Menu

Fast Food Review: Taco Bell’s Grilled Stuft Nacho


grillstufnacho.jpg

In one of the oddest marketing pitches I’ve seen in quite some time, Taco Bell has been showing commercials which imply that their latest food item is designed to be eaten while running away from the father of the underage girl you just tried to fuck.

First impression: if you found a girl who is seduced by Taco Bell food, she really is easy. I mean, I hate to slut-shame and all, but unless the dude is so dirt poor that he saved his allowance of a single penny for over a hundred weeks, buying her Taco Bell isn’t really an impressive act of devotion worthy of affection. Of course, she could be really stoned. There are a lot of variables we don’t know in this equation, save that her parents came home early.

Then I tasted the thing, and it occurred to me that this is all an elaborate trick. The goal here is to PUNISH the young miscreant, by tricking him into eating something so terrible that he will forever psychosomatically associate it with his attempted seduction and never do that again. Because like your first time having sex, the Grilled Stuft Nacho is fucking awful.

The pitch is that it’s everything you like about nachos in a handy to-go form. So for the sake of a controlled experiment, I bought a regular Nachos Supreme and the Grilled Stuft Nacho to see if that was true, putting aside the fact that once upon a time, Taco Bell got me used to green onions on my nachos then cruelly yanked that away.

Here’s the main thing – if you’re going to call something that isn’t nachos a Nacho-anything, the dominant flavor needs to be goddamn cheese (this goes out to you too, Baja Fresh Nacho Burrito). Just like if you tell me something tastes like spaghetti sauce, tomatoes better be the motherfucking dominant species up in that bitch. Now, I knew going in that at Taco Bell, the term “Grilled Stuft” means “this item’s predominant ingredient and flavor is ‘Burnt Flour Tortilla.'” To be fair, it’s only a grace note in the nacho.

So what else is in there? Ground “beef,” nacho cheese sauce, low-fat sour cream (I get mine without because sour cream is gross with or without extra fat), and red tortilla strips. Oh wait, forgot one thing: “nacho sauce.” A logical person might hear “nacho sauce” and think that meant cheese, right? Let us now present the proof that no Vulcans work at Taco Bell.

I think “nacho sauce” is an un-spicy variant of “volcano sauce” – another sad creation, because I remember the “Volcano Burrito” the Bell had back when to tie in with the movie Congo – it had a thick vein of nacho cheese sauce through the middle, and was indisputably the best thing associated with that film. Nacho sauce is bright orange, making it look and smell like radioactive ranch dressing. As for the taste – I can best describe it as resembling rancid cottage cheese. You know how Jelly Belly uses pepperoni pizza as a flavor base for its Bertie Bott vomit-flavored bean? I think we have here a new contender that’s even better.

Naturally, there’s more vomit sauce than cheese. And thus did I tap out about halfway through.

Taco Bell already has an item containing everything I want on my nachos – the good old Meximelt. Real pico salsa, multiple cheeses, chicken if you request it. An underrated, understated item that they thankfully have not tried to fuck with too much by stuffing it with Doritos. Yet.

Dads, next time you see that kid running away, force him to eat one of these. He’ll beg you to call his parents instead.