Taco Bell has a new item, and instead of rearranging the same ol’ ingredients in a new format like they usually do, they’ve taken to rearranging names of existing foods. The Quesarito is a portmanteau of “quesadilla” and “burrito,” and features meat, sauce and rice wrapped in a tortilla with a layer of cheese around the inner core.

Hmmm, I guess they are just using the same ol’ ingredients too. Like a boring mad scientist. Like if Dr. Moreau kept promising a herd of hybrid leopard-men but just kept putting the legs of rats on legless rat bodies. You know what, though? That’s still pretty impressive. And you know what else? The Quesarito is also pretty impressive.

Maybe the greatest thing about the Quesarito is that it doesn’t really taste like it comes from Taco Bell. It has Taco Bell elements, sure: a disregard for fresh vegetables, a runny sauce that coats all the ingredients, it emanates nuclear fast food warmth.

But the Quesarito has heft. It has substance. Other Taco Bell items often feel chintzy, like they are designed to run through our bodies as fast as possible. Tasty, edible garbage. The Quesarito feels like food. I feel comfortable even calling it a “gut bomb.” And from my experience, the Quesarito comes with a free sizeable nap.

This is thanks to a couple things. It’s a burrito wrapped in a quesadilla, so the tortilla is actually doubled up, which makes it chewier. The rice is also new. It’s “Latin rice,” which I guess means it was a loser studying a dead language in high school. But you can pick out individual grains and it’s cooked more al dente than the rice in other sister items. Biting into a Quesarito, you can sense full, sturdy ingredients. Seems like maybe they took a look at the modus operandi of one Chipotle restaurant and decided to go sic semper tyrannis on ‘em. Side note: anyone have a time machine and know how to say “Please go to prom with me” in Latin? Asking for an amicus.

The decent base of tortilla and rice gives the cheese and protein a solid springboard to showcase their flavors, and for the most part, they do a good job. The cheese in the quesadilla forms a golden ring around the bisected burrito, and every bite is equally blessed by the melty smoothness.

Of the three meat options, the relatively muted shredded chicken fares the best, playing along with the rest of the Quesarito to let every ingredient shine in a concert of flavor and texture. The steak is fine too, but every bite was filled with sinew and makes the burrito feel stringy. The beef is the ground beef from all the other Taco Bell stuff, and as such it lacks subtlety. It’s salty like a salt lick, to the point where it almost burns, and definitely overpowers the quieter elements in the Quesarito.

It’s also ground to the point of almost being a meat puree, and seems out of place in this new, gentler Taco Bell item. It’s time to leave your hometown, Ground Beef. See the world, get some new perspective. Yeah, Ground Beef, we’ll leave tomorrow. Let’s go out back for now, look at the rabbits. That’s it, pet the rabbits. Oops, I shot Ground Beef in the back of the head. I’m sorry, Ground Beef. You’ll never over-salt anyone’s tongue again, Ground Beef. You are reunited in heaven with the Blackjack Taco and the Volcano Menu.

Now the bad. It’s pretty much just the sour cream. Maybe it actually goes well with the Quesarito, but it’s a problem of construction, not taste. The way the sour cream is dispensed on the tortilla, it’s packed all into one end, like if the Quesarito was an airplane, the sour cream takes up first class. And that’s confusing, because first class is a good thing, but there isn’t anything called “last class.”

Okay. If the Quesarito was an airplane, the sour cream takes up all of last class. And I’m Godzilla or Optimus Prime or whatever, and I want to eat the plane, and I bite in and I get a giant mouthful of tangy sour cream. That’s insane. Because who put all this sour cream in an airplane?

But as a human, if I wanted a mouthful of sour cream I’d go to the sour cream store and grab a spoon. Oh wait, that doesn’t exist, because we are civilized people and not creeps and nobody wants mouthfuls of sour cream. And the sour cream pocket is on either end of the Quesarito so it’s like playing Russian roulette with every beginning bite. Mexican-Russian roulette. Sorry. Mexican-Russian-American roulette. We’re a melting pot, folks.

So Taco Bell smushed two words together and they scored a home-down/touch-run with the Quesarito. They made the Brangelina of fast food. Oh! Are any of those kids in that family Mexican-Russian?

The Quesarito is a success, and soon we might be calling Merriam-Webster to add a new word, like all those popular portmanteaus of the past such as bromance, Californication and Fleshlight. Welp, just made myself barf with that string of words. That’s okay, more room for Quesarito.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 ground beef Quesarito* – 650 calories, 300 calories from fat, 34 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 60 grams of cholesterol, 1450 milligrams of sodium, 65 grams of carbohydrates, 6 grams of fiber, 5 grams of sugar, 22 grams of protein.)

*Nutrition facts for chicken and steak versions not available on Taco Bell website.

Item: Taco Bell Quesarito
Purchased Price: $1.99 (Ground Beef), $2.79 (Chicken) and $2.99 (Steak)
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Taco Bell
Rating: 6 out of 10 (Ground Beef)
Rating: 9 out of 10 (Chicken)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Steak)
Pros: Substantial, filling. Tastes like actual food. Cheese in every bite. The rice is great.
Cons: Very salty, particularly the beef. Steak is sinewy. Can be runny. Sour cream is always stuck in one bite.