Taco Bell's Cheesy Double Beef and Fritos Beefy Crunch Burritos (RE)-REVIEWED!

Two of the most beloved value menu offerings from Taco Bell have returned - but are the much ballyhooed "fan favorites" as good as our nostalgic recollections have led us to believe? 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

Having written so many articles about Taco Bell menu items, I often find myself wondering just how in the hell I am going to be able to do a product review about the latest and greatest Taco Bell foodstuff without sounding like a broken record (or a scratched CD  if you are under the age of 30, or a corrupted MP3 file, if you are under the age of 18.) I mean, there are only so many different ways you can describe a tortilla and its contents, right?

Thankfully, Taco Bell is quite a bit more than just another fast food establishment. Indeed, it is a shining exemplar of American consumerism excess, with a fervid fandom that rivals the intense team loyalty of just about any sports organization. There is unquestionably a "Taco Bell culture," and the social media origins of the returning Beefy Crunch and Cheesy Double Beef Burritos demonstrates both its enormity and passion for all things Bell.

About five years ago, the establishment introduced a $1 sour-cream, beef and rice burrito, which also came loaded with a handful of spicy Fritos chunks. Unsurprisingly, the product proved a smash hit with stoners and broke ass college students across America, but eventually, it was bumped off the main menu to make way for the Bell's grandest marketing blitzkrieg to date - the Doritos Locos Tacos. 

So, for most Americans, it has been about five years since they last tasted the Beefy Crunch Burrito. Because we really don't have anything more important to do with our lives than start up petitions to bring back novelty fast food items, a Facebook campaign urging T.B. To resurrect the item eventually grew to 41,000 backers. The leader of the so-called "Beefy Crunch Movement" was so adamant that his favorite fast food provider bring back the item that he even mailed them a 14-page manifesto describing in insane detail why the company ought to bring it back into production. 

And - because corporations have a more thorough understanding of the power of social media-borne movements AND the ironic, kooky passions of Generation Bernie - they FINALLY decided to wheel the "fan favorite" product out again. And if that wasn't enough, they even decided to bring back another long-forgotten value-priced item, the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito, at the same rock-bottom price of just-o uno dinero. 

As you can no doubt see, the exterior tortilla shells are completely unremarkable. It's just your standard, soft flour wrap, slightly toasted but not enough to make it more crispy than mushy (except, maybe, around the enclosed "folded" pocket corners.) While the recipe should be the same no matter where you pick up the burritos, we must remind ourselves that humans are indeed fallible creatures, so the overall quality of your wrapped comestible will vary. By now, though, you should have a firm idea of which restaurants in your vicinity make the best burritos, and which ones have insanely high turnover rates and are stocked with high school juniors that just don't give a fuck. And yes, one glimpse at the haphazardly constructed pseudo Tex-Mex meal offering on the right ought to tell you PRECISELY the type of personnel staffing the Bell nearest my abode.

Let's start with the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito first, why don't we? For those not in the loop, the product was introduced at the height of the Great Recession as an 89 cent item, and was officially discontinued in 2010 (although I have heard reports that the product, in some locales, was on the menu up until 2012.) As the name implies, the hook here if that you get a double portion of seasoned beef and a shit load of melted cheese (with some rice in between, playing the stratosphere to the troposphere of ground up cow and the mesosphere of congealed udder runoff.)

To be frank (but not this Frank), I really don't have any recollections of the original Cheesy Double Beef Burrito, so yeah, the nostalgia quotient isn't too high for me here. On the whole, it is a fairly serviceable little burrito, although I'm not entirely sure my local Bell really doubled the meat ratio for my $1 item. It's good, I suppose, but honestly, nothing worth writing home about. Speaking of, isn't it about time that colloquialism was replaced with "nothing worth sending an email about?" anyway? 

And now we come to the big enchilada (which, technically, isn't an enchilada, but you know what I'm trying to say.) Now, I do vividly recall the Fritos Beefy Crunch Burrito from back in 2011 and eating a whole shit load of them - this, despite the fact that my professed food faith back then was "vegetarian." Hey, when you are a broke-ass junior in college, ain't nobody got time for food ethics, y'know. Of course, anyone with even a cursory understanding of the Fritos Beefy Crunch Burrito can see where the staffers at my nearest Bell royally messed up...

