This might be the Green Burrito from the Taco Bell Decades Menu, except there is no green sauce just beans.
Like Taylor Swift, Taco Bell is currently drawing on its history to put together an episodic menu. Unlike Taylor Swift, Taco Bell doesn’t have much of a catalog considering their products endlessly repeat the same small set of ingredients. Against our better judgment, we decided to give it a try.
Taco Bell Tostada.
Our local Taco Bell is right up the road, a mile at most. We ordered on the app (efficient) and specified ASAP as our pickup time. This was about 11:30 am, early in the lunch service. We were there in five minutes and gratified that our meal was already bagged, sealed and waiting in a clearly marked pickup shelf. So far so good.
The experience went downhill as soon as we opened the bag: the carefully selected assortment of sauces had been left out. The items inside were either room temperature or cold. They could not have been prepared on the spot and might have been left over from the previous day’s service.
Taco Bell Gordita.
First up was the Tostada. Some internet sleuthing confirms this was indeed an early offering in the 1960s, when they had to provide a phonetic pronunciation for customers unfamiliar with Mexican food. It was $2.19, not a bad price. Tasted ok except the base tortilla was cold and the container had been crushed and the product cracked in two during its brief journey from the kitchen to the pickup shelf.
We also tried the Gordita, from the 1990s. This has a puffy flour tortilla, though Taco Bell calls it “flatbread” so as not to frighten us. Inside was ground beef and a decent sprinkle of veggies. We’d order this again though the $2.99 price takes it out of the bargain category.
Meximelt maybe, but without the cheese.
The Decades menu also includes the Meximelt and Green Burrito, but I don’t think we actually received either. Unlike at McDonald’s, the wrappers are not labeled so it would be easy for a demotivated server to grab whatever is lying around. We received a folded over soft taco containing a decent array of chopped tomato and onion and a base of meat and sauce; this might have been a Meximelt except that, instead of a “three cheese blend” we got zero cheese.
The final item was a very large flour tortilla folded around a wad of refried beans with a few strands of grated cheese, no sauce. Was this supposed to be the green burrito? There is nothing on the menu to match what we received; even the basic bean burrito includes red sauce and onions.
WTF?
We know a few food-savvy people who claim to be Taco Bell fans; their argument is that it is the healthiest fast food because it doesn’t contain a lot of additives. Our kids used to insist on Taco Bell and we’d indulge them from time to time. But no mas. With such theatrical overpromising and incompetent under delivering, they’ve surely jumped the tiburon this time. ¡Afuera!
Taco Heck. Are you saying they aren’t adequate anymore?
Something like that. No more runs to the border for me.
Oh well. Cheap fast food. Now: not cheap, not fast, barely food. In the good old daze?, maybe better? It seemed so.
ugh….definitely not worth giving it a try….thanks for suffering through it all.
I tried Taco Bell for the first time in 1993 in the old mall where Home Depot is. I decided I didn’t need to eat it again. FF to ~2017, my son wanted a chicken sandwich from KFC. Out of curiosity, I got some Taco Bell. What a mess. That Wilton franchise is a disgrace.
That store was the source of my dispiriting Taco Bell experience. Here and elsewhere, I find it telling that Yum Brands has chosen to co-locate KFC and Taco Bell. As if, once you’ve decided to have fast food, it really doesn’t matter what fast food you get. And Wilton Taco Bell takes it a step further by assuming it also doesn’t matter whether you give customers what they have ordered.