Food Review: Taco Bell’s Grilled Cheese Burrito

I’ve sort of formed an awful habit (evergreen statement). After my wild Tuesday work schedule, where I’m typically doing a marathon of 15-18 hours of writing, editing and designing, I stop at Taco Bell and eat gross nonsense at 11 p.m., and before it even hits my stomach, I’m fast asleep. By morning, when I see the remnants of the Taco Bell bag hanging out of my tiny garbage can like a drunk friend who slept over, I regret it. By next Tuesday, I do it again.

So, the recent goofy item I’ve tried is Taco Bell’s (relatively) new Grilled Cheese Burrito. I was too tired last night to bother taking a pretty picture of the grotesquery, but I can assure you, it looked … similar to the picture at the top of the post, perhaps even more yellow, though.

I mean, folks. Taco Bell could advertise its new Cheesy Shoe Burrito, and you bet next Tuesday I’d be trying it out. It’s both a fascination with gimmick items and a rather expansive openness to trying different things on menus rather than settling for the usual. Can I get a better burrito somewhere fancy and formal? Heck yeah. But is it going to be a Grilled Cheese Burrito? No way. The fancy places don’t need to do gimmicks.

The gimmick here is simple enough. Do you like grilled cheese? (Yes). Do you like burritos? (Yes.) What if we combined them into a thing? Here I am. Taco Bell’s Grilled Cheese Burrito comes with seasoned beef, of course, but also seasoned rice, nacho cheese sauce, reduced fat sour cream, three cheese blend, chipotle sauce, red strips, and naturally, the tortilla itself is grilled with cheese on the outside.

While the world always seemed fine with confining cheese to inside a tortilla, this burrito wouldn’t be contained. A world with more cheese in it is a good thing. And a world with more cheese on it is a game-changer.

Taco Bell, and I must say, the person who wrote this press release should get a raise.

I don’t disagree, Taco Bell. There is no such thing as too much cheese. There is either cheesy or more cheesy. Never enough cheesy. Drown me in cheese, please. I love cheese! And cheese, meat and sour cream are the best bedfellows. The yummiest ménage à trois on my tongue imaginable (next to perhaps chocolate, peanut butter and caramel?).

Yesterday, I bit into this without knowing the ingredients list. Looking at it now, it makes sense: The burrito had a bit of a kick to it. I love kicks. Give me all the kicks, even if I regret it later. I’m guessing the chipotle sauce and/or red strips did the trick in that regard. It was a bit hot.

And the burrito is certainly cheesy; however, I think it could almost be called the Grilled Sour Cream Burrito. It was a river of sour cream within a tortilla, and boy, I do love me some sour cream, but I’d hold back a smidgen on that for more cheesiness to come through.

Overall, yes, it is a beautiful blend of ingredients, the grilled cheesy exterior works well, and that kick adds a little unexpected fun to the late-night Taco Bell ride. I’d recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Taco Bell. For those who aren’t, they’d probably rather drink from the toilet bowl. Alas, your mileage my vary.

Also, let’s be honest, the best thing about Taco Bell is that it’s garbage yum for only $3! A decent-sized burrito for $3! I get to cosplay as a raccoon for $3!

If you have had this, what did you think? If you haven’t, would you?