...those no-count motherfuckers used REGULAR Fritos when we all know you have to use those spicy red ones! Needless to say, this spectacular display of ineptness irked me to no end, so after I was down setting fire to the establishment - oh, the things you can get away with when nobody working the late night shift speaks English as a first language - I hauled my ass off to a better Taco Bell affiliate literally a county over. Extreme measures, some may say, but then again, we've been waiting five years for these suckers to make a comeback ... not only is a little arson to be expected, it might as well be encouraged. 

It may have taken me an extra 30 minutes in combined queue-and-sitting-in-traffic waiting time, but seeing this tightly rolled beauty was well worth it. In the pantheon of Taco Bell products - from the long, long forgotten first wave of Loaded Potato Grillers to the short-lived Country A.M. Crunchwrap to the blink-and-you-missed-'em Chickstar wraps - the Fritos Beefy Crunch Burrito is certainly one of the more gustatorily pleasing novelty products the franchise has released this decade. It is big, it is bulky, and - despite the pell-mell assortment of ingredients - it actually does taste surprisingly delicious. Alas, did the Bell meddle with the tried-and-true formula for this re-do, George Lucas-style? 

Thankfully, the answer there is a big "nope, they sure didn't." Indeed, the relaunched Fritos Beefy Crunch Burritos - when properly assembled by a well-trained and qualified crew - taste EXACTLY the same as it did in our Year of the Lord 2011. Rest assured, obscure fast food menu offering fanatics, T.B took great strides to ensure the historic quality of the product remains intact for its big re-introduction. The tortillas are still hefty and a little pokey (as you would expect from a burrito stuffed fool of fiery corn chips), and the amalgamation of greasy beef and sour cream is just sheer, obesity-baiting perfection. A fast food behemoth that has more or less made its cultural imprint by providing filling, low-cost, weird-ass novelty consumer products, this remains one of the absolute most brilliant - and astonishingly tasty - creations the Almighty Bell has ever produced. And at just one dollar, even the most lumbering lard-asses out there can pound their colons into Tex-Mex submission for less than an Abe Lincoln. Ultimately, the popularity of the product relaunch will determine whether or not the second wave of Fritos Beefy Crunch Burritos is a two-and-done failed experiment, but financial hit or not, I at least hope Team Bell makes an effort to release the offering as a Shamrock Shake\Pumpkin Spice Latte-like seasonal item every Cinco de Mayo. I mean, considering all the Metformin I have to take after spending the last five years reviewing nearly every limited time only product they have hawked to the masses - yes, even the Cap'n Crunch-co-branded cinnamon roll balls - I think that is the absolute LEAST they owe me, and human civilization as a whole. 

And if the relaunched burritos wasn't a big enough deal, guess what else Taco Bell decided to roll back out? Consider me tickled pink when I waltzed into my neighborhood Bell and saw a whole slew of these bad boys just hanging out behind the cash register, anxiously awaiting to be stuffed in those little plastic cubby holes next to the sporks and brown paper towels. By now, my adulation for Diablo Sauce is well documented, so I shan't squander too much time restating what everybody with half a brain and  quasi-functioning taste buds already know. Rest assured, however, that this stuff is H-O-T (at least a 7 on the "adjusted for white people" Scoville scale), flavorful and the perfect complement to your value-priced nostalgia-ritos. Also, it will make your butthole burn for at least a solid 24 hours, but hey - that's the price you gotta' pay sometimes.

So, to recap? The Cheesy Double Beef thing is just sorta' meh, but a good goddamn, is the Fritos Beefy Crunch Burrito - especially one soaked in the savory, NWO Wolfpack-colored hot sauce - a fantastic little novelty product. And who knows? Perchance the success of the relaunched 'rito will convince the Bell to trot out some of its other long-forgotten offerings. I mean, if Burger King is willing to bring back the motherfucking Yumbo, they at least owe us a L-T-O Bell Beefer, don't they? 

