https://tacobell.com/food/nachos/nachos-bellgrande
Order: Nachos BellGrande
Price: $6.19-$7.00
Server: ChromeOS or a human, depending on location
Laura Nachopacabra (“Cabra”): Koko 4Loko and I ate at Taco Bell well over a year ago, and it has taken me until now, the anniversary of his Kory’s 40th year around the sun, to write it up. It’s my gift to him, my gift to me, my gift to us. Koko, what was the best birthday gift you have ever received, other than my signature on our friendship contract?
Nacho Man Kory Savage (“NMKS”): Lauraborealis is a world-class gift giver. Let’s just say that I was so overwhelmed by her gesture and thoughtfulness that I was incapacitated for six entire months, only now recovering enough strength to pen my corresponding review. (Editor’s note: Koko wrote half of his review back in April 2023, a few days after eating Taco Bell’s offerings. He then spent an entire year of his life lobbying Nachopacabra to work on her review, to no avail. Then out of the blue she swooped in, saving me from my pit of despair much like Gwaihir rescuing Gandalf from his internment atop the tower of Isengard. So, now we’re all caught up and thank goodness because I’ll finally have something substantive to point to when everyone’s showing me photos of their families and talking about their successes at my 25-year high school reunion in 2027, assuming this review is published before then.)
Atmosphere
NMKS: I found the innards of the W. 11th Ave Taco Bell to be quite pleasant. Turns out the Friday 11:35AM lunch rush is a thing of fables, there were only two people sitting down and one of them was an employee on break. There was a lot of natural light coming through the windows, which really made my nachos and all the modern art “pop”.
Someone must have tipped off the store manager because when I arrived they already had a special table set up for me. It’s generally considered a conflict of interest in our line of work to accept special treatment from a restaurant that is being reviewed, but, you know what, I deserved it.
Cabra: Last time we did this, I was on the Palouse, which I have since exchanged for the hill country of Texas. This place. I like it more than Idaho but still miss Oregon. Speaking of Oregon, Koko and I once shared a dental hygienist in Eugene, and she used to tell me Kory’s secrets when she cleaned my teeth. She was once like, “So, have you heard Kory is now an ordained minister?” and I was like, “Duh, I was the one who submitted the paperwork for it!” NPR is welcome to fact check this story. Anyway, I went to the Taco Bell in San Marcos, which is basically on the campus of Texas State University. It was nice, but not as nice as the split level 3-in-1 Kentucky Fried Chicken Taco Bell Pizza Hut that was down the road from my childhood home. That place ruled. The chairs that were anchored into the ground also swiveled. There was no swiveling to be had the day of our review.
Server interaction
Cabra: Did I order at a kiosk? I think I ordered at a kiosk.
NMKS: Much to my surprise, my order was not taken by anyone, it was entered by me into a self-service kiosk. Maybe I’m the last person to know this, but fast food restaurants use machines to take orders now. A lot has changed in the 20-years since I last ate at a Taco Bell. The ordering process was easy to navigate and largely uneventful. Because I’m a newb, the algorithm didn’t know me yet and its, “You might also like” suggestions were a bit off the mark. You really think I want to tack on a side of chips and nacho cheese sauce to my Nachos BellGrande order? Sure, maybe the MTN DEW Baja Blast Freeze, but not a satchel of lesser nachos.
I did, however, get to interact with a human being to acquire the bathroom code (no, not to do a diarrhea…I just had to pee). He gave me the 4-digit number with the exact level of “I-don’t-want-to-be-here-right-now” that I was expecting when I ordered my food, you know, before I discovered that C-3PO was working at Taco Bell in between Star Wars film shoots. The bathroom code for the W. 11th Ave Taco Bell is 4328, for anyone in need.
Presentation
Cabra: I mean, we’ve seen worse? Look at those colors. The vibrancy! Hello, fresh cut tomatoes. Nice to see you, pure-as-snow sour cream. Ahoy there, natural golden hue of the very natural and not artificial cheese sauce. It’s a sight for sore eyes. Too bad it turned into nightmare fuel when Koko licked the bowl clean and the cheese sauce clung to his mustache hairs, which he then referred to as the “ol’ flavor saver.” What a day it was to have eyes. If I had to experience it first-hand, then you have to relive it through my words.
