hello everyone this is Running on Empty Food review
well hello ladies gentlemen and everyone watching welcome one and all to this newest edition of The
Running on Empty Food review series I'm your host the report of the week thanks for checking in
the last review that I did was for an establishment that doesn't release all
that many new items that being McDonald's this is the complete opposite Taco Bell pretty much
releases new things or at least a re-release various items on a near continual basis and
they're making a few adjustments to their menu and this being one of them for the month of March
2023 they have brought back the double stake grilled cheese burrito which I've reviewed a
couple of times already so I thought if there's really nothing else to try then I'll try that out
I believe in April they are getting rid of the quesarito likewise though for the month of March
they have brought back the bacon club chalupa and I thought I tried that out like three years ago
may as well give it another shot what I always like doing with these sorts of items that haven't
been out in a few years I like trying them out again because as you I'm sure have noticed the
quality of fast food it fluctuates it goes up and then it goes back down and well we
just have to see if they're maintaining the standards or not where things stand so the
bacon club Chalupa from Taco Bell is back and I'm going to be trying it out in today's review
it's available at the price of five dollars so five dollars for the chalupa itself and what
it has is a chewy flaky shell as you'll see in a moment it looks very different from your
standard taco shell inside is grilled white meat chicken bacon lettuce tomato and avocado ranch
sauce and a three cheese blend it has everything not really but that makes it sound good anyway
and it again is available with the price of five dollars I tried this out a couple years
ago as I said and I didn't have a problem with it so we'll see how it is this time
here it is so this is the typical chalupa shell as you could see right there you could actually see
I'm going to position this paper strategically in case any of that avocado sauce drips out
but as you can see right there it'd actually make a decent thumbnail I'll take a quick just in case
but you can get a good look at it you can actually get a real good view of that green hue to the
sauce you could see some bacon some of the chicken in there but the cheese the lettuce the tomato
to give uh credit where credit is due it actually doesn't look that bad at all Taco Bell items as
far as visually speaking can be real hit or miss and sometimes they can look absolutely disgusting
and taste as they look but in this case I'll I'll be honest it looks pretty good looks real fresh
it's not just the lighting but to me anyway the colors of it really are popping and uh
just it actually looks pretty decent we'll see how it tastes but from the visual side of things
purely based on presentation not bad at all what I am going to do if you've been a regular viewer
then you know this is a whole a whole Saga now yeah I still have that temporary crown in so
I'm going to pause the camera while I eat because otherwise if I were to just dig into this thing I
would be missing a front tooth most likely because again this is just a temporary crown in there
next week things should be back to normal and I won't have to do these Cuts anymore but I'm just
going to eat carefully pause the camera and then I'll come back of course you have a good cross
section of it to look at and give an assessment so we'll see it's looking good and let's find out
if it tastes as good as it looks the bacon club Chalupa from Taco Bell it's going in
before I get into the assessment I'm actually going to go and wash my hands but I just want
you to take a look at something because this will tie into what I uh I have to say if you look at
my my fingers here um this is the hand I was holding it I don't know if you can see with the
fingertips How uh oily they are keep note of that all right now with Clean Hands I have returned
so I guess since I since I kind of got into that I mean obviously I wanted to show you
that example uh that's really the only actually the only negative thing I really have to say
about this item because I'll tell you what it doesn't taste bad at all and there's actually
more substance to this chalupa than I expected there to be so when I and actually you'll see
I carefully ate it look into the cross section and the results are pleasantly surprising
that's okay I'll get that later
you could actually see that there is a decent portion of meat there
on the bottom is the chicken that's all bacon right there with the chicken then you have the
lettuce the Tomato the three cheese blend and the sauce is kind of mixed in with everything
and I'll tell you what it all works very nicely together it Blends together well
and as I said portion size this is one of the few times that Taco Bell has actually delivered
as far as presenting a good amount of the meat so often I'll wind up getting an item be that with
