TBG Eats: Taco Bell's New Value Menu Food

My Current Weight: 178.2 lbs.

I'm officially setting the bar at 185 lbs. If I pass it, then I'm retiring from fast food reviews forever. I mean, Jesus Christ, it's all I've been eating lately. Where's Mrs. Bootleg and how'd she slip past the kitchen sentry?

So, I got an email from m'man Smitty over the weekend. In it, he broke the news that the Bacon Club Chalupa – God's fat bomb – had been removed from the Taco Bell menu. I feared that this would happen. Last Friday afternoon, while driving 'round town, I noticed ginormous window placards in my neighborhood TB that advertised the newest additions to their Big Bell Value Menu.

These were the same windows that last week trumpeted the delicious union of ubiquitous farm animals – pig n' chicken – with a warm chalupa shell and club sauce.

Well, "all good things" as they say…let's regrettably move on.

Taco Bell has added several new items to their already awesome Value Menu. Unfortunately, I can't tell y'all if anything was actually removed from the menu to make room as my cheap eat staples (the beef and potato burrito and the grande soft taco) are still on there.

For whatever reason, TB is really pushing their 89-cent Cheesy Double Beef Burrito. You've surely seen the ad spot, which is kind of funny through the first viewing, then exponentially less humorous with each subsequent airing:



I dropped $2.88 on three of the new items.

Big Taste Taco - There's nothing more shame-inducing than shouting a ridiculously named fast food menu item through a drive-thru speaker to an employee who wasn't briefed before she started her shift and is hearing said ridiculous name of this menu item for the first time. ("You want a WHAT taco?"; "(To her supervisor, with speaker still on) Do we have a Big Great Taco?")

This is TB's standard Soft Taco Supreme with the sour cream replaced by "jalapeño sauce" and a few crispy red tortilla strips sprinkled within. It's juuuuuuust OK. The sauce doesn't have any appreciable kick, while the tortilla strips make for an odd, but inoffensive texture, throughout. Unspectacularly edible. Grade: 2.5 (out of 5)

Cheesy Double Beef Burrito - According to Taco Bell, this features "twice the seasoned ground beef" of their regular burritos. Bullshyte. There's certainly a 2:1 rice to beef ratio in this thing, though. The nacho cheese sauce is a nice touch and mine was apparently ladled out at a temperature of 200 degrees. TB claims there was "red sauce" in there, too, but damned if I could taste it. Continuing the theme, this was a definite "meh" and in no way will it unseat its beef and potato-packed brother. Grade: 2.5

3 Layer Nachos - The three layers are: cheese sauce, refried beans and red sauce. All things considered, for 79 cents, you get a fair amount of faux Mexican fare here. The red sauce, though, appears to be just TB's mild pre-packeted taco sauce spooned out by the gallon. They ain't exactly re-inventing the wheel, but it works. Grade: 3