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Taco Bell's EVEN NEWER Crunchwrap Sliders!

I hope you like semi-spicy, junk-food-laden Hot Pockets variations with contents that resemble vomit!

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

Even when Taco Bell isn't that great, it's still fairly enjoyable. Granted, the products have a tendency to run together due to their textural and mouthfeel similarities - if you told me to describe the difference between a Sriracha Quesarito and a Daredevil Loaded Griller (any of those motherfuckers), I don't think I could - but who cares if everything on the menu is fairly indistinguishable? What matters is that the Bell, even at their lowest level, is still affordable, filling and gustatorily satisfying enough to warrant indiscriminate nom after indiscriminate nom. Their almost-monthly product variations may not be getting any points for originality, but they score plenty of points when it comes to consistency. 

When I first started working on this article, I totally forgot that I had already covered the first wave of Crunchwrap Sliders last year. As such, I assumed that I was ordering four all-new products, but in reality, just two of the Sliders you can pick up at the Bell in early 2016 are original items. So if you are wondering about the quality of the two returning offerings - which are modeled after breastaurant sampler menu favorites, thematically - do yourself a favor and click this link right ' chere.

The Sliders themselves are pretty interesting little menu offerings. They aren't quite burritos, but you can't really call them tostados, either. Instead, they remain in this weird fast food interphase, as if a quesadilla and an enchilada were locked inside the teleportation machine from The Fly. That they come in paper pouches more befitting bread sticks just adds to their offbeat uniqueness. 

Aesthetically, they ain't much to look at. They are just slightly toasted tortillas wrapped up in a pseudo-pentagon shape, with a whole bunch of weird shit sealed inside them. They are fairly bulky, though, and their misshapen forms - you ever try to wrap up chunks of chicken and Frito's without the end outcome looking bumpy? - give the Sliders a certain eccentric charm. 

As far as our new dining options are concerned, we've got two new items to chew on. First, let's take a gander at the Sriracha Chicken Crunchwrap Slider, why don't we?

You know, it is a good thing these products are wrapped up tight, because if anyone saw the internalized contents displayed all open-face-like, dry heaving would probably ensue. Make no mistake, this stuff is uglier than homemade soap; the blend of puréed chicken, corn chip fragments and neon orange sauce looks less like something you would eat than something someone has already digested and barfed right back up.

Alas, if you can overlook the fact the product looks like ginger sauce-soaked cat food dumped inside a tortilla, you'll discover a fairly enjoyable fast food offering that is actually quite a bit spicier than most Taco Bell selections. The chicken is a little watery and the Fritos really don't add much at all to the formula, but the sweet chili flavor definitely makes everything come together. It is an odd mishmash of  textures and shapes, to be sure, but all in all, it is not a bad little novelty burrito. 

So there is already a Beefy Cheesy Nacho Slider out there, but the SPICY BEEFY NACHO CRUNCHWRAP SLIDER ups the ante by, uh, making it spicy? Yes, yes it does, indeed. And not unlike its Sriracha Chicken cousin, this thing looks all sorts of disgusting inside the tortilla. Shit, I'm half-tempted to post an up close photo of an open sore or my latest bowel movement; I highly doubt anyone would be able to distinguish them from the utter grossness of what the foodstuff actually resembles. 

Fortunately, although the product may look like diarrhea spray squirted all over a soft taco shell, the product itself is pretty yummy. This is definitely one of the spiciest Taco Bell products to come out in a long time, with the molten-cheese-soaked beef and Fritos chunks doused in a savory, smoky, Jalapeño ranch dressing that I am pretty sure the company has never trotted out before. Sure, it is no Lava Sauce, but it definitely does the trick. Overall, this thing may be nothing more than just a slight tweaking of a pre-existing product, but hey; at least it is one hell of a re-tweaking, no? 

