7 Best And 7 Worst Things To Eat At Checkers

If you ever find yourself sitting around your apartment bored with friends, pulling out the classic board game checkers is a great way to kill time. Now, if you ever find yourself sitting around your apartment trying to figure out where to grab a bite to eat, Checkers also makes for a great option. The chain stormed the fast-food market in the early 1990s, offering a simple and affordable menu that helped drive business away from competitors. The brains of the outfit, a successful real estate developer from Alabama named James E. Mattei, came up with the idea after realizing a massive chunk of the sales from two Wendy's franchises he owned came from the drive-through windows, and the items that sold the most were burger combination meals. So, he ditched the expensive menu items, large parking lots, and unnecessary dining rooms to build Checkers. (You may also know it as Rally's.)

Over the years, Checkers, like any restaurant, saw its fair share of both ups and downs, but they always stayed true to their plan to ensure the food was simple and affordable. However, this simplistic mindset doesn't mean everything they serve is a grand slam. Sometimes you order a meal only to find it was a big swing-and-a-miss. If you find yourself standing in line at your nearest Checkers, here are seven things you should absolutely indulge in and seven you should keep at a safe distance from your stomach.

Chicken wings and parties go together like presents and Christmas. Neither celebration would be the same without them. Bring a plate of sauced-up wings into a room and people flock to it like seagulls on a beach who just saw someone drop their lunch. But, when a batch of wings is less than satisfactory, you can almost feel the collective disappointment surging through everyone's appetite in the room. That's why if you plan on ordering up a tray of those suckers, avoid doing your whole gathering a huge disservice by choosing Checkers as the spot to snag them.

It's unfortunate because Checkers does have great sounding flavors. You can order angry or medium buffalo (depending on your spice tolerance), garlic parmesan, or sweet and smoky barbecue. Now, while those flavors sound enticing, the end result isn't. The boneless wings are small, which means not a lot of meat. Yes, they are boneless, so you don't have to worry about bones occupying space inside, but the meat is also dry. Nearly the entire morsel is just the crisp outer breading, and no matter how much sauce you put on them, you're left wishing you opted for something else.

A spicy chicken sandwich, much of the time, is a pretty safe bet when you go to a fast-food joint. The patties are simply dropped in a deep fryer, then plopped onto a moist bun and topped with fixings that pair well with the chicken. When you're just not feeling that hankering for a beef burger, chicken is usually a winning second option. That is, unless you tempt fate and order the Spicy Double Chicken Sandwich from Checkers. Sadly, after a couple of bites you realize it's not a top-tier fast food chicken sandwich. 

The biggest problem with the sandwich is the chicken, which is a shame because it's clearly supposed to be the focal point of the whole performance. The all-white meat is dry, and no amount of mayo Checkers adds can sufficiently fix the issue (plus, no one wants a mayo-drenched sandwich anyway). Sure, there's iceberg lettuce and American cheese, but all that falls to the wayside when you take that frustrating bite into the patties. Plus, there are two patties, so it's doubly dry. The description of the sandwich on Checkers' website says, "Cluck the game up." Unfortunately, they go the opposite direction and cluck it way down.

The greatest thing about hot dogs is the seemingly endless combinations of toppings you can throw on them. Sticking with just ketchup and mustard is an amateur move when you can add grilled onions, avocado, relish, chili, or even cream cheese in some cases. The mixing and matching is endless, so do yourself a favor the next time you're out seeking a frankfurter and live a little! You only have one life here on Earth so don't waste it with a boring dog! This is exactly why it's a terrible move to order the plain Grilled Hot Dog from Checkers. You want way more flavors in your life than it offers, so give it a hard pass every time.

The hot dog itself isn't bad. It's meaty and plump and nestles nicely in the warm bun. However, it's the lack of great fixings that takes it down so many notches. Ketchup and mustard are the only condiments on it, and that makes for a meal that leaves so much extra to be desired. Hey, maybe just some simple condiments are what you're seeking, but if you're dining out somewhere, you have to order up something you can't easily throw together in your own kitchen. Checkers claims it's "better than a ballpark," but they couldn't lead you more astray.

