Taco Bell Secret Menu Items You'll Wish You Knew About Sooner

There's more than one way to find success in the crowded and lucrative fast food marketplace. Some restaurant chains keep it simple, offering a limited menu of items on which it can focus and perfect. Others present an ever broadening, always changing menu, enticing customers with new things to try. Taco Bell solidly falls into the latter category. Once a fast food pioneer that helped popularize Americanized Mexican food across the United States and beyond, Taco Bell has long since moved past tacos, burritos, and refried beans. So many menu items have come and gone, but they've always carried a particular Taco Bell flavor, because those entrées and sides have all been made, more or less, out of the same small list of ingredients. Taco Bell's cooks are very skilled at rearranging the same foods — seasoned beef, steak, beans, rice, cheese, a bunch of sauces and condiments — in varying volumes and coming up with populist culinary magic.

This makes Taco Bell's menu very easy to hack. Offering customization across the menu board, customers can act like the company has, and use those few ingredients as tools and use the listed fare as suggestions and play around all they like. There are just so many little-known foods available at Taco Bell, if one knows exactly how to order them. Here are some of the all-time greatest, tastiest, and most novel Taco Bell secret favorites.

Similar to a Cheesy Roll Up but slightly more sophisticated and a lot more spicy than just that particular tortilla-and-melted-cheese offering, the Cheesarito is among Taco Bell's many meat-free ideas. It's a decidedly cheese-forward, consisting of just the chain's melted three-cheese blend, red sauce, and scallions. Amazingly, this tasty and obvious union of some of Taco Bell's most mundane and frequently used items was never on the menu in its most frequently secretly ordered form. It was entirely thought up, and popularized, by Taco Bell menu hackers.

A take on the Cheesarito can be obtained with some tricky ordering at most any Taco Bell. Following a food poisoning outbreak, Taco Bell no longer uses green onions as of 2006, but some vegetable-based heat can find its way into the makeshift Cheesarito with the addition of jalapeño slices, and its slight crunch and green color via shredded lettuce. Otherwise, a Cheesarito can be made by asking for a Cheesy Roll Up with those vegetables and red sauce added, or by ordering a soft taco without the meat and with jalapeños and perhaps an extra scoopful of cheese. The Cheesarito manifests as equal parts hot and cheesy, reminiscent of ballpark nachos and the saltiness of the cheese meshing well with the piercing sweetness of the red sauce.

In 2020, Taco Bell streamlined its menu to enable its kitchens to operate more efficiently and effectively in the midst of COVID-19 shutdowns and shortages. Several menu items deemed too consuming of time, labor, or ingredients went away either permanently or temporarily, including the once widely available Quesarito. The name "Quesarito" is a portmanteau, or a mashup of two words to create a new one. As such, the Quesarito itself is two Taco Bell items smushed together, in theory and in practice, and the result is a brand-new item.

The "Quesa" comes from "quesadilla," or Taco Bell's extra-large take on the basic but classic combination of a tortilla, cheese, and a little bit of additional flavor, provided here by a creamy jalapeño sauce. The "rito" is represented by some liberal helpings of ingredients one is more likely to find in a burrito. What one gets back from the Taco Bell kitchen, if ordered correctly — a quesadilla with a protein of choice, a spicy sauce, sour cream, and rice — is a dish flat and cheese-loaded like a quesadilla, but packed with burrito flavors and textures, all of which pop with intensity because they've been pressed and condensed into one another.

Such an extensive and potentially limitless secret menu at Taco Bell exists because the chain allows customization of most of its savory dishes. An item can change immensely by just the addition or subtraction of a sauce. Taco Bell can make anything it sells unique by throwing in red sauce, avocado ranch dressing, or nacho cheese sauce, for example. It doesn't let customers add in Lava Sauce, on account of how it hasn't been a permanent kitchen item since it was used on the Volcano Taco and similar menu items, sold between 2008 and 2013 and reappearing for a limited time in 2015 and 2023.

The Volcano Sauce can be reasonably recreated with two sauces Taco Bell still stocks, and one of them is even free. Order a cup of nacho cheese sauce, either from a live employee or through the Taco Bell app. Then, grab a couple packets of sauce according to your individual heat preference, either Mlld, Hot, Fire, or Diablo. Two servings of sauce get stirred into the nacho cheese cup, and it tastes almost exactly like the Lava Sauce of yore. If you don't remember, it's a tangy, stinging blend with an overwhelming flavor. This new Lava Sauce might work best for pouring over Taco Bell's mildly flavored potatoes, or as a dipping sauce for tortilla chips or Nacho Fries.

