Wrap a regular hard shell taco with a bean burrito, and you get the latest from Taco Bell, spearheaded by a television advertising campaign featuring the NBA greatest centers Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O'Neal. (Where's MVP David Robinson? Filming those stuffed-crust ads for Pizza Hut with teammate Dennis Rodman, that's where, which they had plenty of time for during the finals.) The later spots add Spike Lee to the cast, but fail to capture the "best of both worlds" spirit of the original. And as the commercial suggests, the two have indeed come together in a great way: the tastes blend splendidly (more so than, say, a chicken soft taco could possibly have contributed to the effort) at the same time preserving their respective distinctions (the taco shell remarkably stays hard while the beans provide ample filling); the package holds together perfectly until it reaches the mouth (if, for example, you place enough french fries inside a cheeseburger, some inevitably hang out and drop from the sides); and it is especially convenient for someone like me whose typical Taco Bell order consists of tacos and burritos anyway. My colleague Eric Hester commented that with the soft tortilla layer on the outside serving as containment, the hard shell doesn't shatter in your hands, sending shrapnel dangerously close to the eyes and generally making a mess. Financially, it's quite a deal as well--for seventy-nine cents, you get a whole fifty-nine-cent taco (which I swear is, for some reason or other, better packed than when purchased separately) and more than a third of a bean burrito; granted there is less of the latter, but for those who fear that this will adversely affect the precious equilibrium at work, I promise that it does not. (I don't bother to discuss the merits of the Supreme version of either as I have never considered a pinch of tomatoes and more sour cream than meat worth the price difference.) For those of us who so long ago accepted the soft shell taco as the solution to the design flaws of its hard counterpart and welcomed the higher volume but eventually came to miss the crunch, this may be it.
Rating: (out of five)