Let's be honest, if it was up to most of the world, they'd want the bottom layer of the food pyramid to exist of one word only: cheese. There are so many different amazing ways to incorporate cheese into a meal, and sometimes you even just want your entire meal to consist of one intricately displayed cheese board. A love of cheese is exactly why so many people order up mozzarella sticks as a savory appetizer when they go out to eat. It's not just the outer breading, but that log of gooey cheese in the middle hits your palate like a delicious dart landing smack-dab in the middle of a bullseye. But, if you catch yourself eyeing the Monstrella Stix at Checkers, just know you won't even come close to succumbing to that amazing feeling.

The gooey center that should exist in the middle of each deep-fried stick is nowhere to be found. Even though the crisp outer breading feels hot on your fingers, the log of queso that lives inside isn't even close to the same temperature, so you're basically biting into a piece of room-temperature string cheese with a deep fried coating. It's exactly what you don't want in a mozzarella stick. Sure, you could dunk them in the marinara sauce that comes on the side for a slightly warmer texture, but it's best to turn and run the other way if an order of these hits your table.

Anytime you see the word "loaded" in front of a menu item, you darn well expect it to live up to its name. "Loaded" is synonymous with the words, "heaping piles of extra fixings dumped on top that make it a sight to behold, and an even bigger sight to feast upon." So, it's natural when you see the Fully Loaded Fries on the Checkers menu you prepare for a mega-load of toppings on their seasoned fries so extreme it'll likely leave you forgetting you even ordered anything else. Not the case here, sadly. The fries come with cheese sauce, ranch, and bacon crumbles, but neither of those three can muster up the energy to make this item worth paying for.

The main issue with the fires — and this is a huge one — is the complete disregard for the distribution of toppings. The goal should always be to disperse them in such a way that every fry has a little bit of everything, so no matter where on the tray you grab one from, you get the full "loaded" experience. However, with these, the ranch, cheese, and bacon are all dumped right in the center, leaving the fries in the middle overly soggy and the ones on the outskirts completely devoid of anything. It's so far from the fantasy you have in your head when you think of anything "loaded."

A combination meal is always an enticing way to go when you're trying to get the most bang for your buck. So why not look towards the Chicken Bites and Fries Box when you find yourself scratching your head at Checkers over what to order? You get bite-sized all-white meat nuggets and a handful of seasoned fries. How could you go wrong? Well, as it turns out, you can go wrong in more ways than one, and it's a double-whammy of pure disappointment.

Simplicity is the name of the game with this combo option, and unfortunately simplicity is also its downfall. The nuggets Checkers uses are the opposite of the "crispiest, juiciest, and most perfectly seasoned" like the claim on its website makes. The meat is dry and the breading is too overpowering. They do have a variety of dipping sauces to choose from like barbecue, ranch, honey mustard, and buffalo, but even giving them a bath in one of the sauces doesn't make them worth the investment. Even with the addition of fries, it's wise to shell out your cash on something else since many other great options are at your fingertips.

The word "champ" should not be thrown around lightly. If you carry the title of champion, then you better be the best at what you do. So, if you're daring enough to put the word in between "cheese" and "burger," one would only expect to take a bite into an award-winning handful of flavor and remember it long after they finish. However, Checkers throws that word around a little too loosely with their Cheese Champ Burger. It's an accolade this menu item is utterly undeserving of in the most epic way possible.

So, here's the deal: The burger isn't bad. Let's get that straight. It's just nothing special, and with a word like "champ" in its name, that's exactly what you need from it. The 100% beef patty is layered in American cheese, tomato, red onion, pickles, iceberg lettuce, ketchup, mayo, and mustard (the Holy Trinity of condiments). But, there's nothing about that combination that offers any kind of "WOW" factor, and that's why when Checkers states, "All hail the king," on their website, the last thing on your mind is giving it any kind of praise.