10 Burger King International Items That Deserve To Be On US Menus

While Burger King doesn't officially use "Have it your way" as its current tagline, it still frequently evokes that classic slogan in its push to be a place where customers are put first and encouraged to get what they want. Unfortunately, if what they want is a menu item that can only be found at a Burger King location outside of the U.S., they are out of luck. But we think that the company should let us have it our way on that front as well.

From variations on the Whopper and other Burger King mainstays to entirely unique menu items unlike anything you can find on an American Burger King menu, these items would go a long way in making the chain be the best version of itself — as well as help it stand apart from its competitors.

We didn't include anything that we felt would be completely unfamiliar to the average American fast food devotee, or that would only appeal to niche sensibilities and taste buds. There isn't anything on this list that would stick out like a sore thumb on a Burger King menu in the U.S. — except to have people say, "Oh hey, that looks tasty! I need to try that!"

Burger King already stands out a bit from McDonald's and Wendy's by pushing onion rings as a major side choice, alongside traditional fries. In most locations, you can even choose onion rings as your value meal side instead of fries without any additional charge — though you do have to pay a little more to do half and half (totally worth it, and you should be ordering that every time, by the way). Even so, international fast food places often beat their U.S. counterparts in the sides department, and international Burger Kings are no different. Case in point, the halloumi fries that are available at Burger King locations in the United Kingdom.

Made from creamy, golden fried halloumi cheese, halloumi fries feel almost like a cross between regular fries and mozzarella sticks — they offer that satisfying mozz stick cheesiness, but with a structure more similar to regular fries. Given that halloumi cheese in general is finally getting noticed here in the U.S. after having been popular across Europe for a long time, hopefully it's only a matter of time before it becomes so commonplace that Burger King wouldn't think anything of adding halloumi fries to its U.S. menus. 

Another area where Burger King is a trailblazer among the non-fast casual fast food burger joints is in offering the plant-based Impossible Whopper. It's great that people who want a fast food burger, but either can't or just don't want to eat meat, have that option at Burger King. Still, it would be awesome if U.S. Burger King restaurants took that a step further by offering pork burgers as well for people who aren't vegetarians, but want a non-red meat option.

On Burger King menus in Thailand, several burgers let you choose between beef and pork, including the Whopper Jr. (standard Whoppers don't currently have a pork version). This lets you enjoy everything you love about the Whopper Jr., including that iconic flame-broiled taste, only with a pork patty instead of a beef one. And we think U.S. Burger King locations — along with all fast food burger chains, if we're being honest — should also allow customers to make that same choice.

Whether it's for religious, cultural, and/or health reasons, or just plain and simple taste preference, it's nice to be able to choose from multiple meat options for burgers. Letting its customers choose between beef, pork, and plant-based burgers would really make Burger King special among U.S. fast food burger chains, not to mention further hammer home the whole "have it your way" thing. 

As it stands, Burger King's breakfast menu in the U.S. is compromised mostly of breakfast sandwiches and a couple of burritos, with only French toast sticks as a sweet breakfast offering. We've always found it a little odd how few sweet breakfast options most fast food places have, given that so many types of breakfasts overall land on the sweeter side or otherwise revolve around a sweet component. Well, Burger King in Ireland clearly understands this, as it offers a delectable warm Belgian waffle drizzled in chocolate sauce as an option.

Described as "sweet and crunchy" on its website, the warm Belgian waffle is true to tradition in that it is able to be picked up and eaten with your hands like you'd eat a donut or other pastry. This elevates it above the McDonald's hotcakes, which are very much a fork and knife type of experience. No shade to people who sit down and eat their breakfast inside of a Burger King restaurant, but there should be the option to have this type of breakfast and also be able to eat it on the go.

With that in mind, we would love to see the warm Belgian waffle, and other sweet breakfast items like it, come to Burger King locations in the U.S. It would just be nice to have other options for that than the standard French toast sticks that everyone seems to default to. 

Back in 2016, Burger King introduced flame-grilled hot dogs as a new, permanent menu item. We now know that the Burger King hot dogs were anything but permanent, as they didn't even make a whole year before they were gone. Unfortunately, that also meant losing the chili cheese sauce that had been introduced as a topping for the Burger King hot dogs. We aren't really pining for Burger King to sell hot dogs again — if you want a hot dog, go to a hot dog place. But we do think that that delicious combination of chili and cheese should make a comeback, and the chili cheese bites offered at Burger King in South Africa would be the perfect way for that to happen.

To be fair, Burger King in the U.S. does currently have jalapeño cheddar bites, but they are a temporary menu item that comes and goes. That being said, your mileage may vary, as we were able to add them to an order as of this writing, while just a few months ago there were Reddit posts full of people saying their local Burger King wasn't carrying them anymore. Clearly you can't consistently count on ordering them in the U.S., which needs to be rectified immediately.

Burger King is currently doing another revamp of its chicken nuggets, something the chain seems to do every so often in its ongoing quest to topple fast food nugget king McDonald's. That's all well and good, but what about offering more nugget options in general? Specifically, a plant-based alternative. Point of fact, Burger King tested Impossible Nuggets in October 2021 in a small handful of markets. Well, considering you can't currently order such an item from Burger King, the test either went poorly, or the eventual full rollout is just taking a really, really long time.

