Taco Bell has a new item, and instead of rearranging the same ol’ ingredients in a new format like they usually do, they’ve taken to rearranging names of existing foods. The Quesarito is a portmanteau of “quesadilla” and “burrito,” and features meat, sauce and rice wrapped in a tortilla with a layer of cheese around the inner core.

Hmmm, I guess they are just using the same ol’ ingredients too. Like a boring mad scientist. Like if Dr. Moreau kept promising a herd of hybrid leopard-men but just kept putting the legs of rats on legless rat bodies. You know what, though? That’s still pretty impressive. And you know what else? The Quesarito is also pretty impressive.

Maybe the greatest thing about the Quesarito is that it doesn’t really taste like it comes from Taco Bell. It has Taco Bell elements, sure: a disregard for fresh vegetables, a runny sauce that coats all the ingredients, it emanates nuclear fast food warmth.

But the Quesarito has heft. It has substance. Other Taco Bell items often feel chintzy, like they are designed to run through our bodies as fast as possible. Tasty, edible garbage. The Quesarito feels like food. I feel comfortable even calling it a “gut bomb.” And from my experience, the Quesarito comes with a free sizeable nap.

This is thanks to a couple things. It’s a burrito wrapped in a quesadilla, so the tortilla is actually doubled up, which makes it chewier. The rice is also new. It’s “Latin rice,” which I guess means it was a loser studying a dead language in high school. But you can pick out individual grains and it’s cooked more al dente than the rice in other sister items. Biting into a Quesarito, you can sense full, sturdy ingredients. Seems like maybe they took a look at the modus operandi of one Chipotle restaurant and decided to go sic semper tyrannis on ‘em. Side note: anyone have a time machine and know how to say “Please go to prom with me” in Latin? Asking for an amicus.

The decent base of tortilla and rice gives the cheese and protein a solid springboard to showcase their flavors, and for the most part, they do a good job. The cheese in the quesadilla forms a golden ring around the bisected burrito, and every bite is equally blessed by the melty smoothness.

Of the three meat options, the relatively muted shredded chicken fares the best, playing along with the rest of the Quesarito to let every ingredient shine in a concert of flavor and texture. The steak is fine too, but every bite was filled with sinew and makes the burrito feel stringy. The beef is the ground beef from all the other Taco Bell stuff, and as such it lacks subtlety. It’s salty like a salt lick, to the point where it almost burns, and definitely overpowers the quieter elements in the Quesarito.

It’s also ground to the point of almost being a meat puree, and seems out of place in this new, gentler Taco Bell item. It’s time to leave your hometown, Ground Beef. See the world, get some new perspective. Yeah, Ground Beef, we’ll leave tomorrow. Let’s go out back for now, look at the rabbits. That’s it, pet the rabbits. Oops, I shot Ground Beef in the back of the head. I’m sorry, Ground Beef. You’ll never over-salt anyone’s tongue again, Ground Beef. You are reunited in heaven with the Blackjack Taco and the Volcano Menu.

Now the bad. It’s pretty much just the sour cream. Maybe it actually goes well with the Quesarito, but it’s a problem of construction, not taste. The way the sour cream is dispensed on the tortilla, it’s packed all into one end, like if the Quesarito was an airplane, the sour cream takes up first class. And that’s confusing, because first class is a good thing, but there isn’t anything called “last class.”

Okay. If the Quesarito was an airplane, the sour cream takes up all of last class. And I’m Godzilla or Optimus Prime or whatever, and I want to eat the plane, and I bite in and I get a giant mouthful of tangy sour cream. That’s insane. Because who put all this sour cream in an airplane?

But as a human, if I wanted a mouthful of sour cream I’d go to the sour cream store and grab a spoon. Oh wait, that doesn’t exist, because we are civilized people and not creeps and nobody wants mouthfuls of sour cream. And the sour cream pocket is on either end of the Quesarito so it’s like playing Russian roulette with every beginning bite. Mexican-Russian roulette. Sorry. Mexican-Russian-American roulette. We’re a melting pot, folks.

So Taco Bell smushed two words together and they scored a home-down/touch-run with the Quesarito. They made the Brangelina of fast food. Oh! Are any of those kids in that family Mexican-Russian?

The Quesarito is a success, and soon we might be calling Merriam-Webster to add a new word, like all those popular portmanteaus of the past such as bromance, Californication and Fleshlight. Welp, just made myself barf with that string of words. That’s okay, more room for Quesarito.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 ground beef Quesarito* – 650 calories, 300 calories from fat, 34 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 60 grams of cholesterol, 1450 milligrams of sodium, 65 grams of carbohydrates, 6 grams of fiber, 5 grams of sugar, 22 grams of protein.)

*Nutrition facts for chicken and steak versions not available on Taco Bell website.

