Ditch The Regular Fish Sandwich At Long John Silver's For This Overlooked Item You Can Put On A Bun

Seafood lovers, listen up. If you're a fan of the crispy fried fish, shrimp, and other craveworthy offerings at Long John Silver's, you'll absolutely love some of the menu hacks that customers have concocted over the years. While the popular seafood chain's classic Alaskan Fried Pollock Sandwich is flaky, juicy, and often considered one of the best fast food fish sandwiches, there's one ingredient you can add to the meal to enjoy an elevated flavor — crab cakes.

That's right: When you order a fish sandwich at Long John Silver's, ask for it without the fried fish fillet, and instead, order it with crab cakes. The staff may just give you the soft bun and a crab cake separately, so all you have to do is assemble and enjoy! You can get the traditional tartar sauce on the sandwich, or swap it out for other sauces from Long John Silver's menu, including cocktail sauce or honey mustard for a tangy twist.

This menu hack is fairly affordable, too. Depending on location, a fish sandwich is $5.79, and a crab cake is only $2.99, so you can easily score an entire meal for around $10. Overall, this swap makes the sandwich softer, more moist, and slightly sweeter thanks to the lump crab meat mixed throughout the cake. Just keep in mind that customers can't find crab cakes at every location, likely because they sell out quickly, according to a Long John Silver's employee on Reddit.  

Of all the Long John Silver's meals available, the crab cakes and fish sandwiches are true crowd-pleasers. In fact, these two meals are largely why customers believe the seafood chain doesn't deserve all its hate. "I love LJ's, I usually go once a month. I really love their crab cake," one Redditor said. Another commented, "As a kid...the fried fish and hush puppies with vinegar and tartar sauce was probably the most delicious fast food I ever had." A few customers tend to disagree in the crab cake department — one said they were "meh" — but overall? Not too many negative reviews online.

While delicious on their own, or when ordered with tartar sauce and a fluffy, soft bun, these crispy cakes can do with a few embellishments to make them taste even better. Try squeezing lemon juice and malt vinegar onto the crab cake before assembling into a sandwich for a bright acidic flavor. Or ask staff for a box of "crumblies" — a Long John Silver's extra with its own fandom — mix it with the tartar sauce, and slather it over the crab cake and between the bun slices for an added crunch.