NMKS: I’m not sure why the subject of still life painting hasn’t progressed from a bowl of fruit or vase with flowers to something a bit more modern and relevant to people’s lives. I’d wager to guess that more people sit down with a tray of Taco Bell delectables than a table festooned with a wicker basket overflowing with ripened fruits. Any aspiring or established artist should really consider the Nachos BellGrande for their next subject for this future pièce de résistance has it all:
✅ Vibrant colors
✅ Varied and subtle textures
✅ Intriguing interplay of light and shadow
Chip to topping ratio
NMKS: There’s a lot of talk about people losing jobs due to the increased usage of AI and automation in the workplace, but maybe Taco Bell implementing order-bots frees up the employees to spend more time gussying up the food and elevating the quality of each dish that leaves the hot line. This was a real Captain Planet situation, all of the ingredients came together with their own unique traits in perfect harmony, conjuring up something bigger, an entity that could save the world (me) from great peril (hunger and disappointment).
Cabra: This was, as the youth say these days, a complete banger (they said this in 2023, I swear). No chip was left untouched by that fresh, organic, non gmo, perfectly natural golden liquid. You know when Mufasa tells Simba, “Everything the light touches is our kingdom”? It was a lot like that but with nacho cheese sauce. Not too little, not too much. The perfect amount, and nary a soggy chip in a 1-mile radius.
Price
Cabra: IDK what it was, but now it is $6.99, according to tacobell.com. I feel like it was less, but we all are singin’ that inflation tune. You know the one: She works hard for the money / So hard for it, honey / She works hard for the money / So you better treat her right. No wait, not that one.
NMKS: According to my books, this plastic plate of nachos cost $6.19, which happens to be the same cost as a one-way ticket to Value Town, USA.
Level of Drunkenness
Cabra: Zero. I’m down to sometimes Live Mas, but I don’t want to Get Fired Mas from my job if I were to go back to work hammered after lunch. Also, didn’t we change this category? New option: “Level of Shrunkenness” where we debate if shrinkflation got it’s dastardly claws into Taco Bell’s menu. Nachos BellGrande? More like, Nachos BellMedio.
NMKS: It’s been so long since our last review that I can’t remember if we changed this category or not. I do recall that I didn’t have any booze before, during, or after my BellGrande, but if I had then I’d probably just be getting over the hangover one and a half years later. RE: the Level of Shrunkenness, I’d like to see a Squid Game x Honey I Shrunk the Kids mashup in which small groups of working- and middle-class Americans (i.e. 99.9% of our country) compete against each other to win $150,000 (a.k.a. 6-months of rent). One of the “levels” of the contest would entail contestants being shrunk to ¾” in height (like the movie) and then be forced to traverse a plate of fly-infested Nachos BellGrande.
Company
Cabra: It’s Koko’s bday as I write this, which is the one day a year I am legally obligated to give him a compliment (part of our friendship contract), so here it is: I would like Texas better if you were here. I would be happier if we still saw each other in person. I miss you.
NMKS: I didn’t read Laura’s previous comment until just now and I must admit that I teared up just a tiddle. It’s really touching to see AI emulating human emotion and speech so naturally. The improvements in AI since we ate these nachos in Spring 2023 are quite extraordinary; they can reasonably compensate for Laura’s Spock-like demeanor. A search through her ChatGPT prompts will reveal this prompt dated June 6th, 2024, “Please write a 1-2 sentence note to my former best friend expressing how much I miss him even though I’m not sure I do or if I ever liked him, or even what it’s like to feel anything except the discomfort that washes over me when everyone at work knows I’m the one that farted during our meeting, but didn’t own it.”
Overall
Cabra: 3.75 chips. Can I say something? Koko pointed out that it has been 10 years since our first nacho review. Yeah, it took two years to write this review from the time we ate our meal, so stop talking about it. It’s honestly been the 10 best years of my life. Marriage, two children, a blooming career, a covered deck at my house with a hammock chair…is this all thanks to Take It Up A Nacho? Yes, I mean, probably. Nachos are the common denominator for my life successes. In honor of 10 years, I’m incorporating a new scientific calculation by adding the option of utilizing increments by the .25 in our overall scoring. 3.75 chips. Taco Bell, you did it. We did it. Koko did it (meaning he both smelt it and dealt it).
NMKS: 3.5 chips – You know what? Shame on me for judging Taco Bell and assuming that eating an order of Nachos BellGrande was going to be something I had to get through, rather than something to appreciate and enjoy. Is it something I’ll consider ordering in the future when I’m tired and don’t feel like cooking? No. Is it something that I’ll recommend to an out-of-town guest when they’re visiting me in Eugene? Nah. Is it something I’d eat at 2am when my other options are few and far between? Absolutely. Assuming that I wouldn’t enjoy (or potentially finish) the Nachos BellGrande, I made a contingency plan to eat a burrito from one of my favorite nearby food trucks after I was off the clock. This plan proved to be moot for my dining experience at Taco Bell can be perfectly summed up by one of my all-time favorite memes.
