Fast food restaurants in Austin offer more than just what is written on the menu. Home Slice Pizza and Torchy’s Tacos are two restaurants that offer items on secret menus, which are menus with unique items that are normally not available to customers.

Torchy’s is a very popular chain of taco restaurants in Austin. Torchy’s menu includes tacos with unique names and ingredients, but they also have classic taco options available. Their “damn good” tacos have prompted the chain’s expansion all across Austin. Torchy’s secret menu is on the restaurant’s website. Though the menu is not hidden, the seven tacos on the secret menu are seldom ordered, according to employees.

Freshman and self-described taco lover Eric Haney went to Torchy’s and ordered two items off of the secret menu. He ordered “The Matador,” which contains chopped brisket, grilled jalapenos, pickled onions, grated jack cheese, avocado, sour cream and cilantro. Something Haney feels is unique about the Matador is that it is on a corn tortilla inside of a flour tortilla. Haney said he enjoyed the taco and recommends it to anyone who can handle some spice and wants to try something new.

“The brisket was really good, and it was nice and spicy,” Haney said. “There was a little bit of extra sauce, and there was a little bit of extra sour cream, but that didn’t make it taste worse. It was still really good.”

Haney said he was originally curious as to why Torchy’s has a secret menu, since he believes the tacos are good enough to be put on the real menu.

“[The menu] deserves more publicity,” Haney said. “It is a good menu, and so I feel like more people should know about it, but it’s nice to know about something that not many other people don’t know about.”

Home Slice Pizza also offers items off of a secret menu. One item is a $22 sandwich called “The Vatican” and is packed with ham, salami, capicola and provolone cheese baked inside a cheese calzone. Jen Strickland, an owner at Home Slice, said the sandwich is basically a sub inside a calzone, which is why it is named after the Vatican City, a city-state inside Italy.

Strickland was responsible for creating “The Vatican”, and kitchen manager Phil Korshak was responsible for promoting it.

“The idea came about in a meeting. We were talking about what could be a secret menu item at Home Slice,” Strickland said.

Strickland said she was influenced by TV shows when coming up with secret menu items like “The Vatican”. She said she was particularly inspired by the show “Man vs Food”, which features eating challenges at a variety of restaurants where the portions are particularly large.

“I had been watching a lot of Man vs. Food shows and the dishes were so over the top…the idea to try putting an Italian sub inside a calzone just came to me in that meeting, the name right along with it because the Vatican is a country inside a country,” Strickland said.

Strickland believes menu items are a unique part of a restaurant, and she hopes more restaurants will incorporate secret menus, too. She said the menus are a delicious way for owners and employees to put some personality into the food and the menu itself.