OK, so these newfangled Crunchwrap Sliders aren't exactly going to set the fast food world on fire. Yes, they are rather formulaic and hardly adventurous remixes, but when the end product is so sinfully delicious, who cares? Simply put, the two newest Sliders - despite looking like rolled up barf - are really, really tasty, and at just one dollar a pop, you can scarf down enough of them to give you gastrointestinal regret for less than it costs to buy a decent spiral-bound notebook. It's classic Bell, through and through; familiar, affordable, aesthetically revolting, probably unhealthy as hell and unquestionably delicious. 

When it comes to drive-thru dining, looks and originality are both vastly overrated. While other fast food giants try to church up their line-up with pretentious, overpriced "premium" offerings, the Bell continues to excel in economical, on-the-go nomming, with these latest Sliders demonstrative of the franchise's formulaic greatness. They may not be the prettiest or most creative foodstuffs out there, but ultimately? I reckon I'll vouch for such satisfying, cost-effective sameness over pricey, ostentatious "innovation" any day of the week.

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Taco Bell's Cap'n Crunch Delights!

I really, really hope you like lots of red-on-red images, folks...

When Taco Bell's highly touted breakfast menu went national last year, a lot of publicity was given to the ill-fated Waffle Taco. Sure, it was a pretty gross miscue on par with the Arch Deluxe, but all of that negative word-of-mouth obfuscated what were two undeniable triumphs of the brand roll-out. First, the A.M. Crunchwrap -- as proven by its myriad variations released over the last 365 days -- was a bona-fide fast food success. The other big winner in the re-branding process was a mere $1 item that many big chain breakfast enthusiasts initially overlooked -- the Cinnabon Delights.

Despite bearing more than a passing resemblance to "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" stalwart Meatwad, the Delights were (and are) precisely what the name implies -- a delicious, super-satisfying ball of sugar, enveloping an even more satisfying molten creme center. That they kinda' looked like hush puppies and left brown flecks of cinnamon dust and granulated sugar underneath your cuticles were mere asides -- this stuff was, in every sense of the word, tremendous.

That Taco Bell would eventually release a variation of the Cinnabon Delights isn't surprising in the slightest. What is surprising, however, is who Taco Bell partnered with for that product permutation -- Cap'n freaking Crunch.

Now, I enjoy his limited time only Halloween and Christmas flavored cereals as much as the next guy, but on the whole, I've never really been enthusiastic about the regular Cap'n Crunch cereal. It doesn't taste bad or anything, it just tastes, well, too normal for my liking. When I bite into a breakfast cereal, I want something unique and kooky, like Yummy Mummy or S'mores-flavored Krave. Unfortunately, as hearty as his puffy comestibles may be, he just ain't hitting me with enough of the weird to keep me interested in his volumes upon volumes of product variations.

But these Cap'n Crunch Delights, though? Well, they are something altogether different. Not only do they share more in common with the standard Cinnabon Delights offerings, you'd be hard-pressed to even detect the Cap'n Crunch flavoring in the menu item. Let's take a closer gander at these suckers, why don't we?

Right off the bat, let's get the testicles jokes out of the way. Yes, yes, these things do indeed share an uncanny resemblance to a pair of cherry red cojones -- an aesthetic made even worse since the flakes of cereal really make it look like the products have tufts of hair. For god's sake, the two I ordered even came in the dreaded "semi-colon" formation, which occasionally happens to guys testes' when one of them flips over sideways. Obviously, if you can't get past the mental image of chomping into Hellboy's nutsack, you should probably abandon ship while you still can. (Honest to the Almighty true story time, folks: when I ordered my pair, I referred to them as "Cap'n Crunch's balls," and the cashier almost had a nervous breakdown from laughing so hard.)

After a while, thankfully, these things stop resembling the devil's bollocks and begin to look more like strawberries with orange crap glued on them. Despite the claret hue, the balls ... I mean, 'Delights' ... still have a very profound cinnamon taste and texture, which completely overpowers the bits of cereal. I mean, yeah, you can technically taste the Cap'n Crunch, but only for a second or two before the sweet spiciness starts running around your tongue like a retard on fire. And interestingly enough, the red dye stuff doesn't seem to melt off on your fingers, which makes me want to ask some heavy questions about what kind of additives Taco Bell is adding to these things to maintain such a healthy -- albeit certainly unnatural -- sheen. 

