I Tried the 10 Most Popular Taco Bell Menu Items—This Is the One I’ll Always Order

The winner wasn't what I thought it would be.

We’ve all been there: You stop at the drive-thru on the way home from work or pull up a delivery app, take the bag to your kitchen, where you find that your order isn't quite right. Usually, the error is that the workers shorted you a chicken nugget or ignored your request for no pickles, but all too often, they forgot an entire sandwich or box of fries. But every once in a while, you get the surprise of a menu item that you didn’t order. At that moment, you can either see the stowaway foodstuff as a curse or a blessing. At Taco Bell, at least for me, it’s always a blessing.

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That’s because, while I have my go-to favorites that yo quiero when I make a routine run for the Bell, I’ve never had anything from the chain that I haven’t liked. Cynics will reply that of course I like everything because anything in a Taco Bell wrapper is just a reshuffling of the same core ingredients (shell, beef, beans, lettuce, cheese, sauce); others might accuse me of being brainwashed by the company’s iconic marketing campaigns (and granted, the Enchirito song still lives rent-free in my head a quarter of a century later).

The truth is, part of the reason I love Taco Bell is because its team is always experimenting, thinking outside of the bun (okay, maybe the marketing is getting to me), building out the menu from the original slate of a mere five items (frijoles, tostados, burritos, tacos, and a chili burger) offered at the first franchise in 1965. I’ve tried it all, from the gimmicky Volcano Taco with Lava Sauce or Black Jack Taco (a Halloween-themed black crunchy shell) to the resurrected classic (only to be killed off again) Enchirito to the ingenious Doritos Locos Taco to clever Mexican mashups like the Quesarito (yes, a cheese quesadilla rolled into a beef burrito *chef’s kiss*). The only time I ever balked at a new Taco Bell offering was when I was living in Indianapolis and spotted a Pacific Shrimp Taco—and my wife had to talk me out of it, emphasizing that the ocean was a long way from central Indiana.

But while so-called “Stunt Food” fads cooked up in Taco Bell’s Innovation Kitchen come and go, there is a fairly stable core menu of items you can count on for your late-night cravings. No entry, except for the original crunchy taco, is completely safe (remember how hard we had to fight to get the Mexican Pizza back?), but for now, here are the 10 most popular core Taco Bell menu items to wash down with your Mountain Dew Baja Blast, including the one I’ll order every time.

The 10 Most Popular Taco Bell Menu Items, Ranked

10. Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito

A staple for vegetarians who are sick of having to substitute beans for beef on every item, this burrito should probably be renamed the Beany Rice and Cheese Burrito, because the queso is often hard to find amid the (still delicious) mush.

9. Nachos BellGrande

A longtime fan-favorite, this beautiful mess of Americanized Mexican goodness has suffered as other fast-food joints, restaurants, sports bars, concession stands, and even quick stops have upped their nacho game. Today, you can easily find sturdier corn chips that are better seasoned and buried under much more exciting toppings at a gas station.

8. Chalupa Supreme

This deep-fried flatbread taco is just too greasy for me—it's akin to wrapping beef in a funnel cake, which when it comes to tacos, it just misses the mark.

7. Beefy 5-Layer Burrito

A more appropriately named burrito, this bad boy brings the beef, but I’m here more for the outer layer of nacho cheese sauce that provides a cheesier kick than the so-called Cheesy Bean and Rice burrito. It’s even better when you order the flour tortilla grilled to a nice golden crispiness.

6. Soft Taco

Soft as it may be, this is the solid foundation of any Taco Bell order. Just a flour tortilla stuffed with seasoned beef, cool lettuce, shredded cheese, and the sauce packet of your choice (I’m Team Diablo), I usually order at least four more soft tacos than I’m hungry for because, unlike its crunchy counterpart, this one reheats nicely later in the evening or the following day.

5. Chicken Quesadilla

This is a fan favorite that tends to get overlooked by the casual Bell hopper—probably because it’s so simple. It’s the best use of the house grilled chicken, melted amid a three-cheese blend pressed inside a grilled flour tortilla. But the secret is the creamy jalapeño sauce, which ties it all together in a chewy, meaty, cheesy, spicy package.

4. Mexican Pizza

The Mexican Pizza is a lesson in scarcity. First introduced in 1985 as the Pizzazz Pizza, this sandwich of beef and beans between corn tostada shells, topped with cheese tomatoes and a tangy sauce was collateral damage in a larger menu culling in 2020. Fans went crazy, circulating an online petition that garnered 200,000 signatures. But when the company relented in 2022, they quickly sold out as demand was 7-times what it had been two years prior. I know I said no menu item is safe, but you can be pretty sure the Mexican Pizza isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

3. Crunchy Taco

Is it a feat of Taco Bell ingenuity? No, it’s a corn shell, beef, lettuce, and shredded cheese. Is it well constructed? No, all those toppings are virtually guaranteed to spill all over the wrapper, the table, or your lap the moment you bite into it and the shell crumbles in your hands. Does it come with a signature seasoning or sauce? No, you have to squeeze a drop or two of sauce from the packet pretty much with each bite. Can you resist smiling through the entire experience with this Taco Bell classic? No, no you can’t.

2. Crunchwrap Supreme

The secret of Taco Bell’s success, in my opinion, is not so much the marketing, the late-night drive-thru hours, or even the taste of its offerings—it’s the texture of the menu items. It’s the pleasure of snapping into a crunchy taco, softly biting into a pillowy gordita, getting to the crispy tortilla strips hiding inside the burrito. And the Bell is at its best when it combines those sensations in a single package. The Crunchwrap gives you all of that and more: The crust of a grilled soft flour tortilla, giving way to the mantle of cool lettuce, sour cream, and tomato on top, hot beef and cheese on the bottom, and at the core, a crunchy tostada shell. The mutli-textural experience would easily rank No. 1 had it not been exceeded by …

1. Cheesy Gordita Crunch

What’s more pleasurable than biting into a soft, thick flatbread to get to the signature crunch of a classic taco shell? Going through a layer of chewy melty three-cheese blend to get there. And for the finale: A beefy core spiced up with a zesty ranch sauce. Screw up my order all you want as long as one of these is somewhere in the bag.