by Bottom Line: The El Diablo items from Carl’s Jr. (and Hardee’s) are rather messy, but they certainly deliver some good heat for drive-thru selections.
Carl’s Jr. is a West Coast-based fast food chain that specializes in burgers, and they share a menu with Hardee’s (located primarily in the Southern and Midwest states) because both are owned by CKE Restaurants Holdings. There used to be several stores located around San Antonio, but they all shut down a few years ago (Houston area as well), so the only place I know of to get your Carl’s Jr. fix relatively nearby is the TA Travel Center just west of Sealy, TX, where one lone location remains.
I travel between San Antonio and Houston on a regular basis, and I recalled that the chain would add some spicy selections from time to time, so I made a stop there recently on my way to Houston and on my way back. As it turns out, they had their El Diablo menu featured, so I tried one item on the first trip and another on the second. Here is the rundown:
El Diablo Burger: A charbroiled all-beef patty, two strips of bacon, jalapeño poppers, two slices of pepper jack cheese, jalapeños, and their fiery habanero ranch sauce on a seeded bun.
El Diablo Loaded Fries: Natural-cut fries topped with fiery habanero sauce, shredded cheese, and jalapeño coins.
I got the burger on the first stop, and while I ordered a single, they ended up giving me a double. All I can say is that it is one hefty burger with a lot of stuff! The burger patties were on the thin side (common for fast food) and a little dry, but they did deliver some good flame-broiled taste. The bacon adds some salt and a hint of smokiness. The poppers had a crispy crust and delivered a nice sharpness from the cheese. The fiery habanero ranch sauce adds some creaminess and sweetness, while the jalapeño “coins” (slices) bring some tang and tartness. The pepper jack cheese seemed to get lost in the mix, but it may have added to the creaminess to offset the heat. It is a big and messy burger (don’t try eating it while you are driving), but it is quite good.
As for the heat, the first few bites don’t deliver much of a kick, but that builds as you continue to chomp on it. It gets beyond Medium on my scale but not close enough to Hot. Still, that is pretty good for one of the major fast food chains, and this beats the Fiery Bacon Whopper that Burger King put out this last summer hands down (more on that one here).
As for the fries, I tried those on my return trip along with the Carl’s Jr. spicy chicken sandwich. The latter was fairly standard fast food fare (similar to McDonald’s Spicy McChicken), but the El Diablo fries were worth the stop. The habanero sauce has good flavor with some sweetness and some tang, sort of like a sweet Buffalo sauce. The jalapeños deliver a nice vinegar pop and a good bite to go along with the sauce. The shredded cheese offers some sharpness but is somewhat sparse. The fries themselves are quite tasty, delivering some good crispness, despite all the sauce on top, while being nice and soft inside. I would put these as maybe a step above standard fast food fries.
Most importantly, the loaded version delivers on the heat. They go beyond Medium on my scale and even get to Hot in the bites with jalapeños. These are pretty messy to eat with the sauce, cheese, and peppers, and don’t really count as finger food. But they had forks available, and I used that to gobble the whole order down.
As for the nutrition, both of these items pack in quite a lot of calories. The single El Diablo Burger runs close to a thousand calories, while the double is over 1200 (these are not regular menu items, so there is not a further breakdown on the nutrition). The El Diablo Loaded Fries run 520 calories, so if you get those with the burger, you may be shopping for the next pants size up! And just by themselves, the fries pack a fair amount of calories, and any sandwich you get with them tacks on to the calorie tally. So go easy with your ordering and plan some extra time in the gym.
I don’t see the El Diablo items featured on the Carl’s Jr. website, so I may have been at the tail end of the promotion, or this particular store may have been running it longer, seeing as spicy items are popular here in Texas. If you have a Carl’s Jr. or a Hardee’s nearby, you can check and see if these are still available. If not, they do make a pretty good jalapeño cheeseburger that should satisfy your need for some heat. And hopefully, they will keep that habanero sauce in the stores so that you can ask them to drizzle it over your burger and/or fries. Or perhaps at some point the El Diablo menu will become permanent.
