Visit #24: Sunday, September 14, 2014: 12:25 PM

Hmm.  A salad at Taco Bell?  I admittedly arrived to this Border visit with a bit of trepidation.  Though certainly not Taco Bell's worst menu offering, the seemingly similar -- and previously experienced -- Cantina Power Bowl disappointed on a number of fronts, most glaringly by way of its not offering any salad dressing as an accompaniment.  I understand that the Cantina Power Bowl is not marketed as a salad, but when you have meat, lettuce and vegetables all mixed together in a bowl in relatively equal proportions, that, my friends, is a salad.

But the Fiesta Taco Salad resides on Taco Bell's menu, so consume it I must.

Item #56:  CHICKEN FIESTA TACO SALAD

From the Border's website:

"A crispy tortilla bowl filled with marinated all-white-meat chicken, and loaded with chunky beans, real cheddar cheese, premium Latin rice, crisp shredded lettuce, diced ripe tomatoes, red tortilla strips, reduced-fat sour cream and served with Cantina salsa on the side."

Price:  $5.39

Taste:  8.0 (out of 10)

Value:  5.5 (out of 10)

Overall Score:  7.4 (out of 10)

Upon first glance, the Chicken Fiesta Taco Salad offered an unexpectedly pleasant presentation.  There was lots of color, and a fair amount of textural variation.  (Note the picture below.)  Red tortilla strips, a dollop of sour cream, quite a few tomatoes and what appeared to be a fair amount of chicken were present.  The lettuce was disappointingly of iceberg heritage, but there was cheese and I quickly determined that the edible (and tasty!) shell was lined with a layer of tasty refried beans.

Now we all know that I am not one to beat a Taco Bell horse to death.  (OK, I have already beaten the "lettuce-in-a-warm-and-moist-enclosed-space" horse to death several times over.  But other than that, I think I'm squarely on the right side of the not-beating-horses-to-death fence.)  But the earlier complaint that I referenced regarding the Cantina Power Bowl?

It turned out that a ridiculously simple solution was at hand:  salsa.  If Taco Bell would get off their fucking "Cantina Bell" high horse and offer salsa with the Cantina Power Bowl, a major problem would be alleviated.  But that's another matter for another day.

The salsa pulled together the ingredients in the Chicken Fiesta Taco Salad pretty well.  The acid of the salsa cut through the blandness of the iceberg lettuce, which actually held up better than expectations -- probably due to not being enclosed in a warm and moist space.  (Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)  The chicken was pretty tasty, and the shell-and-beans combo was a winning one.

What keeps the Chicken Fiesta Taco Salad from scoring higher?  The price, my friends.  $5.39 is still a fucking huge amount of money for a bowl of lettuce and chicken at Taco Bell.  For a lesser amount of money, one could purchase and consume a Steak Quesarito, a Spicy Tostada, AND a Beefy Mini Quesadilla.  I know which alternative I would choose.

The receipt from this afternoon's visit:

Only two more "official" Border visits remain, dear reader.  (Other than future visits to sample the inevitable additional items that will be spawned by menu expansions.)