Meet All The Terrible Items Taco Bell Is About To Remove From Its Menu

Taco Bell is eliminating 11 bizarre and unpopular items from its menu on August 13, in their words, “to create a more efficient Taco Bell experience.” So we went and ordered all 11 of these strange menu items, many of which have names that sound like they came from a Taco Bell  Name Generator full of opaque descriptors such as “Cheesy,” “Fiesta,” and “Stuft.” And after eating all over these, my small intestine can report there is no such thing as an “efficient Taco Bell experience.” 

Each of the 11 menu items is described below, ranked by their terribleness, with their San Francisco prices listed. These items are all going to be 86’ed by August 13, so if any of them appeals to you, make a run for a case of the runs. 

BEEFY NACHO LOADED GRILLERS ($2.79)

“Beefy Nacho Loaded Grillers” sounds like something Guy Fieri and Chuck E. Cheese came up with over an eightball of cocaine and a handful of mushrooms while camping at Joshua Tree. But this is not the Hieronymus Bosch orgy of culinary decadence the name implies. The execution is extremely unsatisfying, and clearly nothing here is “loaded.”

TRIPLE LAYER NACHOS ($1.29)

“Triple Layer” my fucking ass. The only thing on these chips is beans and cheese, plus what Taco Bell euphemistically calls “red sauce.” People, sauce is not a layer on nachos, it is a condiment! Good riddance to this example of fast-food dishonesty.

BEEFY FRITOS BURRITO ($1.29)

You understand they use the term “beefy” so they don’t have to call it “beef.” As Jezebel described in 2011, this matter is “a gross mixture called ‘Taco Meat Filling’” that is “mostly tasteless fibers, various industrial additives and some flavoring and coloring.”

But with this item leaving the menu, I might use “Beefy Fritos Burrito” as my new Grindr handle.

SPICY POTATO SOFT TACO ($1.29)

Taco Bell is getting rid of all potato items, after introducing them a few years back, thinking this would get vegetarians to eat at Taco Bell. Clearly that didn’t work!

CHIPS AND DIPS ($1.29)

This basically just chips and salsa, with your choice of pump cheese, pump guacamole, or pico de gallo. I ordered pico de gallo and they gave me pump cheese instead.

SPICY TOSTADA ($1.29)

The old 1978 Steve Martin joke about McDonald’s that “Everything they make is all one thing” is technically more true of Taco Bell than McDonald’s. The spicy tostada is the epitome of that, it’s just an assortment of standard Taco Bell ingredients on a flat surface, and they do not even give you the dignity of sour cream. Swipe left.  

7 LAYER BURRITO ($4.19)

Here Taco Bell goes again, misidentifying an ingredient as a “layer.” Despite the promise of 7 later, this thing is as thin as a fingernail, and only slightly more tasty. 

GRILLED STEAK SOFT TACO ($3.29)

This is the closest Taco Bell gets to a real taqueria item, and you will scarf down your first one entirely in about 20 seconds, with each successive taco taking slightly longer to eat.

NACHOS SUPREME ($2.49)

Nachos Supreme is just a smaller version of Nachos Bellgrande, a fairly decent Taco Bell menu item. It has all the exact same toppings as a Bellgrande, so we’re not really losing a menu item here, they’re just removing the smaller size option.

CHEESY FIESTA POTATOES ($1.89)

This unimpressive-looking little side dish was actually pretty good! It’s fried (and probably pre-frozen) potatoes with pump cheese and drizzled with the ambiguously named “red sauce,” and an excellent drunken snack.

Obviously fake product shot: Taco Bell

MINI SKILLET BOWL (Price Unknown)

They stop serving breakfast at 11 a.m. at Taco Bell. I personally cannot fathom eating Taco Bell before 11 a.m. so it was not available when I visited.

For all the shit I gave Taco Bell (and all the shits it gave me!), they have at least switched to compostable and recyclable packaging. 

But in these distinctly not taco-licious times, we’d rather you support locally owned restaurants, and our friends at Matador, Tato, and Wooden Nickel all have terrific genuine Mexican fare.