chicken or a beef where the famous filet mignon steak and there's barely any in there there's
like a tiny little morsel and you have to really you know search through it to even find any of the
meat so to actually get something that has as much meat as the advertisement actually portrays is a
rarity but that's a good thing to see because so often it's the opposite it tastes good
the chicken and the bacon as you could as you could see again there's a good amount of it and
they're both flavorful too the chicken is Juicy it's tender that bacon it's little bacon crumbles
but it really is quite flavorful and it adds a nice little almost like a nice little salty kick
to it as well but it just works real nice um it you know it's a little fatty but it tastes good
as far as the avocado sauce this ties in with the one thing that I have a complaint toward because
the three cheese blend is fine the lettuce and tomato are fresh they're crisp they give it a
little bit of moisture which all works out nicely and again the bacon and the chicken
complement each other and it's of good quality as well granted as far as Taco Bell is concerned
so the main issue that I have with this is actually the chalupa shell itself and I'm not
talking texturally texturally speaking it's fine adds a little bit of a crunch it gives it that
firmness that structure there's nothing wrong with that problem that I had with the chalupa
shell it is very oily it is extremely oily as a matter of fact the only thing I could really taste
as far as the chalupa shell goes is oil it would be as though you had this shell that was like a
sponge and I just imagine you had this bucket of oil and you dumped it in there let it just soak up
as much as possible and then you put the stuff in that so when I showed you my fingers a few moments
ago that was just from gripping the shell just to eat the uh the chalupa and you know there's this
oily residue that I mean if I squeezed it you would literally see the oil and the grease and
all of that coming out in literal drops from the chalupa shell so it is just absolutely soaked in
grease and oil and as a result in certain bites especially toward the top when uh
there might not be too many ingredients there all you really get is just this overwhelmingly
oily shell and I'm not a fan of that and if this were lacking on the ingredients then that shell
would single-handedly make what would otherwise be a good item into quite an unpleasant one quite
frankly because again that oiliness is just so excessive that it just gets really monotonous
really old really fast and it's like come on I just want to taste something different than this
now that established this is where that avocado ranch sauce comes in with that avocado ranch sauce
does is it complements or not not complements it balances out that's the right word for it I
misspoke it balances everything out so what what otherwise would be excessively oily a shell that
avocado ranch sauce is able to cut through it it's able to moderate things out a bit and it's able to
uh to get it to a point where wait a minute now I could taste that little bit of that sharpness
of the ranch complemented with that smoothness of the avocado which is also quite flavorful and
a table again to cut through the oiliness it ties everything together it balances everything out and
it's really what saves the day because otherwise if it weren't for that sauce yeah the ingredients
are good there's a good quality there good quantity of ingredients as well but when you have
that potent persistent oiliness in that shell that seeps into every single bite if it weren't for
that sauce we would have ourselves a problem and I would be sitting here saying this would have been
a darn good item if it weren't for the problems uh with the shell but because of that sauce this
is an instance as we sometimes get where you have one ingredient that single-handedly saves the day
and is able to transform an item that otherwise might not be the best into something that uh is
actually quite good so that avocado ranch sauce in this case really works and that does a good job so
definitely make sure that if you get one of these bacon club chalupas that it has that avocado ranch
sauce on it because that is a must for this item to be uh optimally enjoyable so that said price
five dollars yeah some people might say yeah but you know the fact that it's reliant on this one
ingredient uh isn't that kind of saying something about the quality yeah but it's Taco Bell you know
and you have to remember that too so uh still factoring everything in the item is what it is
I'm reviewing what I got I'm happy with what I got as a result out of 10 I'm going to be giving the
bacon club Chalupa from Taco Bell I'm gonna give it an 8.15 out of ten that's an 8.15 out of 10.
not bad at all and yeah that sauce really uh saved the day here I'd say so it sounds like
something that I might be of interest to you and if you'd like let me know in the comments uh what
you thought of yours if you wound up getting one of these bacon club chalupas that's all
that I have for you thank you for watching until next time I'm your host the report of the week