One of Taco Bell’s greatest strengths is its affordability. Even as the price of fast food has continued to rise, Taco Bell’s menu has managed to maintain a fairly reasonable price tag. Building a menu around economical prices does have its downsides, however. It can feel lopsided at times, and there are plenty of items that just don’t quite hit the way they once did — especially when considering how far you can stretch your dollar.
Taco Bell has done a good job of creating a menu that caters to its fans. If you like eating at Taco Bell, there’s a solid chance you’ll like everything on offer. However, a committed perusal of the menu has revealed a list of items that should be skipped during your next visit. Whether it’s a price point mismatch or a better version of the item elsewhere on the menu, here is a list of 10 items to avoid next time you’re at Taco Bell.
Crunchy Taco
While the Crunchy Taco is part of Taco Bell’s early 1960s origin story, the fact remains that it’s just not that good. Sure, it’s among the cheapest items on the menu, and it’s admittedly kind of fun to see how many of them you can eat in one sitting. However, when you put the culinary magnifying glass up to the Taco Bell crunchy taco, you’ve got nothing but flaws.
For starters, a crunchy shell in the fast food ecosystem is simply a nightmare. These shells barely have enough structural integrity to keep the ground beef, lettuce, and cheese secure. When you toss it in a bag with anything else, it’s definitely getting crushed to death. This dubious architecture also makes crunchy tacos extremely difficult to eat on the go. If the taco isn’t pulverized in the wrapper, the shell will shatter into oblivion after your first bite.
There isn’t anything wrong with how the Crunchy Taco tastes, so it’s really on this list because it’s such a pain to eat. However, its core ingredient composition also gets a penalty for how basic it is. If you’re headed to Taco Bell with crunchy tacos on your mind, at least spend the extra buck to upgrade it to a crunchy taco supreme. You’ll still get the messy delivery system, but at least you’ll get some sour cream and tomatoes in the mix.
Soft Taco
Taco Bell’s Soft Taco is a vast improvement over the Crunchy Taco. Its softer tortilla can take a beating in the Taco Bell bag, which immediately solves the Crunchy Taco’s main issue. Once that problem is solved, however, you’re still left with an extremely basic flavor profile. Like the Crunchy Taco, the Soft Taco only has seasoned beef, lettuce, and cheese. If you happen to be craving a Taco Bell Soft Taco, then do as Dolly Parton does and opt for a Soft Taco Supreme — you’re worth it.
The main reason the Soft Taco joins the Crunchy Taco on this list is because they’re both basic enough to be featured as add-ons in Taco Bell’s combo meals. It’s safe to say that the Soft Taco’s appeal improves when it’s used as an appetizer for perhaps a Chicken Quesadilla or a Mexican Pizza. However, this is really as far as the Soft Taco’s value goes when it comes to Taco Bell’s overall menu.
Spicy Potato Soft Taco
There was a time when the Spicy Potato Soft Taco wouldn’t be on this list, but that was before the restaurant unveiled its game-changing Nacho Fries. With those on the menu, Taco Bell’s spicy potatoes became the ultimate second fiddle. This isn’t to say that the spicy potatoes are bad in any way. They also can’t help the fact that Nacho Fries happened to be the most successful product launch in Taco Bell’s history. This taco is simply on the list because it’s a spicy potato dish that isn’t as good as Nacho Fries.
It remains a great option for plant-based diets and doesn’t really have any glaring flaws. It’s got a basic assembly of ingredients like the Soft Taco and Crunchy Taco, so that’s a bit of a strike against it. The problem here is mainly psychological. When you bite into a Spicy Potato Soft Taco, your brain processes the information as generally positive. However, it’s not long before you remember that you got this from the same place that makes Nacho Fries — number three on Chowhound’s definitive fast food fry ranking — and everything falls apart.
Cinnamon Twists
Taco Bell’s Cinnamon Twists are another example of a not-so-bad menu item that is simply outshined by something else that is superior. The twists themselves have a nice airy texture and are consistently well-seasoned with cinnamon and sugar, so there’s nothing inherently wrong here. However, once you’ve tried the Cinnabon Delights, it’s hard to go back. The Cinnamon Twists are definitely the more economical option as a whole bag of them is cheaper than two Cinnabon Delights. However, the quality and satisfaction gaps between the two products are substantial.
Even when you take the Cinnamon Twists at face value, there’s really not much to speak of. They’re nice as a little bit of crunchy sweetness in one of Taco Bell’s meal boxes, but they’re not the first item you think of when placing your order. When that Taco Bell craving hits, it’s typically spearheaded by one or two savory items from the menu. Until Taco Bell can produce something on par with Burger King’s Hershey’s Sundae Pie, the restaurant’s dessert menu will always be forgettable.
Bacon Breakfast Crunchwrap
Bacon and Taco Bell have had a tenuous relationship in the past, and the Bacon Breakfast Crunchwrap is yet another example. Whether the bacon is there as part of a new menu item or if it’s added by consumer request, it just doesn’t taste very good. There’s a bit too much smoke flavoring, and the small pieces tend to exude more grease than other fast-food bacon varieties. Both of these negative aspects come into play with the Bacon Breakfast Crunchwrap. When the bacon combines with the egg and cheese, the grease makes everything soggy and unpleasant. On top of that, the aggressive smoke flavoring starts to overwhelm everything else.
