9 Foods On Dunkin's Menu You Should Avoid At All Costs

Thinking about the easiest way to organise some snacks for your next staff meeting? Maybe you're just wanting to bring home a selection of sweet treats for the family? Dunkin' has stood the test of time while continuing to remain one of America's go-to breakfast options. But, while Dunkin' still remains one of the kings of breakfast, in no small part due to its wide selection of food and beverages, like any fast food menu, it's no surprise some of the items don't live up to the hype. 

The Dunkin' menu is a minefield of duds when it comes to bringing home the bacon (which you shouldn't do as you will see in entry two on this list), and we're here to give you the rundown on which food items Dunkin' goers continue to avoid at all costs. Whether its because of quality, cost, or nutritional values, this list will help you to make the best choices when placing your next order.

It just doesn't feel right to kick this list off in any other way than with a representative of the Dunkin' donut range. Conveniently, the Tasting Table team has already sat down to rank 16 Dunkin' from worst to best, and the worst one we tried was by far the lemon donut. 

When buying your next box of donuts, do yourself a favor and just forget about adding a citrus-y twist to your selection. The lemon donut falls severely short of what a lemon based dessert should offer: subtle flavors, a tangy twist, and some additional complexity to contrast with the sweetness. Dunkin' must've thought diners wanted to feel as if they were drinking lemon juice, because nothing about the donuts' lemon filling compliments the doughy exterior. To say the least, eating a lemon flavored Dunkin' Donut will make your tongue and cheeks sizzle. 

For lovers of aggressively sour flavours this might be your cup of tea, but we think that for most people this donut is just way too hardcore to make it into your regular order. Plus, at the end of the day, this donut only has a powdered coating. The Dunkin' team has even offered another lemon flavored donut, this time in the form of the lemon glazed donut. For some reason we have a feeling adding even more sourness won't be the solution.

From the beginning of our research we just knew the Snackin' Bacon had to make it onto this list. Firstly, no other item included in this ranking received as much criticism from Dunkin' staff as the Snackin' Bacon. On Reddit, a slew of Dunkin' servers across the country reported the Snackin' Bacon would potentially just sit out for hours during shifts. To be fair, Dunkin' workers also commented that it's very difficult to make bacon crispy, especially when you are serving loads of customers and you need to prepare menu items in batches. The result is that the vast majority of Dunkin' diners will either receive oily, mushy Snackin' Bacon that was only once freshly cooked or cooled, slightly crispy pieces of bacon which had now become leathery tiles reminiscent of beef jerky.

If you're still thinking of adding the Snackin' Bacon to your order, just remember that after recent price increases, one pack now costs $5.00 a pop! On top of all this, each pack of Snackin' Bacon contains 500 milligrams of sodium (22 percent of the recommended daily intake), 9 grams of added sugars (18 percent), and 4½ grams of saturated fat (23 percent)! In our eyes, if the bacon isn't even going to be crispy, it isn't worth the 190 calories per serving.

Finally we have reached the first sandwich item entry for this list, the turkey sausage, egg and cheese. Somehow, Dunkin' manages to create problems with two of the item's main components, leaving eaters regretting their order time and time again. In some anecdotal evidence, Dunkin' goers have reported that the turkey sausage makes them feel sick, in no small part due to a rubbery texture and grey appearance. When you consider that other breakfast sandwiches like the ham, egg and cheese remain a beloved Dunkin' menu item, this will give you an idea how much room for improvement there is.

The egg is a bit more complicated than what you would throw together at home. The egg 'patty' served at Dunkin' contains the following ingredients: egg whites, yolks, soybean oil, water, and 2 percent or less of cornstarch, salt, flavoring, Xanthan gum, cellulose gum, and citric acid. A number of reviewers have commented that egg products on the menu have a strange chemical aftertaste and smell, with workers chiming in to say they think this is actually a result of the TurboChef ovens and/or cleaning products used in store. Now the cheese ... well fortunately it's just commercial cheese, really, meaning that you'll be getting a relatively tasteless melted sheet of it overtop your sandwich. Costing upwards of $6 in some locations (at the time of writing), you're paying a lot for a little here. Overall, you're much better off looking further afield if you're craving a turkey sausage breakfast sandwich.

We love the fact Dunkin' is taking big steps to expand its menu to meaningfully cater for vegan diners. While we believe everyone benefits with an inclusive menu design, the vegan bagels at Dunkin' are just a missed opportunity. Assuming you're dining in a reputable Dunkin' location, you can expect that the non-vegan plain bagel will be fresh and golden. This brings us to the vegan plain bagel's primary deficiency, its lack of an egg wash creates a similar lack of crispy exterior. While, understandably, Dunkin' can't use eggs on a vegan menu item, a quick online search reveals vegan foodies already cracked this code. 

As an egg wash substitute, vegan bakers reportedly use ingredients like maple syrup, honey, flaxseed, or plant-based milks. Can you imagine how wonderful a soft vegan bagel with undertones of honey would pair with your favourite jam? To cater for savoury bagel lovers, what about an almond milk egg washed bagel paired with the delicious Dunkin' Avocado Spread?

Instead of either of these delightful alternatives, the Dunkin' vegan plain bagel has a doughy, dry, and crumbly interior. Considering that Dunkin' already offers alternative milks for its beverages and collection of vegan menu items, it seems like an oversight to also not produce the best vegan bagel possible.

In another universe this donut would've been featured as the first item on this list. In fact, the reason we remembered to even include it on this list at all is we had just finished eating one while planning this article and we needed to clean our keyboard and desk from all of the microscopic sugar dust we had spread.