Item: Taco Bell Quesarito
Purchased Price: $1.99 (Ground Beef), $2.79 (Chicken) and $2.99 (Steak)
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Taco Bell
Rating: 6 out of 10 (Ground Beef)
Rating: 9 out of 10 (Chicken)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Steak)
Pros: Substantial, filling. Tastes like actual food. Cheese in every bite. The rice is great.
Cons: Very salty, particularly the beef. Steak is sinewy. Can be runny. Sour cream is always stuck in one bite.

When Taco Bell introduced the Doritos Locos Taco (DLT), it revolutionized not only midnight-munchies runs, but also the whole fast food world. I used to be an occasional T-Bell visitor, but once I had a DLT I quickly became a junkie. I haven’t eaten a normal hard shell taco since, and I don’t think I could. They’re just so primitive and outdated now.

Eating a normal taco shell would be like hitting a piñata filled with candy; you know what you’re going to get out of it. But eating a DLT, now that’d be like hitting a piñata filled with candy AND $100 bills.

New shell flavors came out over time in Fiery, Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch, but there was still room to improve. T-Bell thought adding a spicy chicken and sauce into the mix could do this, so the Cool Ranch Spicy Chicken DLT was made.

They apparently got the idea after people constantly defied the menu and substituted chicken for beef. Maybe some people are just too good to eat 88 percent beef?

The chicken is the same as it is in other T-Bell poultry-based items except it’s been marinated in some kind of hot sauce. Or tossed in the sauce. Or the sauce was poured on it. I don’t know I didn’t make it. Use your imagination! Regardless of how it was made, the chicken was exceptional.

In addition to the kicked-up chicken there’s a “Fiery” hot sauce on the taco as well. I was kind of skeptical about this because I worried there would be too many flavors. You have the cool ranch on the outside, the spicy chicken and the hot sauce on the inside. That’s three different tastes right there. Take into account the sour cream that will be in the supreme one, and that’s four flavors.

I did indeed get one of my two tacos supreme style, and that’s where we’ll start.

The supreme version was a supreme mess. There’s not tons of room in these shells to begin with, and when you add two sauces things get crowded real quick. The hot sauce was oozing from the side of the taco the whole time and kept getting all over my hands. I’m a bit of a picky Pete about messy eating, and this really bugged me.

As for the taste, it was okay but there was just too much inside and the flavors kind of counteract each other. You’ve got the cooling ranch from the shell, two different hot sauces on the inside, and another cooling agent in sour cream. No one flavor stands out and it’s kind of disappointing. I could barely taste the shell on the supreme style, probably because of all that was going on inside the taco.

The regular taco was much better and is, in my opinion at least, the better route to go. It was not nearly as messy, and, more importantly, you could taste everything you’re supposed to taste. It is called a Spicy Chicken Cool Ranch DLT, and in the supreme I didn’t taste cool ranch at all and barely got the spicy chicken flavor.

In the regular taco the shell’s flavor was very noticeable, and it combined nicely with the spicy chicken and hot sauce. The hot sauce isn’t over-the-top, but it’s still got some nice zing to it and you’ll want some sort of cool beverage on hand when you eat it.

Getting back to the sour cream, I can’t stress how much of an unnecessary component it is in the taco’s equation. It’s like when you see a really nice sports car driving down the street, but when it gets closer you notice the owner put some cheesy-ass decals on the side of it, such as flames or fake bullet holes. Weak sauce.

I’ll still get the supreme version of the other DLTs because I find them better that way, but this one has enough going for it already, and sour cream just ruins it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go search for one of those magical piñatas that was mentioned earlier…

(Nutrition Facts – Supreme – 200 calories, 100 calories from fat, 11 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 30 milligrams of sodium, 410 milligrams of sodium, 14 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fiber, and 11 grams of protein.)

Item: Taco Bell Spicy Chicken Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco
Purchased Price: $1.59 (Regular)
Purchased Price: $1.89 (Supreme)
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Taco Bell
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Regular)
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Supreme)
Pros: Spicy chicken was delicious. Cool ranch goes well with spicy flavors. Midnight-munchies runs. Magic piñatas.
Cons: Supreme style was pretty sloppy. Sour cream covered up too much flavor. Not knowing where to start looking for magic piñatas.

Let’s face it. The only thing most of you care about on Taco Bell’s breakfast menu is their Waffle Taco, because almost everything else consists of the same ingredients in a flour tortilla.

Begin sarcasm.

A flour tortilla taco with bacon, eggs, and cheese! Ooooh! A flour tortilla burrito with sausage, egg, and cheese! Wonderful! Sausage, egg, cheese, and hash browns wrapped in a flour tortilla! Whoa!

End sarcasm.

While Taco Bell’s Waffle Taco also contains scrambled eggs, cheese, and either bacon or sausage, it delivers them in something that is definitely not a flour tortilla — a five-inch round waffle that’s curved like a taco. And all of that comes in a container with the words, “Right now I’m eating a Waffle Taco and you’re not,” which, when holding the box in public, kind of makes me look like an asshole. Thanks, Taco Bell!

