Three Quesalupas: A Review

You may have seen a commercial during the Super Bowl touting a new culinary masterpiece from Taco Bell. The Quesalupa. You see, it’s like a Chalupa and a quesadilla had a baby and named it poorly. Although really, it’s more like the Chalupa had an affair with the mailman, but the baby still kinda looks like the quesadilla, and the quesadilla desperately wants to believe it’s the father, so it just sweeps their suspicions under the rug and takes up drinking.

I suppose you could argue that the shell is a modified quesadilla, and if that helps Quesadilla to sleep at night, I won’t take that away from it. But no amount of bargaining is going to change the fact that it’s still basically just a cheese-stuffed Chalupa. And that cheese was stuffed there by the mailman. 

Anyway, the second I saw the commercial, I knew I had to have it. So I drove to my nearest Taco Bell and confidently ordered three Quesalupas. I got the bag. It was heavy.

There was chicken, steak, and beef. It was $11. I imagine the drive-thru worker was sexually impressed when she saw I planned on eating them all by myself. But true love would have to wait for another day. I was on a mission and needed to eat my Quesalupas ASAP. Reheated Taco Bell is not okay. I say this with all the respect in the world for Taco Bell and its wonderful food, but if you offer reheated Taco Bell to the homeless, you can technically be charged with a hate crime.

I arrived home and took the delicacy out of the wrapper. I ate it. It tasted exactly like Taco Bell. I then ate the second one. Then, the third. They were all gone.

I sat and pondered what brought me to this point in my life. Alone, cold because I forgot to turn the heat on, Taco Bell wrappers strewn about the table, and a belly full of grease and salt. I sighed and thought to myself, “How is it even possible to be this blessed?” To live in a world capable of producing such culinary beauty. And now, me, just a guy trying to make it in the world, is alive to witness its existence into my being.

I rate the experience high. I rate the Quesalupa pretty good. Think about what a Chalupa tastes like. It tastes like that. If you’ve never had a Chalupa before, you should be ashamed of yourself. It tastes like a deep-fried taco.

The Quesalupa’s cheese-stuffed shell does add some pretty decent extra flavor, as well as even more of Taco Bell’s patented sweet, sweet buttery grease. But it’s not super far off from the taste of a normal Chalupa. If you didn’t know the shell was stuffed beforehand, you’re probably not very smart, but you also wouldn’t really notice the cheese. It’s not like the commercial where it’s stuffed with a bag of string cheese.

It’s more like if cheese got a Chalupa shell pregnant, and Chalupa Shell is a couple months along. But then you come along and eat it before the cheese has a chance to gestate. Why did you do that? That cheese could have grown into something special. You’re a monster.

Though, to be honest, I think I like it better this way. The Quesarito—which is like if a burrito and a quesadilla had a baby that you let come fully to term before you eat it—had too much cheese and kind of threw the texture off. It tasted like I melted a bag of cheese and ate it for lunch. The Quesalupa, however, was just right.

As far as chicken vs. steak vs. beef, I’ll call it chicken > beef > steak. But it’s like making a parent choose their favorite child. Of course they’d rather hang out with Chicken, and Steak is kinda weird because Mom might have had a few drinks during that pregnancy, but they still love and accept all three children unconditionally.

The Quesalupa isn’t the genius that Doritos Locos Tacos are, but it is pretty solid. And entirely necessary. I fully approve of Taco Bell’s mission to innovate cheese into every item in new and exciting ways. If I want a normal taco, I’ll make a normal taco. But when I want fast food tacos that cause Twitter to crash over millions of people racing to make the same exact diarrhea jokes, Taco Bell has always been there for me. Some may call the Quesalupa a glorified Chalupa, and they would be right. But this is bigger than just food. It’s a lifestyle. A gastronomic journey. A quest to create the ultimate fast food item, uniting the people into one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and Taco Bell for all.

Quesalupa: 3 Stars

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