Of course, the real highlight of the Delights ain't the Crunch, but the ultra-delicious, super gooey creme core that's probably one of the ten most pleasurable things I've ever placed inside my mouth. Essentially, it tastes the same as the standard Cinnabon Delights ball, but it has a really nice pop that's complemented by by the cereal bits. It's like getting a bit of granola in your vanilla milkshake -- sure, the textures clash a bit, but it's a harmonious clash that creates a gustatory Woodstock on your taste buds. And yes, I know full well the image above looks like what the kids today call a "creampie" -- and no, I am most definitely NOT talking about the beloved dessert offering.  

It's kinda' hard to give you a quick wrap-up thought on the new item. I mean, it is pretty much unnecessary, and it tastes so much like the original item that you kind of have to wonder what's the point. That said, it definitely has a cool aesthetic (a crimson red doughnut hole that spits tartar sauce-hued goop at you when you bite into it!) and the exterior mouthfeel, with all that kooky crunchiness going on, does taste quite unlike anything you've probably eaten at a fast food establishment before. When it comes to "cross-branded" novelty foods -- i.e., your Reese's flavored Oreos and what have you -- I tend to straddle the line on whether such is a neat consumer ploy or something really, really stupid and lazy. Essentially a tri-branded product, the new Delights are certainly excessive, but beyond their wacky external appearance, they're actually a pretty damn yummy (and super-affordable) drive-thru impulse purchase.

When the new Cap'n Crunch Delights were first announced, I figured it was nothing more than another smarmy, pseudo-ironic, hipster-baiting marketing move. While I still think that's the case to some extent, the overall product turned out way better than I thought it would. It's yummy, filling and unlike virtually every other fast food breakfast pastry, it doesn't dye your teeth a funky color or leave chunks of sugary dough all over your clothing when you go to town on 'em. Believe it or not, these things aren't just value-priced comestibles targeting the stoner demographics -- somehow, someway, the Almighty Bell was able to take what conceptually sounds like the grossest thing ever and package it into one of the most sickeningly enjoyable guilty pleasure fast food snacks in recent memory.

And, of course, the popularity of the product lends itself to some much more interesting permutations down the line. Halloween is nearing, guys -- how about whipping up some Boo Berry and Count Chocula Delights to go along with these suckers? Or how about Lucky Charms Delights in time for St. Patrick's Day? Hell, for that matter, why not go full on retro-revival and bring back Baron von Redberry or Sir Grapefellow in all-new, cinnamon and sugar-paste form?

You've got yourself a license to print money, here, Bell. Golden opportunities like this one just don't present themselves everyday, y'know...

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Taco Bell's All New TACO BISCUITS!

Surely, it has to be a better menu item than the waffle taco, right?

It's been a while since I last wrote about Taco Bell. Alas, that's what happens when the best you can give the general public are quesadillas masquerading as nachos ... come on guys, we all know we're having the wool pulled over our eyes on that one. 

Of course, there are a few new additions to the Taco Bell breakfast menu, and I recently woke up before noon for a change to try a few of them. Anchoring the new wave of morning-time products is the "Taco Biscuit," which is ... well, pretty much exactly what it sounds like, I guess. The Bell is offering a pretty lengthy set of permutations of the item; you can get one with egg and cheese, sausage and egg, and sausage and cheese only, or you can spring another dollar and get the two marquee variations, the egg, cheese AND bacon biscuit taco and the egg, cheese AND sausage biscuit taco. Obviously, if we're going to cover these products in-depth, we have to try the deluxe edition; I know the readers here at IIIA expect absolutely nothing less in terms of semi-sincere fast food journalism. And as an added bonus (as opposed to one of those rare subtracted bonuses), I even plunked down some change for a newer-ish Crunchwrap product, which is we all know by now, is among the greatest delicacies ever presented by a national food chain. And I am being 100 percent honest about that, I think. 

So first up, we've got our sausage, egg and cheese taco biscuit. In case you were wondering, we are indeed working with a legitimate flour biscuit base here, although it may appear as if the animal byproduct contents are housed inside a chalupa tortilla. 

