Taco Bell's Doritos Locos Taco Review

I understand that when you already have a menu of 57 items that are all comprised of the same 5 ingredients, it is hard to come up with something fresh. I mean, how many ways can you put meat, beans, cheese, sour cream, and tortillas together and still get people to come to the drive through? Taco Bell has tried it all. Cheesier cheese, tortillas inside other tortillas, tortillas with sugar, beef with beans, beef without beans, beans with cheese, beans without cheese. You get my drift. Do the math, there are only so many combinations that you can create with 5 ingredients...even fewer if you figure they all need that pesky tortilla, so you really only have 4.

Side note: You should know that I am writing this from a biased point of view. As a matter of fact, I usually put Taco Bell on the list next to McDonald's as far as food is concerned. It works in a pinch, but generally speaking, there isn't much worse that is still legal to sell.

This being said, last week I saw an internet picture of something that I had to try (and no it wasn't on www.naughtynarnia.com). Apparently the two companies most responsible for the average American's bulging waistline decided to team up an unholy union of lard, crunch, and salt in a way we have never before imagined. Taco Bell introduced the Doritos Locos Taco. I saw that picture on Friday and was psyched. Saturday, I had my family in the drive through ordering 8 of these puppies in anticipation of gluttonous bliss.

First and foremost, we were in the car, heading out of town, so this was a drive while eating situation. To my delight, Taco Bell included what I will call a "cheesy sleeve" to help prevent "cheese finger" that all Doritos lovers despise. Caking my steering wheel in cheese powder was something I hadn't thought about ahead of time, but was glad to see that Taco Bell had. Unfortunately, that was the extent of my delight. I bit into what I assumed would be the perfect marriage of nacho cheese snacks and mediocre mystery meat, but what I found was an over-salted disaster. Doritos are very salty, but alone they are often just what I crave. Taco Bell meat is extremely salty too, but alone it gets tempered with several packets of fire sauce and is tolerable. Together, this new taco is a salty bonanza that even someone of my ample size can't take. I have no idea how high my blood pressure spiked 30 min. after this meal, but it couldn't have been pretty. The salt was out of bounds and overpowered anything else that I might consider reviewing, so I will stop there.

Dear Taco Bell, your Frito burrito disaster should have taught you the first time. I know you think you can handle a 6th ingredient, but you can't. You can't just walk through the snack food aisle of your local grocer, pair it with a taco and call it something new. You can't take tater tots, put them inside the burrito and call it something new. You can't take one taco and put it inside another taco (which, I believe, is considered incestuous in all 50 states) and call it something new. You are what you are....a 5 ingredient wonder. Don't try to get fancy, just stick to 1500 calorie dinners, advertising 4th meals for us fatties, and building tacos with caulking guns full of sour cream. It seems to have worked for you so far.