What to order · Updated September 2026
What to Order at Culver's: Every Item, Judged
Culver's has a reputation problem in both directions. People outside the Midwest think it's a slightly nicer Wendy's. People inside it think the cheese curds are a religious experience. Neither is right, and the menu's best item is a piece of fish.
Two things govern everything below. Nothing here sits in a warmer by policy, so the food is made after you order it and the wait is real. And when a Culver's disappoints you, it's almost always because a store broke that rule and batched something ahead. Prices are national averages off the delivery menu as of August 2026; every store is independently owned and in-store prices usually run lower.
Every item, judgedThe verdicts
North Atlantic Cod Sandwich
Order itThe reason to drive past three other burger places. It's cod rather than pollock, hand-battered after you order, and the fillet breaks into flakes you can actually see instead of the uniform gray paste inside a Filet-O-Fish. Ten dollars is fish-sandwich money nobody wants to spend at a drive-thru, and this is the one that justifies it. Ask for pickles.
The Culver's Deluxe
Order itThe default burger, correctly. Lettuce, tomato and mayo on top of the seared patty do the work the plain ButterBurger leaves undone, which is why taste-testers who rank all eight burgers keep putting the plain one dead last and this one first. If you want it dressed the fast-food way instead, say "the works" at the counter: ketchup, mustard, pickle, raw onion, no upcharge. It does not include lettuce and tomato, which catches people.
Mushroom & Swiss
Order itThe sleeper on a menu with no other sleepers. Ten cents over a Deluxe buys sautéed mushrooms and melted Swiss that hold up better to the buttered bun than tomato does. Swap it onto sourdough and it stops resembling fast food entirely.
Wisconsin Cheese Curds
Order itFamous for a reason, and slightly overrated by the people who made them famous. Culver's breads these rather than batters them, which is why curd purists compare the coating to a grocery-store freezer bag, and the squeak that defines a fresh curd doesn't survive the fryer. No drive-thru in the country sells a better one. Get them well done or accept that half of them will be soft.
Onion Rings
Order itA buck under the curds and better than them. The coating is a smooth beer-batter style rather than breadcrumb, so it shatters instead of shedding, and it stays attached to the onion. Nobody orders these. Everybody who ranks Culver's sides puts them near the top.
Concrete Mixer
Order itFrozen custard is denser and eggier than soft serve and it holds mix-ins without going slushy, which is the whole point of this thing. One rule: pick one liquid topping, maximum. Hot fudge plus butterscotch sounds great and produces soup. If the Flavor of the Day you wanted was yesterday, most locations will blend the matching mix-ins into vanilla and get you 90 percent of the way there.
Crispy Chicken Sandwich
DecentFine. Fried after you order, which puts it ahead of most chains on texture, and the Spicy Crispy at $8.79 is the better thirty cents. At $8.49 with nothing on the side, it's also a dollar-sixty more than the Deluxe for a sandwich that does less.
Pretzel Bites
DecentGood, a lot of money for bread. The cheddar sauce is thinner than the gluey stuff most chains pour, which helps. The move nobody tells you about: order them with no salt and dip them in hot caramel or marshmallow from the custard station, and you've built a dessert for side-dish money.
Crinkle Cut Fries
DecentThe most location-dependent item on the menu. Fresh out of the fryer they're crisp-edged and properly salted; the internal standard is that they shouldn't sit longer than six minutes, and plenty of stores ignore it. Ask for extra crispy every single time. It's not a hack so much as insurance.
Grilled Chicken Sandwich
Skip itNine sixty-nine for a chicken breast asked to carry a sandwich by itself, when the Crispy is $1.20 cheaper and has a texture.
Chicken Cashew Salad
Skip itThis used to be the reason salad people came here. In 2023 the heritage lettuce blend was replaced with iceberg, shredded carrot and red cabbage, and employees were the first ones online complaining that it looked cheap. Eleven nineteen for iceberg, dry grilled chicken and a puddle at the bottom of the bowl.
Pork Loin
Skip itThe most divisive item Culver's sells, and the critics are winning. Reviewers describe it as tasting of nothing with a cardboard texture; staff say it's mostly ordered by regulars over 70. The best defense of it came from a Culver's employee who argued the sandwich is the problem — put the same pork on a plate under beef gravy and grilled onions and it's good. You can't order that.
Mashed Potatoes & Gravy
Skip itMade at a corporate food-processing center and reheated in a microwave at your store. That's not an accusation, it's how employees describe the prep. Four dollars to microwave someone else's potatoes at a restaurant that fries everything else to order.
Frequently askedFAQ
What is the best thing to order at Culver's?
The North Atlantic Cod Sandwich, $10.39 and 599 calories. It's cod rather than pollock, hand-battered to order, and it beats every other fast-food fish sandwich by a wide enough margin that Reddit fish-sandwich arguments usually end with it. If you want a burger, the Culver's Deluxe at $6.89 is the one that consistently wins taste tests against the rest of the ButterBurger line.
Is the Culver's Value Basket worth it?
Yes, and you have to ask for it by name. A basket bundles an entrée, a side and a medium drink — a ButterBurger Cheese Value Basket runs about $11.45 against $6.39 plus $3.89 plus a drink à la carte. The comparison that matters is outside the chain: burger, fries and a drink at Five Guys lands near $20 because Five Guys doesn't bundle at all. Premium sides like cheese curds and onion rings carry an upcharge.
Why are Culver's fries sometimes bad?
Because they were cooked before you ordered. Culver's policy is fry-to-order with a six-minute hold limit, but stores under pressure batch them ahead and park them under a lamp, which is where nearly every complaint about cold or limp crinkle cuts comes from. Say "extra crispy" — it adds roughly a minute of fry time and forces a fresh basket.