We’ve come a long way from the original Hot Dog and Hamburger. Now-a-days, it seems anything goes between to halves of a Bun. Or in a Wrap, or in a Taco. But when does the Bun cease to be a bun at all? And what do you call the resulting culinary creation? Now, Taco Bell is testing the limits…
The Naked Breakfast Taco. An interesting innovation, but is it still a ‘Taco’?
Taco Bell has been struggling to maintain its share of the fast food market and, until recently, keeping a pretty ow profile with new menu items or service innovations. But, now, it’s testing the limits of the conventional Taco and Breakfast Sandwich concepts by introducing more ‘Naked Breakfast’ items.
The Naked Breakfast Taco (NBT) comes ready to stuff with Potato Bites, Sausage Crumbles or Bacon, Nacho Cheese Sauce, and Shredded Cheddar. But what’s getting stuff is the real news. The regular NBT uses a ‘fried Egg’ circle as a Taco Shell. No bread. Ditch the Potato Bites and you’ve got a no-carbs (albeit, high-fat) breakfast! This ‘fried Egg’ is actually, as close as I can tell, a sort of Omelet which, like pretty much everything else on the TB menu, is prepped on the Flat Top. It must be kind of tough to stand up to being folded and stuffed.
Alas! – I won’t get a chance to try it. Not yet, anyway. It’s being test marketed in Flint Michigan starting tomorrow. Anybody out there in flint who does get to try it, please write in and let the rest of us know how it is…
The question is…
Does a breakfast-stuffed Omelet still qualify as a Taco without a real Tortilla shell? And what of the so-called Burgers that use stuff like Noodles and Waffles and Doughnuts? And what about the Japanese concoction that uses the Beef Patties as ‘buns’ and put everything else between them? The Internet yields scads of examples simply by searching for ‘crazy burgers’.
I think maybe the Fast Food world is entering a new phase of its evolution. I’d like to see all the big players agree that any Burger that doesn’t have a conventional Bread ‘Bun’ is no longer a Burger, but something else. Or a Taco or a Wrap? What do we call this new mashup entity or category?
I’ll be following this ‘trend’ with great interest…
~ Maggie J.