5 Fast Food Breakfast Items That Aren't The Typical Egg Sandwich

A fast food breakfast can be a road trip hero, a hangover saving grace, or the difference between running late and making it to work on time, depending on the day. And, although the egg sandwich is queen, the wider options are as versatile as speedy morning-meal use cases. Sure, everyone loves the old reliable bacon, egg, and cheese (and its superior sausage swap), but "old reliable" can sometimes just seem "old" after a while, and variety is, as they say, the spice of the drive-thru.

Egg sandwiches are also extremely easy to cook at home, making them a less exciting order when we're out. Whether we're visiting New York City's swankiest (and most expensive) restaurants, or dining on the cheap, we'd prefer to order something that we're not quite so likely to prepare on our own. These five favorite fast food sunrise staples go beyond the frying pan for tasty alternatives to the standard rush-hour selection.

Taco Bell's Crunchwrap is an architectural marvel that has taken on many forms. This breakfast edition almost gilds the lily, wrapping scrambled eggs, hashbrown and sausage patties, cheese, and a creamy jalapeño sauce into a tidy hexagon that fast food devotees can identify from a mile away. It is perfect in its intended, handheld form, but add-ons like guacamole and sour cream are also available, and a few other protein swap options are also on the menu.

Few but the King, waxen faced and merrily menacing as he has often been depicted, are bold enough to simply repurpose so many main menu items and still collect thanks from so many loyal subjects. Like a couple of Burger King's other breakfast sandwiches, which use its famed flame-grilled beef in lieu of a unique breakfast sausage, so, too, does this clucking wake-up call simply dress up its beloved Chicken Crisp patty with egg and a croissant — or, rather, a Croissan'wich bun. This is not, to be clear, the typical egg sandwich; it is a chicken sandwich with egg.

This ode to excess is not merely a cheeseburger in disguise. The Breakfast Baconator is built on a foundation of a morning-appropriate sausage patty flanked by American cheese, Swiss cheese sauce, an egg that's practically a garnish among these bold proteins, and, of course, the titular smoked bacon, all on a soft bun. Like our modern era's big burgers, you might need a knife and fork to delve into this otherwise two-handed, moist-toilette endeavor.

No fast food roundup, whether made for day or night, would be complete without old McDonald's. Its Big Breakfast with Hotcakes also evokes a different kind of excess than something like an overloaded sandwich. Those disposable trays arranged with sausage, scrambled eggs, hash browns, a biscuit, and, of course, hotcakes, bring to mind unending hotel breakfast buffets, lazy Sunday mornings with loved ones, and a satisfying sense of abundance you just can't often find in a steamy paper bag. McDonald's Big Breakfast also hits peak nostalgia for many; one bite of any one of its assembled items, and odds are you'll be transported to each previous taste, in the blink of a sliding window.

Some might not agree that the world's largest coffeehouse chain actually counts as fast food, but to that, we ask you to consider how long you spent dining in during your last Starbucks visit (and on what type of china, precisely?). The jolly green coffee giant has tons of breakfast foods — muffins, scones, and bagels, to name a few — that aren't anything close to egg sandwiches. But its ham and Swiss croissant, which appears on the bakery menu rather than on the specific breakfast lineup, is a satisfying, savory way to start the day.