The Quesalupa Explained: It's Actually a Taco-ized Stuffed Crust Pizza

The Food Kingdom is coming relatively late to the Quesalupa phenomenon that was unveiled to the nation on the eve of the Super Bowl.  Reaction from many quarters has been been a fairly muted disappointment, with the most common complaint being that the Quesalupa doesn't really taste that much different from the Chalupa, which preceded it.  Some people actually miss that warm fluffy dough inside.

The Food Kingdom roundtable has reached a similar conclusion about the Quesalupa, but I want to go a bit further and explain the reasons behind its shortcomings, organizing the critique around the central paradigm mentioned in this post's title.  It all makes sense when you consider that the Quesalupa is, in many ways, a stuffed-crust Mexican pizza.

What Do I Mean It's a Stuffed-Crust Mexican Pizza?
Consider the major taste elements in the Quesalupa, which you can see in the picture below.  First let's start with the obvious: the stuffed crust itself.  The Quesalupa certainly passes the test of "matching the picture" as far as the gooey stretchy cheese inside the shell.  Unlike the abominably dishonest Nestle 100 Grand (formerly 100,000 Dollar Bar) which promises stretchy caramel that elongates as you pull the bit section away from your mouth but actually breaks off cleanly no matter how delicately you bit into it, the Quesalupa really is filled with warm stretchy cheese and that gets it off to a terrific start.  But just like with a stuffed crust pizza, the cheese and crust don't taste like much all by themselves.  So let's dig beneath the shell and see what else awaits.

A cheesy, melty auspice as we break open the Quesalupa for the first time.

Inside the Shell
Inside the shell are many other things you would indeed find topping a Mexican pizza.  Shredded cheddar?  Check.  Diced tomatoes?  You know it.  Lettuce is a bit of a wildcard, so leave that aside. Seasoned ground beef?  Absolutely.  So you see the thesis is all coming together.  And so the base-model Quesalupa is a perfectly decent hand-held Mexican pizza in ways good and bad.   Just like pizza, it's quite tasty when perfectly fresh and the hot gooey cheese meshes with the tender crisp crust and the fresh interior toppings.  But just like most people don't care for cold pizza, a cold Quesalupa has the same liabilities.  When the gooey cheese settles down to room temperature, the stretchy cheese suddenly becomes brittle.  It no longer fills the four corners of the mouth, but rather breaks off in ruddy, gummy bits.  So all Quesalupas should be eaten fresh, which is to say you should either eat them in the restaurant or only order one, or perhaps two at the most if you eat quickly.  By the time you get to a third, the interior cheese will have hardened and the steam given off by the hot cheese will have migrated by capillary action through the shell transforming it into mere...wet, greasy, bread. Ewww...

Seasoned beef, diced tomatoes, lettuce, sour cream.  Aside from the stuffed crust, it's standard-issue Taco Bell.

But What About the Chicken and Steak Versions?
An interesting irony obtains with the Quesalupa and many other Taco Bell items: the premium ingredients don't always translate to more taste.  In principle, do we prefer steak over ground beef, and real chicken strips over ground chicken?  In isolation, surely we do, but in the case of a multi-ingredient item like a Quesalupa, the answer isn't so simple.  Remember that steak and chicken strips are lost in a melange of many other components; not just the tomatoes and lettuce (which can water down flavors), not just sour cream and cheese (which can soak up and obscure flavors) but the spongy bread and cheese of the shell itself.  Those steak juices?  They've soaked into the pores of the bread.  The sizzling oils and browned tastes?  They've blended with the white cheese into relative anonymity.

This lonely steak is going to need some help

 So the tastes endemic to the meats aren't going to be making a very strong statement.  The flavors are going to have to come from the sauce.  Remember once again the pizza analogy.  How would a pizza with no sauce taste?  Pretty bland.  In the case of the seasoned beef chalupa, the meat comes with its own sauce.  But the chicken and steak ones need the hot sauce.  With their help, a fresh Quesalupa can be a richly satisfying and bold experience.

Taco Bell Fire Sauce Brings it to Life!

This is the Third Chalupa. Notice How the Cooled Cheese Has Stiffened the Shell

Conclusions
The Food Kingdom has a lot of work to do before the Quesalupa retires from the menu, at least temporarily, in 12 weeks.  There is also a shredded chicken version which we haven't yet tried. But more importantly, the Quesalupa is customizable with all of the add-ons you see below.  We suspect that bringing more crunch and more heat, with pico and jalapenos, or onions and chipotle, or perhaps some more salty, earthy notes with bacon and black beans, could make the Quesalupa a lot more interesting.  If all that white cheese doesn't get in the way....