If I am eating McDonald's breakfast, I usually need the grease for a reason!

Brought Taco Bell lunch take out for my wife today. I didn't notice a breakfast menu here in Calgary. Is this just a States thing right now?

Taco Bell seems to be taking full aim at McDonalds with these new items. Have you seen the commercials? Wow. I wonder how successful they will be at cutting into McDonald's breakfast meals share. I wonder if Oak Brook is nervous.

Not if they've eaten the TB breakfast. Not good. :td::td:

I agree that they're trying to take McD's head-on. But they're going to lose that battle.

Nothing about it makes much sense.

• The food is barely Mexican. Waffle taco? No chorizo? Heck, Whataburger's breakfast menu is more Mexican-themed than this dog's breakfast of choices.
  
• Logistically, I ended up having to wait 3-4 minutes for my food, where McDonald's can throw it at me as I'm pulling up to the second window.
  
• They have to staff for 7 AM openings from a crew that previously was oriented to working graveyard shifts.

IMO, they should just be offering the full menu from 7 AM, rather than messing with these off-the-wall items. That would be a differentiating entry into the AM market.

I guess Taco Bell has indeed entered into the Calgary market with their extensive brekkie menu.

I may have to go down and try one of these days. No Taco Bell around me though, so I'll have to drive out of the way.

(1) Taco Bell is not Mexican food. It is Taco Bell food. Most people know this well. ;)
(2) If there are, i.e., 50 million visits for the product due to morbid curiosity, death wishes, and/or repeat happy customers and the average ticket is $4, even if the experiment is a "failure," it was not. It is not much different than Coke or Pepsi putting a horrible product out there, that countless millions try once or twice, and that shoves shelf space away from another product.

Perhaps Mexican Junk Food. Regardless, I can't believe how cheap the food is, and actually is excellent variety and unique food offerings.

New Taco Bell Cantina Burrito
 

I didn't know TB revamped their cantina burrito until yesterday when I noticed the bag felt lighter :D They eliminated the rice and beans and added more meat for increased protein. It's about 40 % smaller than the old one but still the same price and only a few grams of fat less. Meh. I miss the old one.

Chalupas and Beer? Taco Bell to Serve Alcohol
 

Beer and 99c bean burritos ! What more could you ask for .....

^


http://www.trbimg.com/img-55f848df/t...14/900/900x506
---
Taco Bell wants to give you a buzz with your burrito, planning to open new “cantina” restaurants as it tries to compete with more upscale fast-casual joints.

The Irvine-based company said Tuesday that its new “urban” restaurants will serve alcohol and have open kitchens and a plethora of technology to streamline the ordering experience.

The first Taco Bell Cantina is set to open in Chicago next week, with the second debuting in San Francisco later this month.
...
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...915-story.html

Will it be available for To-Go or drive through orders? :confused:

If you had read the article, you will have seen that there will be no Drive-Thru's. Many local regulations forbid open alcoholic beverages of any kind in a vehicle, so this would be a no-go.

If YUM! Brands decide to convert some of their current locations, they may find some local regulations would prevent them from doing so. Here in South Florida, no restaurants can serve any type of alcohol within a certain number of feet of a school or park.

Burger King has something like this on South Beach called the Whopper Bar, as it serves bottled beer along with a normal lunch menu. It's located in the tourist district and does not have a drive-thru.

When I lived in MD they allowed liquor stores to have drive thrus ... and in NVa other similar fast food places, like Moes, serves bottled beer.

... but as suggested, the rules are probably dizzying in how different they are from state to state, co to co, ... town to town

I have to admit that the AM Crunchwrap is pretty tasty. It's simply a flat breakfast burrito...or basically a breakfast burrito made by someone too lazy to chop up anything. :D

Doesn't it also have a hard taco shell-type layer?

No. Inside is (top to bottom) some kind of sauce, shredded cheese, scrambled eggs, sausage patty (not chopped), and hashbrown (not chopped). It's all wrapped in a tortilla and put in the grill press to warm/brown.

Didn't realize that.

Taco Bell's "Cantina" restaurants very much remind me of their "Border Grill" (or was it "Border Bell"?) experiment in the late 90s. They tried to latch on to the emerging trend of fast-casual restaurants. I'm not sure what Taco Bell considered its results to be, but from the outside it sure looked like a failure as the restaurant near me never seemed to have any business and was converted to a regular Taco Bell within a year or two.

I think you are confusing it with the crunch wrap.

On a related note, has anyone been to "U.S. Taco Co."?

Apparently, it's a spin-off from Taco Bell as they are both owned (I think) by the same company. It's in Huntington Beach, CA.

Probably. Both are bad for people.

Taco Bell report:

Two bean burritos: Fort Wayne, IN on way from Ford Field, Detroit, MI - IND.

Pretty good - was starving and hadn't eaten in 12 hours.

I had one of these today; basically the taco shell is a thin fried chicken patty folded with the vegies inside.

It tasted pretty good, but it was about 2:30pm and I was starving.;)


http://fortune.com/2015/09/02/taco-bell-chicken/

http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocre...94bsm33.10.jpg

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/t...l-chicken.html

Yep, you guessed it, I was in Bakersfield.

Can't go there anymore...
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/t...estaurant.html

Proof that there is no demand for Mexican food in California. ;)

That, and it doesn't help it took them 7-8 months to acquire a liquor license in an area with lots of bars and restaurants.

The Ghost Pepper (ha!) grillers have been a welcome addition to an otherwise bland menu but recent items like that above and virtually all of the breakfast menu have zero visual appeal. I can't imagine actually eating any of that.

Proof that there is no demand for crummy Mexican food in California. ;)

Fixed that for you.

Isn't this the naked chicken chalupa now?

I think so.

After fasting for a blood draw, and then having to take the car to a repair shop, I picked up a Crunchwrap AM with sausage to have in the waiting room. It was good; definitely something to get once a month for a guilty pleasure.

Yes. And at 3a after a night out I'd rank it above every restaurant in the Michelin/SP 50 threads ;)

Occasionally, I will have a meal from Taco Bell. I do enjoy their chicken quesadillas from time to time.

Taco Bell pulling its Naked Chicken Chalupa
 

Link to full article: Taco Bell pulling popular chicken-shelled chalupa (Associated Press Feb 23, 2017)

Maybe it'll become their version of the McRib.

Shoot...guess I now have dinner plans tonight. I've wanted to try this since I saw the first commercial, but haven't gotten around to it.

I eat at Taco Bell about once a year. Typically when I go it's because I convince myself I remember the food not being that poor. Then, once I go, I'm reminded it really is that poor.

So: Taco Bell benefits from a clientele with poor long term memory. That's probably why they market so heavily to stoners. :D

Woman hopes to marry in dress made of Taco Bell wrappers
 

lol...same here and I live half a block away from one. But I enjoy trying some of their mash-ups. I thought the Doritos Loco taco was terrible, and I like Doritos. So I finally tried the naked chicken chalupa yesterday for lunch, and have to say it was pretty tasty. A little chewy, but good flavor. Millions of drunk 20-somethings are going to be sad when it's gone!

Link: USA Today - Boo! Taco Bell's scariest product yet is the Kit Kat Chocoladilla (Published 5:52 p.m. ET Oct. 20, 2017 | Updated 7:18 p.m. ET Oct. 20, 2017)

Bring back the Choco-taco!