That is, in the U.S. anyway — plant-based nuggets are already on the menu elsewhere. Germany and Austria both have an entire "plant-based" section on their countries' Burger King menus, both of which feature plant-based nuggets as a permanent menu item for both the regular and kids menus. So there's no reason that U.S. Burger Kings shouldn't as well.

German and Austrian Burger Kings also both offer the option of plant-based nuggets on a bun as a way of making a plant-based chicken sandwich (which they also offer as an option for the standard nuggets), and we are also a bit jealous of this and would love to have at our Burger Kings, too. 

Not to keep belaboring this point, but we obviously have a chip on our shoulders about how many international Burger Kings have all these extra side options that we don't. And another one we'd like to call out as something we have our fingers crossed will come to U.S. Burger Kings eventually are fried plantain cubes, which are one of several unique and delicious side options at Burger King in Nigeria.

Nigerian Burger King restaurants also have yam fries and sweet potato cubes, as well as offering the sweet potatoes and fried plantains as slices. Honestly, we just want all of those on our Burger King menu, so we could eat there every day for two weeks and get a completely different side every time. But if we had to pick one, we'd go with the plantain cubes, as they are completely different than any other side type currently offered at Burger King — or just about any American fast food place, in fact — and feel a bit more like a traditional side than the plantain slices. They offer a nice balance of sweet and salty, like french fries dipped in ketchup, but without the extra step of needing the ketchup.

Why stop at beef burgers, pork burgers, and plant-based burgers? While we are suggesting ways to pad out the amount of burger options at American Burger King stores, we would also like to throw the shrimp burgers from Burger King in Korea into the mix. Fine, so it's not so much a burger as it is a fish patty made with shrimp. Po-tay-to/po-tah-to, shrimp burger/shrimp sandwich. The point is, other countries give their Burger King customers multiple options, while we get the Big Fish, and... the Big Fish.

Think that it's a bit of a cop out to suggest what amounts to a Big Fish but just using a different type of seafood? Okay, then we'll shift gears and recommend the Shrimp Whopper from Burger King in Korea, which is a regular beef patty Whopper topped with actual pieces of (non-breaded) shrimp in a spicy tomato sauce. A little too out there? Maybe we should've just suggested the fried coconut shrimp instead, which we'd certainly be delighted to have at our Burger Kings — we were just trying to avoid doing yet another side. Or, why not all three? Once they've committing to having shrimp on the menu, might as well just go all out. 

It sometimes seems like American fast food places are reluctant to go all-in on food items that are hyper specific to the country's culture. What's fun about the international versions of those same fast food places is that they usually don't have those same hang-ups. Case in point: Burger King in Mexico, which just straight up offers a hunk of fried Oaxaca cheese as an option in the "snacks" portion of the menu.

It's not integrated into a sandwich, it's not made bite size like a traditional side, and it's not otherwise Burger King-ized in some way. It's literally just a fried piece of Oaxaca cheese, and that's all it needs to be. We would love to see more stuff like this on Burger King menus in the U.S. — items that bring a bit of another culture's cuisine to the fore, as well as not trying to contort it into a traditional American fast food menu item.

We feel pretty certain that nobody would see fried cheese on a menu and question why it was there and whether it "belongs." Especially not as they were biting into it and creating a TikTok-worthy cheese pull.

Poutine, the unofficial national food of Canada, has seemed to struggle in fully penetrating the U.S. It is certainly around, it is on a fair amount of restaurant menus, and there are even places devoted entirely to poutine. But for whatever reason, it is still looked at by many as niche hipster food that people are reluctant to try — which is odd, since what it more American than drizzling a savory sauce and dropping big chunks of cheese over top of a plate of food?

In a just world, the poutine options that can be found on Canadian Burger King menus would've made it to the U.S. years ago. There is of course standard poutine, which is french fries covered in brown gravy and cheese curds, plus the option to add bacon. And that would make us more than happy. But once the poutine door has been opened, that also allows for the various intriguing limited time poutine options that Canadian Burger Kings have had over the years — from breakfast hash brown poutine to spicy "Angry" poutine and more.

Plus, just think of the fun that can be had with other Burger King sandwiches and menu items once that gravy and those cheese curds are available for hacking purposes. Poutine Whopper, anyone? 

Fittingly, we are ending this list with dessert. Fast food desserts have long been underwhelming for the most part — besides shakes, there's a fried apple pie here, some basic chocolate chip cookies there, and not much else, save for the occasional limited time sweet treat that usually corresponds to a promotion for some new animated movie. Admittedly, Burger King does offer the Hershey's Sundae Pie, which is impressive for a fast food dessert, but still very much a fast food dessert option — it's a prepackaged thing that just goes from freezer to customer. But when you know what Burger Kings in Switzerland offer, you'll see what we are truly missing out on.

When you venture to the "Desserts and Shakes" section of the Burger King menu in Switzerland, you immediately take note of just how not-underbaked the selections are. From an array of soft serve ice cream "King Fusion" cups to that same Belgian waffle that is offered in Ireland — with both chocolate sauce and Nutella options — you could easily go to a Swiss Burger King just for dessert and leave full and satisfied. But perhaps most impressive is the warm brownie, with its river of molten chocolate sauce awaiting in the middle.

Add a scoop of ice cream — which, again, is soft serve — and you've got a dessert worthy of an actual, non-fast food restaurant. We want it, and all that other stuff, at our Burger Kings, like, yesterday!