felt very lazily put together, like the salad equivalent of shrugging.

Fans were devastated. Some didn't even learn about the change until they opened the app to order and realized their favorite salad had vanished: "The first thing I noticed was the club salad was gone ... No more salads from there for me," one customer wrote on Reddit.

To compile this list, we drew from genuine comments, real-life experiences, and authentic reactions, scouring Reddit threads, fast food forums, and viral posts. And because fast food photography often fails to accurately reflect what arrives in the box, we didn't judge anything based solely on promotional images.

We examined the current version of these salads as they are today, not what they were before ingredient swaps, recipe changes, lettuce downgrades, or discontinued toppings. The goal wasn't to crown the healthiest or lowest-calorie option, just the ones people actually enjoy (or don't) when they're ordering in real life.