Monday, April 4, 2016

Breakfast Sandwich #55 - Taco Bell Quesalupa aka Fake Words

There is also a guest review of the Breakfast Quesalupa here. It's not really a "point/counterpoint" situation but that would have fun had it worked out that way.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandwich: Breakfast Quesalupa with Sausage
Location: Taco Bell (E. Washington Ave.)
Date: March 23, 2016
Cost: $3.54 ($2.99 +.25 for pico de gallo + .30 for sour cream)

Is a Quesalupa a sandwich? No. It is, however, one of America's hottest selling breakfast items (I can't back that up with any statistics) and since I forgot about Taco Tuesday I decided to celebrate Quesalupa Wednesday. Is Quesalupa a real word? No.

If I had bothered to do any research prior to going to Taco Bell I may have decided against doing this review as there are already a glut of Queso-pinions online. From local reviews to discussions of the marketing aspect, you could spend the better part of a weekend reading about, or watching annoying youtube videos about the Quesalupa. (Skip ahead to the 4:00 mark if you want to see the old guy complain about the food, which is not a Quesalupa.) Here is an entertaining and informative review which is a better read than what I wrote. (I didn't read her entire review until I was done writing this). Well, shit, it's too late now, I have to write this.

I reviewed the Taco Bell AM Crunchwrap in June of 2015 so Taco Bell is the first place to get a return visit and review. That is embarrassing. I have barely started this review and I'm already filled with shame.

Taco Bell breakfast menu here.
The Taco Bell receipt art game is strong.

Stretchy cheese poster. Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of cheese. 

There it is.
The Sandwich - Breakfast Quesalupa with sausage, pico de gallo and sour cream. When I ordered the pico and sour cream the lady felt the need to point out that those are "the cornerstones of Mexican food". I think that somehow made this Taco Bell experience more authentic. As I mentioned, I hadn't done any prior research so I didn't know the whole catch with the Quesalupa is that they put a bunch of cheese sauce on the tortilla and then build on top of that. I didn't try to cut the thing in half to show the innards but that would have really illustrated the featured ingredient of the Quesalupa. The sausage is on top of the queso cheese sauce and the eggs, potatoes, etc. are piled on top of that. The Quesalupa isn't exceptionally large although that seems to be the angle they market, along with the stretchy cheese. Anyway, when it comes to flavor, the Quesalupa isn't too bad. It's not great, it was too salty for my tastes but the sour cream and pico helped with that. The eggs get lost in the cheese and salty potato bites, but the queso cheese is a nice addition if you can accept that eating artificial cheese in the morning is OK every once in awhile. The sausage patty was small, it took a couple of bites to get to it which only revealed it's salty disposition. The fried tortilla thing was better than I expected, it didn't have the greasy sheen I imagined it would and it kept the 'Lupa together even after extraction from the cardboard cradle.

The Result - 3.4 fake Mexican foods out of 5 fake Mexican foods. The overly salty taste knocked this down some as did the slight queasy feeling that started about 30 minutes after I ate it. Luckily the queasiness only lasted for about an hour. Queasylupa. That's also not a word.

No comments:

Post a Comment