Best Fast Food Dollar Menu Deals

After a long day, sometimes its nice to pull up to a fast food window and bring dinner home. With so many places to choose from filled with tasty treats, its hard to say no especially with the amazing values available at most fast food restaurants for around 1.00. With so many places rotating items, adding new items and creating value menus on nearly a daily basis, we've collected some of our favorites.

By dollar menu, we mean items that are typically anywhere from .79-1.29. Since many of the higher cost ones either vary by location (we've found menus to be slightly less expensive at home in the Midwest than on our recent Florida vacation) or rotate into .99 from time to time, we've included them as well although they are slightly more than 1.00.　

Best Fries

Since we like our fries hot and seasoned, our pick for this item is Arby's spicy curly fries which were just recently added to the dollar menu. A close second is Checkers (also know as Rallys in some parts of the country) spicy seasoned fries.

Best Burger

Wendy's Junior Bacon Cheeseburger is the best low cost option. Unlike most paper thin, paper tasting burgers available on value menus, Wendy's balances small size with wonderful flavor.

Best Chicken

Once again, we love spicy so Checkers/Rally's wins with the Spicy Chicken sandwich. If you don't like spicy, consider their regular chicken sandwich or Wendy's chicken nuggets. We suggest you avoid Wendy's chicken sandwich as it tends to have very little meat with very little flavor.

Best Vegetarian

Taco Bell's under one dollar menu recently introduced a new product -Crunchy Potato Soft Taco. Just like a regular soft taco, but with crispy fry-like filling along with the lettuce and sauce. For vegetarians, it's a nice change choosing between the bean burrito and triple layer nacho!

Best Drink

Mc Donald's Sweet Ice tea. Perfectly brewed, perfectly sweet and just the right size. A better deal than most of the other fast food restaurants who sometimes offer tiny drinks for their value menu

Best Desert

A&W's one dollar root beer float. Although most of A&W's menu is pricy-albeit worth it-it was a wonderful discovery that they're currently offering generously sized root beer floats for such a low price. It's the same famous A&W root beer, with a scoop of delicious vanilla ice cream.

Most Filling

Some dollar menu items are a bit tricky, since they're really trying to get you to buy many items since they're only 1.00. In some cases, you'll end up adding items until you've spent more for your dinner than you would have if ordering a typical fast food value meal. However Taco Bell's bean burrito is extremely filling and can satisfy some people's appetites with just one.

Most Tasty

Panda Express's recent incursion into dollar menu pricing is a delightful two for 2.00 program where you can choose two of the following: two (2) Spring Rolls, an Egg Roll, three (3) Cream Cheese Rangoon , or three (3) Crispy Fried Shrimp. Although many would stick with the fried shrimp, we love the spring rolls-which at .50 each are our "Most Tasty" pick. If they would only add Orange Chicken to the two for two menu....

Best Overall Value:

Rallys / Checkers: for just three dollars you can get a satisfying chicken sandwich or burger, tasty fries and a drink.

With careful choice and planning you can make the most of your fast food dollar and enjoy a special treat with the change from your couch cushions.