Taco Bell’s breakfast menu has been around since 2014, but it still feels like it could use a few tweaks. The Breakfast Crunchwrap overall is a great idea from an engineering standpoint, but the innards remain less than harmonious. It’s hard to only blame the bacon in the Bacon Breakfast Crunchwrap since Taco Bell’s egg preparation often yields mediocre results.
Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes
The main issue with the Spicy Potato Soft Taco is the Fiesta Potatoes, so it was hard not to put this side dish on the chopping block. In Taco Bell’s pre-Nacho Fries era, it’s easy to see why seasoned potatoes topped with a bit of nacho cheese and sour cream were a good option. But just like VHS tapes, dial-up internet, and pagers, this side dish has been rendered obsolete by the majesty of Nacho Fries. The potatoes are not seasoned as well, they need to be eaten with a fork, and nacho cheese doesn’t make them absolutely sing.
There’s a solid argument to be made about the Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes being a big part of Taco Bell’s plant-based menu options. If one is craving a meatless Taco Bell adventure, this side dish is a nice way to round out an order. The problem with this argument is that it also applies to Nacho Fries. You can’t put the most successful item in Taco Bell’s history up against a side dish that nobody even knew was on the menu; there’s no contest between them.
Burrito Supreme
Typically, requesting the “supreme” version of an item at Taco Bell is a significant upgrade. Both the Soft Taco and Crunchy Taco are vastly improved with the addition of some sour cream and tomatoes. However, that rule strangely does not apply to Taco Bell’s Burrito Supreme. Even though the ingredient list sounds great, something always tastes a bit unbalanced when they all get wrapped up together.
There are a few flavor and textural contrasts that cause this mismatch. First of all, the red sauce, seasoned beef, and sour cream all fight with one another on the palate. The beef and the red sauce share a lot of the same smoky and savory notes which can become a bit overwhelming. On top of that, the sour cream tends to break down with all the moisture of the veggies and sauce, so it loses a lot of its tart potency.
The main textural issue here is the shredded lettuce. The Burrito Supreme is soggy enough as it is, and a bite of thin, papery lettuce just misses the mark here. Execution issues aside, perhaps the biggest problem with the Burrito Supreme is its price tag. It’s a $6 burrito, but its lack of balance and conflicting textures make a good case to switch gears to the far superior Beefy Five Layer Burrito.
Cheese Quesadilla
The shredded cheese at Taco Bell leaves a lot to be desired. It shows up and gets the job done, but it’s rare for the shredded cheese to leave an impression. Not even when it’s folded into a gigantic tortilla, toasted, and then sliced into pizza-like triangles. As the Cheese Quesadilla from Taco Bell really leans into the restaurant’s shredded cheese, it’s no surprise that it comes up a bit short. Even with the creamy jalapeño sauce, the Cheese Quesadilla doesn’t quite hold up to its meaty counterparts.
The issue with Taco Bell’s shredded cheese is that it’s a bit on the bland side. There are certain items where you know it’s there and you get a few faint flavor notes. For the most part, it feels like Taco Bell’s shredded cheese is hanging around out of some sort of misplaced obligation. Melting it into a quesadilla seems like it would solve the problem, but a bland shredded cheese will only yield a bland melted cheese.
Nacho Cheese Doritos Locos Taco
The day we all learned that we could eat a taco made out of Doritos was definitely one for the history books. While a taco shell made out of Doritos is a stroke of genius, the execution just doesn’t stick the landing. Nacho Cheese Doritos are among the finest snacks around, and they’ve got a signature flavor that compliments tacos very well. However, the flavors of this taco don’t quite meet expectations.
The taco shell itself lacks the same great nacho cheese flavor as Doritos, so expectations are immediately soured there. Once you try the whole thing together, the problems persist. While the taco shell does have a cheesy dusting of Doritos-adjacent flavors, the seasoned beef just creates a salt bomb. There is no give and take between the beef and the shell, and each subsequent bite just yields more and more salt. When one thinks of how great a Doritos taco could be, the Nacho Cheese Doritos Locos Taco is just one big letdown.
Cheesy Roll Up
There is some appeal to the Cheesy Roll Up if you happen to be younger than ten years old. Any older than that and you can’t help but look past it for other more nuanced items. Even for the incredibly low price tag of just over a buck, the Cheesy Roll Up doesn’t have much going for it.
Like the Cheese Quesadilla, the Cheesy Roll Up relies on Taco Bell’s lackluster shredded cheese. Unlike the Cheese Quesadilla, it doesn’t have any creamy jalapeño sauce to fall back on. Cheesy Roll Ups also have a terribly short shelf life for consumption. If these are not consumed within minutes of ordering them, you’re left with these dry, flavorless cheesy bricks. The Cheesy Roll Ups are at the bottom of the Taco Bell tier for a lot of reasons, but it all comes down to the fact that they’re devoid of any real personality.
