Taco John's Meat & Potato Breakfast Burrito has meat and potato indeed

Posted on Jul 28, 2020

Taco Bell may have betrayed us, but it’s a good thing they aren’t the only pseudo-Mexican-style food restaurant in the business. One of our personal favorites is Taco John’s, a distinctively Midwestern brand of ground meat slop shoved into tortillas that has managed to capture our heart. 

It’s no secret that our number one favorite fast food item is Taco Bell’s Breakfast Crunchwrap, which was definitely the reason we were distracted from noticing Taco John’s breakfast menu for so long. Though Taco John’s was our first stop if we wanted shitty tacos, Taco Bell had our hearts for shitty breakfast. With Taco Bell announcing that they’re going to be making unforgivable changes to their menu, we’ve been in the market for a new tortilla-wrapped breakfast delight.

Most of Taco John’s breakfast items were the standard ‘breakfast burrito’ kind of thing, but one caught our eye: The “Meat & Potato Breakfast Burrito”. With just good old meat, potatoes, and eggs in it, it was a potential challenger to the Crunchwrap throne.

So can the Meat & Potato Breakfast Burrito dethrone the Breakfast Crunchwrap in our eyes? Hit the jump and find out.

The Meat & Potato Breakfast Burrito cost us around $4 USD a burrito, which isn’t super expensive, but it isn’t cheap either. Certainly, anything at Taco Bell that costs 4 dollars is not worth the money. We were worried that the burrito wouldn’t be very substantial - most breakfast burritos are dollar menu things, slim and wan.

Thankfully, these were nice and hefty; they would prove to be enough of a breakfast by themselves, with no sides at all. The burrito itself was, well, a plain burrito. It promised to be filled with Potato Oles, cheese sauce, scrambled egg, and a choice between sausage or bacon. We chose sausage, because sausage is the superior breakfast meat. 

Before we progress any further, we need to discuss exactly what Potato Oles are, and why we like them so much. They’re honestly just tater tots with some seasoning salt on them. Yeah, that’s about it. They’re so far from being “Mexican food” you have to wonder what convinced Taco John’s execs to put it on the menu. But we really do like them! They’re totally different from what other fast food places offer, even if they are simple. 

So, of course, the idea of a breakfast burrito stuffed with these little tater knobs excited us. But once we bit into it… we loved it. What more can be said? It’s a classic breakfast burrito, and it was everything we expected. The Potato Oles were fluffy on the inside and crunchy on the outside, the cheese sauce was their good ol’ salty plasticky nacho cheese, and the tortilla was soft.

The sausage, however… We barely registered it as sausage. It had the exact texture and consistency of taco meat, and even tasted exactly the same on our first few bites. Towards the end we started to notice a strange sour flavor, which we singled out to the meat itself. It’s like their standard taco beef, but with a McDonald’s-style medicinal breakfast flavor. It wasn’t what we expected, and there was so little of it compared to the eggs-and-potato that we had a hard time forming an opinion on it.

Regardless, it was very good. We really would have liked it more if the sausage was more like Taco Bell’s, but honestly, the meat gives it something that makes it stand out from other breakfast offerings. If you don’t like the taste of breakfast sausage, you’re nuts, but Taco John’s has the answer for you. Otherwise, we’re probably going to stick with the Breakfast Crunchwrap (at least until they inevitably mutilate it), especially since the closest Taco John’s is like half an hour away from us and we could walk to a nearby Taco Bell.

We’d like to give this one another try with bacon, to see if it works out any better. We don’t like Taco Bell’s bacon because it’s virtually indistinguishable from those little tiny imitation ‘Bake-N’ chunks that taste like dog food, but we can guess that Taco John’s uses real bits of bacon that taste like something. When we eat breakfast we like it to taste breakfasty, you know? We love the taste of breakfast sausage, we’d eat it every day if we could. It’s our preferred meat over bacon by a long shot.

But, overall, we do like the Meat & Potato Breakfast Burrito. We’re definitely going to get it again, someday, and maybe we’ll even update this article with a mention of how the bacon tasted.  We just wish it had actual breakfast sausage in it! We do love Taco John’s taco meat - we are devotees to the Six Pack & A Pound, which is a combo item as gluttonous as it sounds - but we’re not willing to part with that sweet, sweet flavor. But hey, it’s a breakfast, and it’s a good and filling one for the price. This one is worth a try any day.

Categories: food

Tagged: breakfast breakfast burrito burritos