Not only is the powdered sugar donut at Dunkin' the most inconvenient item to eat, it lacks any redeeming qualities to make it even worth the hassle. Our writers definitely agree that this one can absolutely be perfect when it's cooked right, but for some reason many Dunkin' outlets can't get the classic donut consistently delicious. 90 percent of the time when you order this donut you're going to be chewing through crunchy flakes of crystalized sugar. 

Even worse, the sugar just never seems to properly adhere to the donut, which is when powdered dugar donuts are at their best. Theories seem to say it's for one of two reasons, either too much sugar is being applied resulting in excess, or they aren't being dusted rapidly enough after the frying process. Either way, like we said with the glazed donut, if you're eating a simple, standard type of donut, all the basic elements have to be on point, and the powdered sugar donut just doesn't manage to do so.

The hash browns at Dunkin' while holding so much potential to be delightful bite-sized alternatives to the classic side have so many issues holding them back. Firstly, Dunkin' diners similarly to the turkey sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich reported the hash browns can have a distinctly artificial 'chemical' taste. 'Chemical' is not one of the words we would like to associate with hash browns. In fact, we don't know what positive description we could give to the Dunkin' hash browns.

If you joined us in envisioning the perfect hash brown, what would you expect? Crispiness? Fluffiness? A golden exterior? Well, if you start buying your hash browns at Dunkin' you will frankly be lucky to even enjoy one of those adjectives. Most frequently Dunkin' goers complain about receiving charred potato discs with their breakfast orders. Personally, we can't imagine choosing to pay $2.00 for burnt hash browns. If you're a true hash brown fan, we strongly recommend instead opting for the loaded hash browns at Dunkin', because the cheese and bacon provides an extra layer of protection against being overcooked or burnt. Otherwise, the hash browns are mostly now just a free side you get with the new $6 fall meal deal.

While the Tasting Table team absolutely loves the Dunkin' jelly donut (which landed it at the number three spot in our ranking), the Reddit forums were consistently united against us on this one. From testing, we can genuinely empathize with how painful it can be to eat this donut. For clean eating technique, we would strongly recommend staying alert and implementing the "arms length" method to avoid any unwanted jelly drippage. 

However, taking this care is only necessary if you end up actually receiving a donut filled with an adequate amount of jelly. Users across multiple platforms found the jelly donuts to be dry in the centre, essentially making it just a Dunkin' powdered sugar donutwith a hollow centre completely devoid of sweetness. Further digging online shows that the Dunkin' jelly donut only contains a single teaspoon of jelly per donut, meaning diners will often reach their last bites before even tasting any of the jelly filling. 

From our review, we concluded that the Dunkin' jelly donut serves as a testament to the power of scrumptious, messy sweets. While we stand by this, for other Dunkin' diners who are unfortunate enough to receive a jelly-less donut, Dunkin' has failed to deliver on being the jammy, flavourful dessert they ordered to satisfy their sweet tooth.

We've already talked about most of the toppings you will find on the bacon, egg and cheese croissant, so we aren't going to drive home our point about the alien-goo like egg patty again. That being said, we are going to again politely suggest Dunkin' re-evaluates its egg recipe, especially when you consider how many online reviews exist expressing how gross the Dunkin' egg patty is.

In general, Dunkin' lovers report the sandwiches or wraps with bacon taste good. Unfortunately, the 'croissant' component is really what lets this food item down, so much so long-time croissant fans swear Dunkin' must have changed its recipe. Many reviewers report the croissants are now not only smaller in size, but that the texture is drier and less buttery. One reviewer even reported the entire item to be 'inedible', describing its flavour to be like paper.

Of course, a dry, non-buttery, flake-less croissant is just a poor croissant. Other diners have even shared that every time they order the croissants from Dunkin' they tend to be too crispy on the outside, or worse, burnt. Servers weighed in and told us this tends to only happen when they're needing to rush out orders, so they try heating the croissants at a higher temperature for a shorter amount of time. Seeing as you can't control how busy it will be when you order, it's probably easier to start looking for a new bakery specializing in this classic pastry.

The old fashioned donut just manages to scrape into our list of items you need to avoid ordering at Dunkin'. We get it, you like the way things 'used to be', but this donut isn't what you think it is. Sure, on the surface you're getting the classic fried donut your inner child dreams of, something you would buy at a carnival or festival. But frankly, the old fashioned donut thrives within a 10 minute window of existence, freshly cooked and to be eaten immediately. Don't get us wrong, we completely agree a perfectly made Old Fashioned donut is great. However, because of Dunkin' being a chain with lots of mouths to feed, you're most likely going to order an Old Fashioned with a rubbery, stale texture.

When you order the Dunkin' old fashioned donut, you're essentially choosing to roll the dice. What you're hoping for is that it was cooked just now or recently, fresh and moist in the middle. However, what's infinitely more likely is that your donut was made hours ago, already exiting its short-lived prime, unredeemed by a layer of sweet frosting or creamy interior.

If you want to gamble when deciding on your donut order, be our guest and add the old fashioned to your selection. All we're saying is don't be disappointed when you're greeted with a hardened ring of dough that ducks in a pond wouldn't be willing to try and swallow.

To compile our list of items we recommend you avoid ordering at Dunkin', we first started with menu items that have been previously reviewed and taste-tested — from the Dunkin' menu, by the Tasting Table team. Following our own internal reviews, we scraped forums, online review sites, and social media pages to get an idea of the items that are most commonly panned by customers across the country. 

Additionally, anecdotal reports from Dunkin' workers on platforms such as Reddit provided many of the key details and explanations to why menu items taste the way they do. In terms of factors, we suggested items to avoid based primarily on poor quality, but in many cases, poor nutritional profiles and the cost of the item were also taken into consideration.