Visit #5: Saturday, May 31, 2014: 9:37 AM

If you haven't been living under a rock for the past few months, you have probably noticed that Taco Bell is now offering a breakfast menu.  There have been some pretty kick-ass ads -- notably the ones featuring "Ronald McDonald" -- and I had high hopes for the potential of these new additions to the Taco Bell menu.  There was only one major obstacle to me having the opportunity to savor these (hopefully) delectable breakfast innovations:  I am not a morning person.  Perhaps no one truly is, but I am the furthest thing from it, at the opposite end of the spectrum.  My non-morningness affects my stomach more so than any other facet of my being (other than my brain).  It has been relentlessly conditioned to reject all food -- other than super-bland fare such as buttered toast or granola bars -- that is consumed prior to approximately 11:00AM.

This of course poses a problem since Taco Bell STOPS serving breakfast at 11:00AM.  But this is a sacrifice that I am going to have to make to move this blog along towards completion since Taco Bell's menu offerings are quite extensive at breakfast time.  Weekdays are not a great breakfast option for me simply because I have to be at work by 8:30AM and there is no Taco Bell on my travel route to work.  So weekends it will have to be!  Thank goodness I like waking up early on weekends!  Oh wait.  I actually don't like doing that.  See what a sacrifice I am making for you, dear reader?  So yesterday was visit #5 -- but it was Breakfast Visit #1.  Breakfast is (was) served!

Item #11:  WAFFLE TACO WITH SAUSAGE

I am going to be up front with you:  this one frightened me.  I was certain that it was going to be rather epically gross.  There was not a single thing that appealed to me other than the always tasty egg & cheese combo.  Note from the first picture in this post that it came with a small package of syrup.  SYRUP!  This really made me nervous, since I had already figured on dousing this breakfast mutation in Mild Sauce -- I figured the Fire Sauce might be too much that early in the morning.  And I am guessing Mild Sauce mixed with Syrup might be enough to induce vomiting.  From the Taco Bell website:

"A warm waffle wrapped around a delicious sausage patty and fluffy scrambled eggs topped with cheese and served with a side of sweet syrup."

Price:  $1.99

Taste:  8.0 (out of 10)

Value:  8.0 (out of 10)

Overall Score:  8.0 (out of 10)

To give a fair and honest assessment of the Waffle Taco I resolved to take at least one bite unaltered by sauce or syrup.  I did so and was stunned -- in a good way.  The waffle was mildly sweet, but not cloyingly so, and had a pleasant, firm texture.  The sausage was mild-flavored, and the eggs and cheese were delicious.  Everything worked in concert here.  My brain started to think that a little syrup might not be the worst idea for an additive complement to this breakfast fare.  I poured the small side of syrup onto the Waffle Taco and went to town.  It was -- and I am still amazed to be saying this -- pretty damn delicious.  And as fast-food breakfast menu items go, this one was pretty reasonably priced for the amount of sustenance that I received.  Nice job, Taco Bell.  This unlikely oddball is a winner in my book.

Item #12:  A.M. CRUNCHWRAP WITH BACON

From the Taco Bell website:

"All the classic breakfast tastes like fluffy scrambled eggs, a golden crispy hash brown, real cheddar cheese, flavorful bacon and creamy jalapeño sauce wrapped up in a warm flour tortilla and grilled."

Price:  $2.49

Taste:  6.5 (out of 10)

Value:  6.0 (out of 10)

Overall Score:  6.4 (out of 10)

As I have not yet "officially" consumed a non-A.M. Crunchwrap in my Taco Bell travels, I cannot offer a comparison here between the A.M. Crunchwrap and its dinner menu counterpart.  But the dominant sensation from my consumption of the A.M. Crunchwrap with Bacon:  that is a lot of tortilla.  One is not immediately aware of how much tortilla exists here upon first gazing at the A.M. Crunchwrap because there are so many folds and because it is presented in such a compact package.  But trust me:  there is a lot of fucking tortilla here.  So much so it seemed that I was chewing on this thing for days.

Another notable aspect of the A.M. Crunchwrap is that the "crunch" is supplied solely by the hash brown component.  This facet of the A.M. Crunchwrap played rather well.  I was skeptical that a hash brown wrapped inside of a tortilla could be sufficiently crispy to offer a crunch, but the hash brown delivered in this respect.  The eggs and cheese were once again tasty, but the eggs were noticeably less fluffy than in the Waffle Taco -- probably because they were tightly compacted inside of approximately 627 square inches of tortilla.

Another quibble:  the "Creamy Jalapeño Sauce" referenced in the official description was all but undetectable.  (And since when is Creamy Jalapeño Sauce a "classic breakfast taste," anyways?)  The bacon was detectable, but it was unfortunately chopped into teeny-tiny "piecelets."  I had to douse this sucker in Mild Sauce -- again, I erred on the side of caution and decided that 9:30 in the morning was just too damn early to combine Fire Sauce and my stomach lining -- just to lubricate the tortilla enough to get the whole thing down my esophagus.  For the price paid ($2.49) you are getting a heaping helping of tortilla and not enough of everything else.

My first breakfast at the Bell was thus a mixed bag:  the hugely surprising Waffle Taco with Sausage, and the relatively disappointing A.M. Crunchwrap with Bacon.  I washed it all down with a Diet Mountain Dew.

Here is the receipt from my virgin Taco Bell breakfast blog experience:

Till next time, loyal reader.