I am not really sure how the product fares compared to your standard Egg McMuffin, since I haven't really tried a fast food biscuit in like, 10 or so years. I don't know if it is my mind working against me or the product itself is that starchy, but I really had a bit of difficulty swallowing the dough. It was super duper salty, which is something you really don't expect from a Taco Bell product. After a few chews, I was able to gulp it down sans incident, but just to be on the safe side? If you plan on eating one of these things, I HIGHLY suggest having a beverage nearby. 

The other taco biscuit, strangely enough, did not look anything like its menu stablemate. Here, the cheese seemed to almost seal the taco biscuit shut like an envelope, with the yellowy-egg contents flowing from the sides of the item like a set of yolky jug handles.

Strangely enough, the bacon, egg and cheese taco biscuit was something of a misnomer, since the contents therein were actually much closer to being bacon bits than legitimate bacon strips. Even weirder, the bacon bits were literally buried underneath the eggs, residing in this shadowy, subcutaneous cavern near the bottom of the biscuit. From a logistical standpoint, the problem here should be obvious -- every time you tilt the taco biscuit to take a bite, half the goddamn bacon rolls out the other side. Granted, it's not exactly a problem that's unsolvable (if you pinch the corners of the biscuit shut, nowhere near as much salted pork flows out), but it's still a bit of a nuisance, especially for a breakfast item meant to be eaten on the go. 

As decent as the Taco Biscuits where, however, if you stop by any Taco Bell in the morning and don't walk away with some kind of Crunchwrap permutation, you've failed life and hard. Seeing as how I've already tried out the gravy sausage and California avocado blends, I decided to try out the only A.M. Crunchwrap offering that, up to this point, I haven't wrapped my lips and bicuspids around; the steak, egg and cheese variation.

As expected, the stuff was just dynamite. Never in a million years what I have thought smashing a hashbrown inside a tortilla and marinating the inside with chipotle sauce would've led to a superlative fast food offering, but paint me all shades of wrong, folks. Really, this concept has no boundaries; I am convinced you could chunk Spam and pineapple rings inside one of these things and it would still taste marvelous. Needless to say, the steak, egg and cheese 'Wrap was an utter delight, and in my humblest o' opinions, worlds better than either of the taco biscuits I tried. It's no skin off the proverbial tits of the biscuits, though; they were quite good for what they were, but frankly, outside of the weird shape, they weren't anything you couldn't pick up at a gas station. This Crunchwrap though? There's only one place in the freaking world you can get one of those, and I reckon it's some of the best money you'll spend on any kind of breakfast offering, fast food or otherwise. That kind of begs the question, however: why isn't Taco Bell selling these babies all day long? I await your response, Bell ... me and everybody else in America. 

SPECIAL HAPPY GOOD TIME BONUS EXTRA ADDITIONAL MATERIAL!

TACO BELL'S NEW DIABLO SAUCE!

One of my biggest complaints about Taco Bell has always been the sauce selections. Not only did they take away that really savory, smoky salsa that used to come in a purple packet, the so-called "fire sauce" the establishment has been touting as its "hottest" condiment is one of the most pitifully weak offerings of its kind at any restaurant. At least the guys at Huddle House leave a bottle of Tapatio to sprinkle on your omelets -- at the Bell, we are afforded no such luxuries.

While Del Taco tends to lose the overall food quality battle, they've no doubt trumped Taco Bell in terms of sauces for years now. Well, much to my jubilant surprise, I recently learned that T.B. has begun offering an all new "Diablo Sauce," and fellas, it does NOT disappoint. The packaging alone is just bad-ass, a pitch black packet with about two dozen scorching hell fires emblazoned upon it. Before you even open this sucker up, you just know it's going to tear your tongue a new asshole. You know, if tongues actually had assholes and stuff. 

