LYT's Fast Food Review: Taco Bell Decades
Finally no editors to tell me this is stupid, then assign other writers to copy me
For some of my readers, this may come as a surprise, but pretty consistently, if any of my friends ever talks about something I've written, it's my fast food reviews. The sweet, sweet irony of the fact that folks always want to see them back is that, for the most part, they were hated at nearly every publication I did them for. Geekweek was the exception – and it was there that I won a runner-up LA Press Club award for them – but Geekweek did not pay. I only recently learned that the fast food reviews contributed to my job at Wizard ending, although that was probably an inevitability for many other reasons, not the least of which was that I was writing editorial content that couldn't be easily found on the main site that didn't even have a search box. As for most of the other publications, after I left, they would usually get someone else to write about fast food. Nowadays, everybody does. I took the heat so y'all could run...for the border. Or the bathroom. Or the boardroom? Whichever.
Don't expect these at the pace I used to do them – my cholesterol has become predictably high in my middle age and I don't want to die for a story. I'll try to give each one extra words, though I do not promise more meaning to them. Like fast food, the content will be there, but you may not get very nourished. We'll see.
Anyway, I used to love Taco Bell a lot. It didn't exist in Ireland, and when I finally moved to North Carolina, I ate it constantly during my half-year in Chapel Hill. When I moved to Cullowhee, there wasn't a Taco Bell for an hour around, so it was always a must-stop every time I was in Asheville. My freshman year at USC, I drove some of my friends nuts by always wanting to eat there.
Sometime in the '90s, though, it got less good. The taste and texture of the meat changed significantly for the worse. What Del Taco tastes like now, Taco Bell used to. Taco Bell these days is all about branded junkfood tie-ins, like Starburst flavor drinks or Doritos taco shells. So when Taco Bell started advertising a nostalgia campaign, I'll be real...I knew they weren't suddenly going to change back the meat, but I was all in nonetheless. I barely eat at Taco Bell any more because my wife hates it, but even she couldn't deny me the nostalgia push. [It also has the edge on the Del when it comes to nachos, with lighter chips and midrange options.]
Taco Bell Decades features the return of some older, discontinued items, since the whole fiasco of canceling the Mexican Pizza probably made them realize fans miss stuff. I mean, they could just look at McDonald's, which barely ever changes the menu for anything, and understand consistency can be good when it comes to fast food. But nahh, you can tell by their graphics that they wanna be hip and with it and radical and trendy, and...does anyone have the heart to tell them Baja Blast isn't really new any more?
Anyhow, I was pretty happy to see the MexiMelt back on the menu, as that was always a staple in my order – once they changed their beef, I would substitute in chicken. Unlike the Bell's quesadillas, which often don't melt right, MexiMelt used processed Jack that would semi-liquefy perfectly. Add meat and pico de gallo (basically chopped tomatoes and onions with herbs, for those of you poor souls who don't know), and this item was a slice of fast-casual Mexfection.
The old one was about a buck and change – the new one is $2.99, and more if you switch up the meat. It's worth it. The sense-memory effect takes me back to North Carolina in the '90s, and the cheese de-solidifies as well as it ever did. It's not as good value, in dollars and cents, but the brain-feels that could only come with time make it hit the spot.
I never cared much for a Gordita Supreme, since Supreme generally means sour cream, which I don't like. But fuck, did they discontinue Gorditas? I guess so. Because if not, it would be easy to custom a Supreme one. You can't really customize a MexiMelt because the cooking time is what makes it. But Gordita Supreme? I won't miss it when the promo's gone. More surprising to me is the Tostada being on this list. I rarely get them, but I didn't think they were gone. They taste like they ought – lettuce and beany crunch with cheese on top and that Taco Bell sauce, yum – but at the same time, $1.99 for something that used to be 59 cents and you could more easily replicate at home than maybe anything else on the menu feels like a ripoff. Again, if it brings the brainfeels for you, though, it's worth the upcharge.
I never ordered a caramel apple empanada even back in the day, so I have no nostalgia for that and left it alone. Empanadas need to not be mass-produced, I say – if they're frozen or premade they tend to use too much bland pastry. I gotta do them fresh or not at all. Certainly not fast food.
That leaves the Green Sauce Burrito, which I do not remember, ever. Mandela Effect, maybe – this never existed except in another dimension opened by Satanists, and...sorry, I'm referencing a movie that none of you in your right minds will ever watch. I think the Qanon guys buy into the theory, though.
Like many Taco Bell burritos, and actual Mexican ones, this item is wrapped at both ends. Oftentimes, this is a trick – with the Grilled Stuft Burritos, for example, it's a way to minimize the space for filling, simply by putting a lot of folded-up tortilla at each end. This item had a good amount of filling, though not in perfect proportions. It seemed like all the cheese was at one end, most of the green sauce at the other, then heavy beans in the middle. A perfect bean burrito needs a balance of beans and cheese in every bite – this wasn't quite there, though the green sauce, similar to the verde sauce they'll give you in packets with Cantina Tacos, helps.
I note that on their website, the burrito is pictured open at one end, not folded on both. Maybe my server made a mistake. Regardless, $2.19 is a LOT for a glorified bean burrito. Del Taco puts green sauce in their regular bean burrito at no extra charge.
As for the collector cups, they are only offered (at my Taco Bell, anyway) for medium drinks, and they didn't have the '80s orange logo one in stock. Seriously, now: since when does any fast food joint do collector cups in goddamn MEDIUM? Collector cups are supposed to be huge, gotta-run-to-the-can-the-milisecond-you-get-home size. Anything less is fundamentally un-American. It's like how am/pm right now advertises a large soda for super cheap, so you grab the biggest one, only to be told no, that's an EXTRA-large, and it costs three times as much. Let large mean the biggest, and mean the collector cup! One of the best things about our country is huge cups. You go to England and get served everything in a whiskey glass. When I lived with my mother-in-law during the pandemic, I had to stock up on Dickey's Barbecue big yellow cups to get the amount of water I needed to drink in the desert. BIG CUPS. Taco Bell could have made way more money if they'd just done that.
Also, they should bring back Cinnamon Crispas. Those were the best, replaced with stupid Cinnamon Twists because fried air is cheaper than fried flour tortillas. I'm sure you have the correct opinion if you lived through the '80s. Does anyone remember the Volcano Burrito they once had to promote the movie Congo? Nacho cheese in the middle. Glorious. The best thing to have anything to do with the movie Congo, besides Bruce Campbell.
Dunno how much longer this promo is gonna go, since chicken nuggets are apparently gonna be their next big thing – talk about faux-Mexican fast food stealing 'Murcan jobs! Run and get that MexiMelt, then run to the bathroom if you must.
Figuratively and literally, that shit is worth it.
I worked at "Taco Hell" in high school... for about 3 months. That was enough for me!