Gallery: We Try Everything On Taco Bell's New Breakfast Menu

Waffle Taco Box

The box says, "Right now I'm eating a waffle taco and you're not." This is to incite jealousy so that a person who is not eating a waffle taco will feel the need to get one, too.

Sausage Waffle Taco

When you open this chest of magic, you may find yourself a little crestfallen that your waffle taco isn't as pretty as the glamour photos. This breakfast creation, in theory, is some of your favorite morning meal components combined...only shaped like a taco.

BUT the waffle is only a waffle in shape—it actually tastes more like frybread, crisp and oily on the outside, chewy on the inside. And while it's sturdy enough to hold together while you're eating it, it's also really, really, oily, which is a ding against it. The sausage patty is dense, salty, and surprisingly delicious, while the powdered and reconstituted eggs serve their purpose, but don't have much flavor. It's much better with the maple-flavored syrup poured on top for some extra punch.

Bacon Waffle Taco

Like the sausage waffle taco, this little guy is very oily to the touch. Here, the bacon is sprinkled on, giving little pops of smoky, fatty saltiness. The bacon isn't exactly crisp, but in this case, the flavor is more important than texture on the otherwise plain eggs and chewy waffle. The syrup adds extra flavor and of course, a ton of indulgent sweetness.

Because there's no dense and springy sausage patty, this waffle taco stays closed a little better, too. Is it better than the sausage waffle taco? It depends on what you prefer; I'm a sausage guy, but I never say no to bacon, either. Just make sure you have plenty of napkins to wipe your fingers on afterward.

A.M. Crunchwrap

The regular crunchwrap on the daytime menu is one of my all-time favorite items from Taco Bell. I love the balance between the soft outer tortilla and the crisp taco shell within, all wrapped up with a nice, hearty filling.

The breakfast version starts with the same tortilla, but it's layered with a whole hash brown, a meat of your choosing (bacon, sausage, or steak), scrambled eggs, cheese, and creamy jalapeño sauce.

A.M. Crunchwrap With Steak

I was prepared to hate the idea of the A.M. Crunchwrap, since I don't like extra starch (rice, specifically) inside my burritos. But it turns out I'm totally cool with a hash brown inside a UFO of fast food engineering. Even though it sounds like overkill, the hash brown adds some satisfying heft to something that would otherwise be little more than a flat breakfast burrito.

While the steak isn't prime dry-aged beef, its flavor is a lot beefier than you'd expect. Imagine this as a portable fast food steak-and-egg plate, complete with hash browns. The jalapeño cream sauce helps cut through all the substance of the Crunchwrap, but the helpful cashier suggested I try a packet of picante sauce with it. It's just a little packet of the kind of salsa you'd ordinarily get out of a jar, but the vinegar and tomato adds some welcome, bright acidity. And the fact that the Crunchwrap is grilled makes a world of difference; the toasted exterior seems like a minor detail, but the processed flour tortilla seriously benefits from the grill-press.

A.M. Crunchwrap With Sausage

The sausage version of the A.M. Crunchwrap is noticeably different from both the steak and bacon concoctions. As you can see, the disc-shaped flat sausage is uniformly distributed across the center of the wrap. The sausage itself is good, especially by fast food standards—salty, fatty, and well seasoned—but it feels heavier than the other versions. The scrambled eggs take a backseat to the forcemeat in this situation. If you need a dense meal to start your day, this might be your choice. Overall, it's good—just really filling!

A.M. Crunchwrap With Bacon

This A.M. Crunchwrap delivers a smoky, salty kick that sets it apart from its siblings. The crisp hash brown and occasionally crisp pieces of bacon (of which there's plenty) work well with the chewy grilled flour tortilla, and the jalapeño cream sauce delivers some extra spice to keep things from getting to monotonous.

Again, it's all about personal preference with these Crunchwraps. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure book, except you get to choose between bacon, sausage, or steak, which is obviously way better than any of the endings in those lousy books.

And yes, it was really difficult to get those Crunchwraps to stand up that way.

Grilled Taco

This half-moon quesadilla-looking thing is actually a grilled taco. It's stuffed with eggs, bacon or sausage, and cheese, before it's pressed on a grill.

Bacon Grilled Taco

The exterior of the grilled taco is a more-or-less neat package, there's no big surprises inside. The only thing I wanted was a more uniform scattering of bacon, but since it is by definition fast food, this is totally forgivable. That said, the bites with bacon are much better than the ones without.

Sausage Grilled Taco

This isn't much different from the bacon grilled taco, but the pelletized sausage isn't particularly appealing. I prefer the thicker, larger format sausages showcased in the other breakfast items.

Breakfast Burrito

There are four types of breakfast burritos at Taco Bell: Bacon, Sausage, Steak, and Bean. All of them also contain egg and look fairly compact, but they're a lot heavier than they appear.

Bacon Breakfast Burrito

Again, this is pretty much what you'd expect. It's eggs, bacon, and cheese, all wrapped tightly in a soft flour tortilla. If you've ever been to a hotel buffet and seen breakfast burritos in the heated pans, these aren't much different. Plain eggs, salty bits of smoky bacon, and a small amount of cheese to glue it all together.

Bean Breakfast Burrito

I should get some kind of James Beard Award in the category of "Being Able to Pose a Burrito Cut in Half." Let's just say this wasn't easy. Out of the breakfast burritos, this one is my favorite. I really like Taco Bell's refried beans. They kind of remind me of instant mashed potatoes, and that uniform, smooth texture works almost as a spread. Plus, the beans are salty and starchy, which helps add substance and flavor to the otherwise bland eggs.

Sausage Breakfast Burrito

Out of all the breakfast burritos, the sausage is my least favorite. There's not much sausage, and what's there isn't very good. Don't get me wrong—I get that they're broken into pellets for easy distribution, but something gets lost in translation when they're pressed into that particular shape.

Steak Breakfast Burrito

Unlike the sausage burrito, there's a lot of steak in this iteration. It also has a little bit of jalapeño cream sauce, but the flavor disappears into the bundle pretty quickly. As someone who loves Taco Bell's more playful and inventive menu items, I ultimately found the breakfast burritos disappointing.

If you do order one, though, make sure to grab some picante sauce—I found the burritos to be a little dry.

Hash Brown

The hash brown is pretty big. It's crisp and lacy on the outside and starchy and soft on the inside. If you're oil-averse, you may want to steer clear—it absorbs quite a bit and is ultimately pretty greasy.

Sausage Flatbread Melt

The Sausage Flatbread Melt is one of the more straightforward items on Taco Bell's breakfast menu. The flatbread is thicker and fluffier than the tortilla (similar to pita bread), and gets some nice color on the grill. Wrapped around the big salty sausage patty with some melted cheese, it's satisfying in a simple way.

Cinnabon Delights

The Cinnabon Delights, one of the newer desserts from Taco Bell, have made their way onto the breakfast menu! You know, for those of you insane people who don't like eggs, bacon, steak, and sausage. As Todd Brock mentioned in his review, they're good, if a bit too sweet. They're best eaten warm, and their warm cream cheese-esque filling is a surprise in the middle that caught me off guard at first, but quickly became a guilty pleasure. They're also the only breakfast item that's available all day.

All of the Taco Bell Breakfast

People often say that they're jealous that I get to write about food all the time. Let's just say it's not always as easy as it sounds.

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