Who doesn’t love a good “Best of” list? Best burgers. Best barbeque. Best beer. If you’re looking for a “Best of” list for fast food, you’re in luck.

Food & Wine went on the hunt for the best fast food in America. But the writers didn’t want the obvious regional fast food joints. Instead, they wanted the “closely held secrets” and gems that weren’t already a national name. Here’s what the writers looked for in a restaurant as they ate their way across the country: at least a handful of locations, counter service, and a robust takeout program.

Alabama’s best fast food, according to Food & Wine? Milo’s. And it was the chain’s secret sauce that cinched the victory.

Here’s what the writers had to say about Alabama’s favorite fast food sauce:

“The dark red condiment is sometimes mistaken for a standard barbecue sauce due to its tomato leanings, while also giving steak sauce vibes, along with the faint umami of a good gravy. This other, one-of-a-kind, don’t-ask-for-the-recipe accompaniment makes its way onto pretty much everything on the menu except the fried pies, though thanks to the generous addition of DIY dispensers in the dozens of Milo’s locations now located around the state, you could probably get away with that.”

There’s a story behind that sauce, of course. Milo Carlton, who opened Milo’s Hamburgers in 1946, developed the recipe. He wanted to make his burgers unique, so he came up with his signature sauce by trial and error and tested it out on his customers until he got it just right. Fast forward to 2011, Tom Dekle and a group of local investors bought Milo’s Hamburgers and expanded the restaurant to include 20 locations around Alabama. Dekle is one of a handful of people who can name the ingredients to the sauce.

“It’s not only the ingredients,” Dekle told AL.com’s Bob Carlton in 2020. “It’s the sequence in which the ingredients are put together. It has to have precise temperatures, and because it’s a cooked sauce, there is a cooking time at the various stages.”

They also singled out the crinkle cut fries dusted with seasoned salt and, of course, the sweet tea that is “a household staple around the state.”

Read the full Food & Wine list.

[READ MORE: 10 things to know about Milo’s Sauce]

Milo’s also won AL.com’s reader poll for Alabama’s best fast-food bracket in 2021. Between Checkers (founded in Mobile!), Foosackly’s, Guthrie’s, Hamburger Heaven, Jack’s, Milo’s, Sneaky Pete’s and Taco Casa, we let readers whittle down the list and to pick the state’s go-to spot. The Final Four were Milo’s, Checkers, Jack’s and Taco Casa. The finals came down between Milo’s and Jack’s, with Milo’s narrowly winning the vote.