One of the simplest and most straightforward secret menu items possible, the double grilled quesadilla at Taco Bell is just that — the chain's standard big, floppy, cheese-stuffed and well-sauced quesadilla cooked for a longer period of time. Another pass on the Taco Bell grill elevates and evolves the quesadilla into something special. The abundance of cheese solidifies a bit, moving from oozy to chewy with a more intensely cheesy taste. The spicy sauce inherent to the item takes on a smoky profile which complements the cheese while also coming in with some moisture and cover for the dryness that happens to the steak or chicken (if customers ordered the quesadilla with an optional meat choice), which taste more grilled than they ordinarily would. But this secret menu item is all about the outside, both in taste and looks. The extra grilling manifests in prominent and appetizing heat marks and a thin, slightly crispy crust. The once soggy and tough to manage quesadilla tortilla can now hold all of the ingredients where they need to stay.

Unlike most other secret menu items, a double grilled quesadilla can't be managed with a few additions or subtractions on the Taco Bell app. If customers want a double grilled quesadilla, they have to ask a real-life Taco Bell employee to double grill their ordered quesadilla.

Even those with just a vague familiarity with superheroes can probably predict that a secret menu item named after the Hulk, or the Incredible Hulk, is going to wind up green in some way. Indeed, Taco Bell's house guacamole bears a hue very similar to that of the unnaturally green and rage-fueled character from Marvel comic books and movies. That seasoned, creamy, and velvety avocado mash is the key ingredient in two Taco Bell secret menu items which are green like the Hulk and similarly hefty. The Hulk Burrito is easy to get and easy to make, as it's merely the standard, low-priced Taco Bell bean burrito — a tortilla filled with a generous helping of refried beans plus red sauce onions, and shredded cheddar cheese — with guacamole added. That's a simple tweak that can be made in the Taco Bell app.

As for the sizable Incredible Hulk Burrito, that takes a bit more machination. To access this heroic item, order a Beefy 5-Layer Burrito but get it made without the included sour cream and nacho cheese sauce. The addition to Hulk it up: guacamole, of course. The green and creamy condiment greatly benefits both the bean burrito and the Beefy 5-Layer Burrito. It imparts more luxurious creaminess to Taco Bell's refried beans in the former, and complements the smooth sour cream and nacho sauce in the latter.

With a name like the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito, Taco Bell customers already know they're ordering one of the Mexican-style fast food chain's most substantial menu items. With a huge build approaching that of a Mission-style burrito or one found at Taco Bell's upscale competitor Chipotle, the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito is loaded with a big portion of seasoned ground beef, nacho cheese sauce, seasoned rice, crunchy tortilla strips, sour cream, and shredded real cheese. A multi-pronged menu hack of this already ample burrito takes things to the next level, and Taco Bell employees must struggle to find the room inside that large flour tortilla to add anything, such is the challenge in making the aptly named Superman Burrito.

Nothing is removed from the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito to give it a transformative Superman makeover. Order the item as is, either to a real employee or on the Taco Bell app, and ask for the addition of seasoned potatoes and guacamole. There's so much going on here that it doesn't evoke memories of any other Taco Bell item, past or present. This combo of ingredients makes everything totally different. The crispy potatoes' inner creaminess emerges and binds with the condiments, and all that plays off the saltiness of the beef and the nuttiness of the seasoned rice.

As Taco Bell is more likely to create and sell innovative Mexican-inspired food items invented in its own kitchens than it is to serve anything particularly authentic, the Meximelt is perhaps the chain's signature dish. Introduced to the menu in 1988 and remaining there for 30 years, the Meximelt pulled from Taco Bell's set collection of ingredients to make for something both familiar and new. Despite its enduring popularity, the restaurant dropped it in the 2010s, but briefly restored it in 2024 when Taco Bell's Decades Menu brought back old faves.

It's still among the discontinued Taco Bell menu items that are unlikely to return, and while it's no longer readily available by name, the Meximelt can be created with some careful machinations on the Taco Bell app or when ordering in person. It begins with a standard flour tortilla used on soft tacos that's stuffed with the seasoned ground beef blend, pico de gallo, and a three-cheese blend. To access this secret menu item, fire up the Taco Bell app and start with the Cravings Value Menu's Cheesy Roll-Up. That takes care of the tortilla and cheese, so just add taco meat and pico de gallo to build a Meximelt. This makes for an object that feels like a gussied up Taco Bell soft taco. That's an item that's tasty enough but lacks bite and dimension — the Meximelt's pico de gallo provides the freshness and crispiness of raw veggies we never knew we were missing.

