9 Jack In The Box Breakfast Sandwiches, Ranked From Worst To Best

The menu at Jack in the Box is like a fast food Swiss army knife — the top Jack in the Box items ranked worst to best include a sourdough burger, tacos, a slice of cheesecake, and egg rolls, among plenty more. Bolstering that singular line-up is the robust breakfast menu. And while the time of day you can get breakfast at some fast food chains is limited to the morning, the breakfast menu at Jack in the Box is available all day.

Technically, Jack in the Box's full breakfast sandwich lineup covers at least 15 permutations of ham, sausage, and/or bacon on a croissant, sourdough bread, brioche, or a so-called bakery bun. However, my local Jack in the Box, located in the suburbs of Las Vegas, limits its selection to nine distinct breakfast sandwiches. That said, every protein and bread type was represented by at least two of the sandwiches available to me. 

With that in mind, I tried all nine breakfast sandwiches on the menu of my local Jack in the Box. Ahead are my thoughts on each of them, in order from worst to best.

The Bacon Breakfast Jack was the slimmest sandwich of the nine I ordered from the Jack in the Box breakfast menu. While its $3.19 price point at my location was fair enough given its lack of heft, I found its insubstantiality to be underwhelming all the same.

Jack in the Box's bacon, for what it's worth, is solid. However, I enjoyed the bacon most in sandwiches that paired it with other meats. The Bacon Breakfast Jack otherwise features just a fried egg and American cheese on a standard bun — Jack in the Box bacon is potent, and as the star of the show, I found it excessively salty and smoky. Plus, alongside little else competing with its flavor, I felt like I could notice some artificiality in the bacon's smoky component. More than any other breakfast sandwich I ate, I felt that the Bacon Breakfast Jack was the one I would be least likely to order again, especially when there are superior alternatives with bacon on them in addition to better Breakfast Jacks.

What defines Jack in the Box's Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich is that it's made with two of everything — two slices of bacon, two slices of ham, two slices of cheese, and two fried eggs. Whereas the portions of those first three ingredients aren't perceptibly different than the quantities on most of the other breakfast sandwiches that include them, it's the two egg patties that separate the Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich from the pack.

The McDonald's Egg McMuffin changed the way America eats breakfast, and remains a popular fast food breakfast sandwich to this day. In other words, an egg-based breakfast sandwich certainly has a place in fast food. On the Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich, however, is too much egg. 

I found the quantity of egg so excessive, I outright couldn't perceive the flavors of the ham, cheese, or even the bacon. That latter ingredient overpowered everything else on my Bacon Breakfast Jack, so the way it faded to the background of my Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich spoke to the heft of that double egg portion. The Jack in the Box egg certainly isn't bad, but I found that it was better off complementing one of the chain's breakfast meats, rather than acting as a sandwich's star ingredient.

One of the most important things to know about the Jack in the Box breakfast menu is that there are quite a few kinds of bread. Even just the nine sandwiches I picked up during my visit covered four distinct bread types. Arguably the most unique option is sourdough, which is available on the regular menu as part of the Sourdough Jack, and in a few different permutations in the breakfast menu. While I enjoyed Jack in the Box's sourdough bread quite a bit, it was the rest of the ingredients on the Loaded Breakfast Sandwich that brought it down.

The Loaded Breakfast Sandwich is effectively an "everything" breakfast sandwich. It includes egg, cheese, bacon, ham, and sausage, covering each type of ingredient featured on the breakfast menu. As it turned out, those competing elements dissolved into a sort of incoherent mass, with few identifiable flavors other than a general sort of salty umami. The sausage cut through just slightly, for what it's worth, but that wasn't enough to make a difference. Especially disappointing was the fact I couldn't taste the sour in the sourdough. 

With that said, given its outright heft, I could see the Loaded Breakfast Sandwich working well with a dipping sauce that might compensate for that otherwise indistinct flavor. Since I didn't know or think to try it with a sauce, the Loaded Breakfast Sandwich rounds out this list's bottom three entries.

The Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich and the Extreme Sausage Sandwich were my Jack in the Box's two breakfast items served on brioche buns. Whereas the mega portion of egg in the former masked the flavor of the bread, I found the brioche on my Extreme Sausage Sandwich to come through pretty prominently. It turned out to be my least favorite of the breakfast menu bread options, texturally solid but excessively sweet.

Of course, the defining characteristic of the Extreme Sausage Sandwich is supposed to be its two sausage patties, which are paired with two slices of cheese, and an egg. That big portion of sausage and cheese was pretty good on its own, with the cheese helping mellow out what I thought was a strong sausage on some of the other sandwiches. 

The brioche, however, added a significant dose of sugar that I didn't think paired all that well with the sandwich's cheesy sausage flavor. Sweetness even ended up taking over in its aftertaste. On a different kind of bread, I think there's a decent chance the Extreme Sausage Sandwich might work better than some of the other sausage items, but as-is, I found its sweetness a little strange.

More than any other sandwich, including the Extreme Sausage Sandwich, I found Jack in the Box's Sausage Croissant to feature the strongest sausage flavor. As is the case with most breakfast sausages, it was defined by plenty of sage and black pepper, in addition to a pronounced oiliness. It was also pretty meaty, contributing a satisfying level of heft.

Where I thought the Sausage Croissant faltered was in how it failed to support that sausage. The Jack in the Box croissant, for what it's worth, is great — however, in this context, its relatively mild character was subsumed by sausage flavor. For whatever reason, the sausage took over so substantially, I could barely perceive its egg or cheese. I took a few extra bites with the intent of explicitly making sure that I hadn't just been biting into a part of the sandwich with a poor ratio ingredients, and each of those bites was dominated by sausage. 