You have the option of having your Waffle Taco come with either bacon or a sausage patty. But if you also have the option of eating breakfast somewhere else, I’d take that option because both are horribly disappointing. But if you don’t have that third option, go for the sausage because it’s slightly better tasting than the bacon, which are chewy little bits of pork that have very little bacon flavor.

It’s really frustrating to see Taco Bell go the bacon bits route, but it’s even more frustrating that they didn’t go with a better bacon. Over the past few years, many of the big fast food chains have upgraded their bacon from chewy, almost flavorless slices that don’t deserve to be called bacon to thick, savory, and sometimes crispy slices of Applewood smoked bacon. Those fast food chains are at Bacon 2.0, while Taco Bell settled with Bacon 1.0.

As I mentioned earlier, the sausage patty is slightly better. But that advantage is similar to drowning and drowning while being circled by sharks. While it does spoon very nicely with the curved waffle, it’s not seasoned very well, allowing its flavor to be easily masked by the syrup, which comes in a container that looks small, but contains more than enough sticky stuff to dump on your breakfast taco. There’s nothing special about the syrup’s flavor; it’s just generic pancake syrup. However, I found that the more I used, the greater the number of napkins I needed. This might explain one of the reasons why it comes in a box, instead of a paper wrapper. I guess the box not only helps keep the waffle from laying flat, it’s also a syrup drip catcher.

One of the characteristics that makes a waffle a waffle is its crispy exterior, but this waffle is disappointingly floppy and soft, which Taco Bell will probably claim has never happened before, doesn’t know what’s wrong, and definitely thinks you’re sexy. But I guess it has to be floppy if it’s going to be folded like that. The eggs are fluffish, but are more bland than the bacon and sausage. A little butteriness would’ve helped. As for the cheese…yeah, that’s not going to make a difference.

For something that’s been tested for almost a year, I’m surprised by how bad these Taco Bell Waffle Tacos are. They’re supposed to hit your jaw with the 1-2 combo of sweet and savory, but it’s mostly sweet. Even without the syrup, the savory is seriously missing. I’ll admit, they don’t lack imagination, but they do lack flavor.

(Nutrition Facts – Bacon – 320 calories, 160 calories from fat, 18 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 110 milligrams of cholesterol, 670 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, and 13 grams of protein. Sausage – 370 calories, 210 calories from fat, 23 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 115 milligrams of cholesterol, 550 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 8 grams of sugar, and 12 grams of protein. .)

Item: Taco Bell Waffle Taco (Bacon and Sausage)
Purchased Price: $2.79*
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Taco Bell
Rating: 3 out of 10 (Bacon)
Rating: 4 out of 10 (Sausage)
Pros: Most interesting item on the Taco Bell breakfast menu. Syrup container might be small, but there’s more than enough syrup for one waffle taco. Sausage version is slightly better than the bacon one.
Cons: Soft and floppy waffle; not crispy at all. Sausage and bacon have very little flavor. Eggs could’ve used some butteriness. Mostly sweet, very little savory. Box it comes in makes me feel like a douchebag. Messy.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

Purchased Price: $3.89*
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Taco Bell
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Holy cow there’s a lot of steak in this taco. Steak is easy to chew; no tough parts. Taco shell seemed sturdier than Taco Bell’s regular taco shell. It’s noticeably larger than a regular Taco Bell Crunchy Taco. Surprisingly filling. To be honest, it kind of makes me wish there was a XXL Doritos Locos Taco.
Cons: Reduced fat sour cream dampens the avocado ranch sauce’s flavor, making the whole taco taste a bit boring. Steak itself didn’t have much flavor. Because of its size, it needed two Taco Bell sauce packets to give it better flavor. Like with the Taco Supreme, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese fall out too easily.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

Nutrition Facts: 430 calories, 220 calories from fat, 25 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 75 milligrams of cholesterol, 680 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, and 24 grams of protein.

Purchased Price: $1.79*
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Taco Bell
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Great value for its size (each side is about seven inches). Super cheesy thanks to TWO nacho sauces (the usual Taco Bell nacho cheese sauce and their new zesty nacho sauce). It smells like the wonderful Crunchwrap. Six grams of fiber.
Cons: There isn’t much flavor beyond the seasoned beef and cheese. Most of the red tortilla strips were soggy. New zesty nacho sauce wasn’t zesty enough for me. Seems like another Taco Bell product except in a different form. Reduced fat sour cream gets lost among the two nacho sauces and is just lubricant that allows the seasoned beef to fall out easier. The word “stuft” still bothers me and my computer’s spellcheck.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll pay less than I did.

Nutrition Facts: 570 calories, 290 calories from fat, 32 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 960 milligrams of sodium, 56 grams of carbohydrates, 6 grams of fiber, 5 grams of sugar, and 14 grams of protein.