It's kind of hard to describe the overall taste and texture of the sauce, but I assure you it is nothing at all like the puny "fire sauce" offering. In addition to have a spicy kick that at least equals Del Taco's hottest salsa, the newfangled Diablo Sauce is also a lot smokier and chunkier, with a nice, meaty flavor that really adds some texture to your burrito. Not only is it hot as hell, it's also flavorful as hell, and it really gels quite well with a whole host of Bell offerings. I'm not quite sure if it is a regional-only item or something that's gone nationwide, but the next time you're near a Taco Bell, feel free to waltz on in there and ask the manager if he or she has a couple of packets in yet. And then, when their back is turned, stuff about 20 of the motherfuckers into your pockets ... remember, the unspoken social code considers condiments public amenities, and are therefore free to all. 

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The New "Smothered Burrito" from Taco Bell!

Or as we used to call ‘em, “an enchilada.” 

So, I was driving the other day, when I saw this mysterious placard at the local Taco Bell.

A “Smothered Burrito,” you say? Disappointed to some degree by the Bell’s most recent assortment of specialty items, I was more than just a tad intrigued by this newfangled offering. I mean, “smothered” really isn’t the kind of fast food adjective you get to throw around too liberally, so I already had images of cheese and grease-drenched tortillas dancing in my head before I even saw what the actual items looked like.

As I neared the eatery, I saw two posters for the item. Well, they look “smothered,” indeed: a burrito, covered in bean sauce, a couple of different melted cheeses, and the tortilla itself comes stuffed with beans and wild rice. That’s an aesthetic that is mighty hard to turn down, no doubt.

Inside the restaurant, there was one of those cardboard placards on display, once again hailing the arrival of this newfangled “smothered burrito.” Apparently, whatever this dish is, it contains shredded chicken…not exactly the most desirable filler for an individual whose food sexuality can best be described as “pescatarian, but not really good at it.”

Upon closer inspection, however, I realized that I could also acquire one of these here “smothered burritos” with either beef or steak. Of course, those ingredients sound perhaps even less desirable than the afore-mentioned shredded poultry, so when it came time to place my order, I elected to have a “smothered burrito” -- henceforward, referred to as a “smoritto,” with just beans and rice.

Whereas a majority of Taco Bell items come wrapped in a fine paper protector, the “smoritto” came instead in a plastic container. As a result, the heat of the “smoritto” caused the plastic to fog up considerably. It’s rare that you can purchase a Taco Bell product with condensation on it, so I was extremely excited at this point.

The big reveal for the “smoritto” was impressive, to say the least. The product had a nice, savory aroma to it, and that first whiff of proprietary bean juice is certainly a delightful olfactory sensation.

Empirically, I suppose this item is really nothing more than glorified enchilada. I mean, it’s covered in cheese, and a nice smoky liquid substance, and it’s more chewy than crunchy. So, yeah, in other words, the “smoritto” is actually JUST an enchilada, only called something more sensationalistic. They could’ve have at least thrown in some Fritos’ chunks or something.

So, uh, my “smoritto” was a lot more bean-y than rice-y. I mean, yeah, it was there, and you could taste it, but the ratio of bean filling to not-bean filling had to have been at least 85-15.

Similarly, I’m the kind of lad that prefers his beans in actual bean form, as opposed to regurgitated paste. I really can’t complain about the mashed pintos here, but for future reference, it probably wouldn’t hurt you to include some unmolested black beans in upcoming offerings, ‘Bell.

As far as the taste of the offering, however, I really can’t complain. Despite being perhaps overly beanish in texture and flavor, the addendum of chipotle-like sauce, cheese and wild rice certainly was palpable. Really, you’re paying for the mysterious bean sauce here. I don’t know what’s in that unusual orange fluid that the “smoritto” comes swimming in, but whatever it is, it’s delicious. Which, of course, probably means its made out of people or something.

So, what more can I say about the new Taco Bell “smoritto?” Well, not much else, which is why I’m ending this article in like, two sentences. Do you like enchiladas, and do you like tortillas with a lot of beans that are marinated in a thick dousing of stuff that you don’t know what it is but is still tasty? Well, if you do, you’ll probably like the “Smothered Burrito.”

And if not? Well, uh, I guess you probably won’t like the “Smothered Burrito,” then.

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