Especially at that level of prominence, the Jack in the Box sausage turned out to be my least favorite of its breakfast proteins due to the general excess of its flavor. However, there's a chance breakfast sausage aficionados may find the Sausage Croissant to be an ideal venue for its core ingredient.

While Jack in the Box technically ranks among fast food chains that don't serve real whole eggs, unlike some of the other chains on the list, that designation only applies to a few menu items that feature scrambled eggs specifically. Each of its breakfast sandwiches, rather, do actually use fresh, whole eggs. Something I particularly enjoyed about the Sausage Breakfast Jack was how that egg complemented its sausage patty.

Whereas sausage overpowered my Sausage Breakfast Croissant, I got a much more satisfying balance of sausage, egg, and cheese in every bite of my Sausage Breakfast Jack. Combined with oily, herby sausage and sharp American cheese, the fresh Jack in the Box egg shined, adding a soft texture and subtle flavor. Plus, I happened to really enjoy the so-called bakery bun that's used on each Breakfast Jack — it was sweet, contributing something absent from the rest of its ingredients, without adding an excess of sugar. The Sausage Breakfast Jack is the best sausage item on the breakfast menu, earning this list's four spot simply because I felt sausage was the least compelling of Jack in the Box's three breakfast proteins.

Before trying the standard Breakfast Jack, my expectations were low. Compared to, say, the Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich's heaps of meat and egg between slices of sourdough bread, the Breakfast Jack sounded boring. At a humble $2.79 price point at my local Jack in the Box, the Breakfast Jack simply consists of one egg, American cheese, and ham on a bakery bun. Once I actually tried my selection of Jack in the Box breakfast sandwiches, however, I learned that the simpler items often outshined their busier siblings, and the Breakfast Jack in particular benefitted from its simplicity.

The best thing about the Breakfast Jack is its bread — the Jack in the Box bakery bun is toasted on its inner surfaces and spongy throughout, satisfying texturally while contributing lightly sweet and buttery flavors. Its ham was lightly oily and, while salty, thin enough that its saltiness was reasonable for a fast food item. Its egg and cheese, then, ended up complementing the bread more than the subtle ham. That combination of hearty egg, sharp cheese, and sweet bread ended up hitting some classic breakfast notes, albeit with its ham serving as more of a protein anchor than a significant flavor contributor. 

While the Breakfast Jack may be a little insubstantial, it tastes better than plenty of its larger companions. And its low price point means it's easy enough to order two and consider that equitable with some of the heftier items on the Jack in the Box breakfast menu.

In the parlance of the Jack in the Box breakfast menu, "ultimate" tends to refer to a combination of meats, egg, and cheese with some elements doubled, whereas "supreme" usually indicates ham and bacon, sans sausage. As it turned out, the two supreme items available at my local Jack in the Box were the best its breakfast menu had to offer.

First off, I found my Supreme Croissant to be a better showcase for the Jack in the Box croissant than its sausage-forward cousin. Like any croissant should be, Jack in the Box's is soft and buttery, while lacking the sort of flakiness that can sometimes make croissants frustratingly messy. Just like on the standard Breakfast Jack, it was egg, cheese, and bread that were at the forefront of the Supreme Croissant's flavor — buttery croissant, hearty egg, and sharp cheese was a combination I enjoyed quite a bit. Lightly rich ham and crispy, smoky bacon paired excellently with that base, accenting those other ingredients rather than taking over. The Supreme Croissant is a straight-up good breakfast sandwich, sticking to the fundamentals of the concept and executing them expertly.

Jack in the Box ranks among the fast food chains with the highest-quality breakfast sandwiches, not just for pioneering the concept — the Breakfast Jack actually holds the distinction of fast food's very first breakfast sandwich — but also for its fresh ingredients and robust selection of breads. The best of those breads is the Jack in the Box sourdough, and the best sandwich using that bread is the Supreme Sourdough Breakfast Sandwich.

Everything I enjoyed about the Supreme Croissant in this list's number-two spot also applies to the Supreme Sourdough — buttery bread, sharp American cheese, and hearty egg serve as a classic breakfast-y base, with light ham and crispy, smoky bacon nicely complementing those core ingredients. The sourdough bread is butterier than the croissant, to the extent I felt a light layer of butter coating my lips after each bite. It also contributes the precise sour flavor a good sourdough should. Simply put, the best bread at Jack in the Box with the best combination of breakfast ingredients on it results in the single best sandwich on the breakfast menu.

My selection of nine breakfast sandwiches comprised the entirety of the breakfast sandwich menu at my local Jack in the Box location. In other words, the handful of additional sandwiches that are part of the full Jack in the Box breakfast menu were not available to me. For what it's worth, I switched my location online to a couple of nearby Jack in the Boxes, and they were unavailable at those restaurants as well.

I ordered all nine breakfast sandwiches through the Jack in the Box website, and picked them up from a location just minutes from my home in the suburbs of Las Vegas. I tried them all as soon as I brought them home, in an arbitrary order. 

To start, I ate just under half of each sandwich, recording my impressions as I ate. Sometimes I had enough information to confidently rank a sandwich from those first impressions. Some sandwiches, meanwhile, I returned to later for an extra bite or three, either to compare to a later sandwich, or simply to reaffirm where I felt it ranked against the rest of the field. My analyses are based entirely on this experience, and not any prior thoughts I may have had about the featured items.