Decades Menu
Taco Bell (2024)
Since the days of dial-up internet, consumers have been sharing lists of discontinued foods and beverages that they want to become available again. There have been quite things from the Taco Bell menu that have been discontinued over the years that are frequently mentioned in these lists. The fast food chain has finally responded to these pleas by bringing back four products from the past for a limited time.
The promotion is called the Taco Bell Decades Menu, which includes the following items representing the decade that they were introduced.
- Tostada: a flat and crispy tostada shell topped with beans, red sauce, lettuce, and cheese.
- Green Sauce Burrito: a soft tortilla wrap with beans, onions, cheese, and Salsa Verde sauce
- Meximelt: a soft taco filled with seasoned beef and topped with pico de gallo and melted cheese
- Gordita Supreme: a thick soft flatbread folded like a taco, filled seasoned beef, and topped with sour cream, lettuce, and cheese
We didn't have a Taco Bell in my hometown until the 90's, so the only one of these that I've had during their original run was the Gordita. When the product line was first introduced, you could get them either with beef for 99 cents, or you could get either chicken or steak for $1.49. There were also three choices of how they were prepared: Supreme (lettuce, tomato, cheese, and sour cream), Fiesta (lettuce, cheese, and pico sauce), or Santa Fe (corn and black bean salsa, cheese, and chipotle sauce).
My favorite Gordita from the late 90's was the Santa Fe with either chicken or steak. In fact, I think those are my all-time favorite food from Taco Bell. Unfortunately, the only one that was brought back as a part of the Decades Menu is the Supreme Gordita with Beef. You could always customize your order for an upcharge and swap out the seasoned beef for chicken or steak, but I don't think they have the chipotle sauce or the corn and black bean salsa. It seems like it'd be an easy enough thing to replicate at home if you want to try it.
I wanted to try everything from the Decades Menu as intended without any customization. This meant getting my Gordita with sour cream, which I am not at all a fan of. Seriously, I don't think I've ever eaten anything that had sour cream that wouldn't have tasted better if the sour cream was left out of the recipe, whether you replace it with something else or not.
My favorite out of the four was the Green Sauce Burrito because the Salsa Verde is especially tasty. The good news is that they have the sauce on the menu all the time, so I'll have to remember to customize my order to include it in the future. I don't usually get crunchy tacos, but the Tostada was surprisingly great. The Meximelt wasn't bad at all, but it didn't strike me as anything more special than their regular soft tacos, and the Gordita was good, but it would have been a whole lot better if it was the Santa Fe style.
Finally, there are four different retro style soda cups available at Taco Bell during this promotion. The one that I got is from the 60's. I'm not sure who had the bright idea of slapping a large QR code on something that was meant to evoke the restaurant's aesthetic from sixty years ago. Seriously, when's the last time you've ever actually scanned one of these things? Oh well... the cup gets an A for the idea, but a D+ for its execution.
