The BTS meal is better than their music, probably

K-Pop! It’s everywhere! You cannot go by a single damn day without some K-Pop related trend on Twitter ruining your life. It isn’t news by any means that K-Pop is conquering the music world in a way not seen since the British Invasion, but what is news is the BTS meal at McDonald’s. The Beatles sure didn’t get a McDonald’s tie in, did they?

McDonald’s has been doing tie-in meals as a “thing” for a while now, starting with the wildly popular Travis Scott meal and following up with the somewhat less popular J Balvin meal. Now McDonald’s has teamed up with the most popular band in the world, the K-Pop boy group BTS to make an all new meal. What could go wrong with the biggest fast food restaurant teaming up with the biggest pop group? Well, a lot, probably, but we’re going to have to find that out ourselves.

FOOD: Taco Bell – Nacho Fries


Nacho Fries! They’re back!

Then again, we didn’t really notice they were ever gone. And from the looks of it, they came back in July, so we dropped the ball on this one right through the floor. Whoops!

Nacho Fries first popped up back in January of 2018, filling a long-pondered-about hole in Taco Bell’s menu. Taco Bell, ostensibly being a Mexican-themed restaurant, has never before offered French fries in America. Their staple cheese-saturated side dish has always been their nachos (officially, ‘Chips and Nacho Cheese Sauce’). But we, as Americans, have a long and storied love of the fried potato that extends back generations; just about every other fast food restaurant has to serve french fries whether they want to or not.

Recognizing this, Taco Bell has added other potato-based dishes to their menu – first and most notably the home fries-esque “Fiesta potatoes”, as well as breakfast hash browns – but the addition of real French fries is a genuine first for the chain.

The real question is, should they have added fries at all? This “nacho” style is an interesting Taco Bell-themed twist on regular French fries, but was it the right choice to move further away from their already distorted view on Tex-Mex cuisine? Let’s find out how we feel about this.

FOOD: McDonalds – Szechuan Sauce

Hey, you! Do you watch television? What about watching adult alternative animation? Have you ever heard of Adult Swim? And what about the show… Rick and Morty?

Well, if you’re reading this review, you definitely have. If you haven’t, Rick and Morty is a sci-fi cartoon show on Adult Swim that recently featured a discontinued McDonald’s promo sauce for the Disney movie Mulan:

Rick Sanchez, a dimension hopping ultra-genius, reveals his motive behind his erratic actions is simply to find more Mulan Szechuan dipping sauce. The mere mention of this supposedly delicious sauce set off legions of Rick and Morty fans, who began a campaign to demand McDonald’s bring the dipping sauce back.

Fortunately for them – and unfortunately for us – McDonald’s listened.

The sauce was brought back in limited quantities as a co-tie in for their new Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Tenders. And when we say limited, we mean limited. It was only available at select restaurants, with most having less than 20 packs to give out. The fans were upset to the point of requiring police intervention at some areas.

Naturally, it was an enormous blunder for McDonald’s. But they pledged that the sauce would return in December of 2017, in quantities enough that all could enjoy the tangy Asian flavor.

Now, in February of 2018, the sauce is back. Points for trying, McDonald’s.

So, is the sauce good enough to riot over? Was it worth digging back into McDonald’s 1998 recipe box for? Was it even good enough to have been a plot point in an overly-popular cartoon? Find out after the cut.

FOOD: Taco Bell – Lava Sauce & Volcano Quesarito [Discontinued]

Taco Bell Lava Sauce 01

Taco Bell, compared to most other nation-wide fast food restaurants, has an extremely dedicated following. Like most fast food places, Taco Bell’s menu is regularly changing, adding new items and removing old. This has led to a lot of contention among their fanbase, as cult favorites tend to be the first to get the ax. These include items such as the Beefy Crunch Burrito, the Bell Beefer, the Blackjack Taco – all cut down in (what their fans will claim was) their prime.

But there’s always been one menu item that’s had an especially loud clamor for its return. It wasn’t a taco, or a burrito, or even a real meal in itself – it was a sauce. The Lava Sauce, the foundation of the now-discontinued Volcano Menu, has been widely requested for a return to the proper menu ever since its discontinuation in 2013. It was essentially a spicy nacho cheese sauce, yes, but fans will claim that the spice made the difference. If you were to hear it from a Lava Sauce lover it could elevate virtually any Taco Bell food into a heavenly experience, a kind of claim that we only hear about Sriracha sauce nowadays. Although the Taco Bell fans cried loudly for their sauce back, Taco Bell stayed quiet… Until now.

Now, the legendary Lava Sauce is back and featured in the Volcano Quesarito, a standard Taco Bell Quesarito with Lava sauce in place of the regular cheese. We’ve never had the original Lava Sauce, but the idea of having such a monumental sauce for a limited time was too interesting to pass up. Will Lava Sauce live up to its volcanic hype or be a stone cold flop?

Find out after the jump.

FOOD: Taco Bell – Dare Devil Grillers [Discontinued]

Taco Bell Dare Devil Grillers 01

Taco Bell has been on a roll recently! We didn’t get a chance to review the Bacon Club Chalupa, but we thought it was very good and an excellent bargain in its $5 meal deal. Their latest offering is the Dare Devil Loaded Grillers, a set of three “loaded Grillers” with super-spicy sauce in three heat levels.

Each Griller is wrapped in a grilled burrito and includes Taco Bell’s seasoned ground beef, nacho cheese, and crunchy red tortilla strips. The primary draw is the Dare Devil sauces, however: Chipotle, Habanero, and Ghost Pepper (from least to most hot).

The sauces for the Grillers are all mayonnaise based, with the Habanero sauce also including sour cream. As the sauce for the Chipotle Griller was an already established sauce on their menu, we decided to only review the two new sauces.

After the jump we’ll take the dare and see if these Grillers are red hot or stone cold.