The Crunchwrap Supreme is an inspired, history-free, completely proprietary creation of Taco Bell's corporate chefs. To create one requires so many of the common Taco Bell ingredients that to alter, add, or delete just a few of its elements results in a noticeably different dish in terms of taste and texture. Take for example an Internet-spread secret menu favorite and Taco Bell menu hack nicknamed the Mexican Calzone. It doesn't look much like a traditional, Italian-style calzone, which is essentially a giant pocket sandwich made with pizza crust and full of pizza ingredients. The Mexican Calzone is instead round and flat, but it imitates the notion of the Italian calzone with its crisp and chewy outer layer, which in this case is a grilled, oversized white flour tortilla. That breading wraps up some of the regular Crunchwrap Supreme ingredients along with some new ones that make it smooth and melty on the inside, not unlike a cheesy, saucy calzone.

To menu hack one's way to a Mexican Calzone that tastes like it was made at a Taco Bell, start by ordering a Crunchwrap Supreme. Ask for the employees to hold the lettuce and nacho cheese and to throw in refried beans and the shredded three-cheese blend. Protein is optional, but it doesn't really need beef or chicken to create a satisfying, soft, and creamy concoction.

Taco Bell seems to love removing and adding Nacho Fries from its menu, but this secret menu item isn't that. More of a Tex-Mex take on fast food fries, Taco Bell's extant Nacho Fries don't have much to do with the common notion of nachos — they're potatoes coated in a taco meat seasoning and meant to be dipped into a plastic cup of spicy cheese sauce. It's also possible to get nachos made with potatoes at Taco Bell, more akin to a spin on pub or Mexican restaurant nachos, or the next step in the evolution of Canadian poutine.

Under its Sides and Sweets menu portion, Taco Bell sells an unassuming side dish called Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes. The dish is made up of lightly seasoned potato chunks (not fries) topped with a spoonful of hot nacho cheese sauce and a dollop of reduced-fat sour cream. That's almost a legitimate serving of potato nachos. To customize it fully into an individual side of legitimate, real-deal, sports bar nacho fries, ask the Taco Bell to get rid of the cheese sauce in favor of the three-cheese blend of real cheese and add diced tomatoes (and onions, jalapeño peppers, and/or pico de gallo if one is so inclined) as well as a sauce — the red works great — and a meat, be it chicken, steak, or seasoned beef.

Seven-layer dip is unquestionably among the best party dips, and as it utilizes a number of ingredients found in American-style Mexican-food, it was an obvious inspiration for a long-time Taco Bell standout, the 7-Layer Burrito. Quietly once one of the best vegetarian fast food menu items out there, Taco Bell eliminated the complicated and gigantic 7-Layer Burrito in 2020. A creamy, savory handheld meal so hearty the absence of meat is hardly noticeable, the 7-Layer Burrito was made from tomatoes, refried pinto beans, seasoned rice, sour cream guacamole, pico de gallo, lettuce, and a three-cheese blend, all slathered inside a large flour tortilla.

The 7-Layer Burrito can't be ordered by its name or via a click on the app, but seeing as how Taco Bell still has all of the ingredients on hand for other menu items, it's quite easy to get a taste of the restaurant's history. When ordering the modern-day version of the 7-Layer Burrito, order a Taco Bell Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito. Request it to be made "Fresco Style," which automatically deletes jalapeño slices and the nacho cheese sauce. Then, ask for the inclusion of lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole, sour cream, and the three-cheese blend. It's like time-traveling back many years — it tastes that much like an original issue 7-Layer Burrito.

Taco Bell's fanbase is a particularly devoted and vocal bunch, and in the online food writing (and appreciation) community, the fast food chain's most ardent adherents have spread word of many secret menu items until they were the stuff of modern legend. I had to try these for myself to see if they really were worth the trouble of placing elaborate orders, both in person and via Taco Bell's app and website.

I also wanted to know if they were pleasingly meaty, spicy, and cheesy. The secret menu items listed, reviewed, and photographed here were chosen because they sounded the most intriguing and because their reputation precedes them, particularly those that replicated long-ago deleted or discontinued items once found on the Taco Bell standard menu. Once the items were purchased, I photographed all of them and then tried them out, reviewing them on their own merits and how they stacked up against regular-issue Taco Bell menu fare.