Review: Taco Bell Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes and Spicy Potato Soft Taco

Potatoes are back at Taco Bell. No . . . not the Nacho Fries. (Hey Bell execs, make those part of your permanent menu.) The “seasoned potato bites” that were available for years before the Bell scaled back its menu during the height of the COVID pandemic are available at the drive thru once again. And that means the Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes and the Spicy Potato Soft Taco are back on the value menu.

The Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes deliver a bowl full of the crispy, seasoned potato bites topped with reduced fat sour cream and nacho cheese sauce. The Spicy Potato Soft Taco offers a flour tortilla stuffed with those potato bites, real cheddar cheese, crisp lettuce, and creamy chipotle sauce. They also brought back the Beefy Potato-Rita—a burrito stuffed with the potatoes, nacho cheese sauce, and creamy chipotle sauce—but it wasn’t on the menu yet when I picked up the other two items.

The Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes have a nice amount of seasoning, but not nearly as much as the Nacho Fries. They taste more like well-seasoned home fries. As for being crispy? Maybe straight out of the frier. But by the time I got them home, the sealed bowl they were packed in had steamed out any crispness. They still tasted good, though. The cheese is the typical nacho sauce the Bell puts on many of its items which adds a good creaminess and actually goes really well with the potatoes. As for the sour cream? Completely unnecessary, and you are best off asking them to hold it. Neither the potatoes nor the cheese sauce deliver any heat. So if you want to add a kick, drizzle on some Diablo or Fire sauce, and that makes for a tasty little dish.

The Spicy Potato Soft Taco offers a decent substitute to the meet-filled taco. The potatoes combine really well with the lettuce and cheese, and the chipotle sauce adds a nice creaminess with just a touch of heat. As with the Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes, the bites of spuds get pretty soft pretty quickly, and this is almost like a mashed potato taco. But surprisingly, that works pretty well. If you want to add some heat, you will have to tear open a package of Fire or Diablo sauce. However, those do tend to dominate the flavors in this case, so might I suggest Secret Aardvark Habanero Sauce? (I find that one works really well as a taco sauce.)

There are two things I really love about these two items. First, they are cheap (a buck fifty for the Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes and a buck for the taco), and I love cheap. (And they are not too bad calorie-wise, either.) Second, they taste different than the other Taco Bell items. So much of the menu at the Bell is just a remix of the standard ingredients, sometimes with a twist or sometimes just bigger and/or with more ingredients packed on. The potato offerings, especially these two with no meat, have their own taste. It is similar to the other menu items from Bell, but different enough to set them apart. The potato taco may not satisfy if you are craving something beefy, but if you are looking for something different while heading to the Taco Bell drive thru, it’s a good option. While the Cheesy Fiesta spuds pack plenty of cheesy goodness and offer a nice break from nachos. (Not that anybody needs a break from nachos.)

The potatoes are back on the permanent menu, but permanent is really only as long as the attention span of corporate execs. If they see the next shiny object or decide they are making a penny less profit than they should, they could be gone again (the potatoes, not the execs sadly). But the Bell needs to keep these in place as a meat alternate and they need to put the Nacho Fries on the permanent menu as well. (And bring back the Naked Chicken Chalupa while you are at it.) Enjoy the seasoned potato bites while they are there, as they could disappear again. But for now they offer a great bargain and just enough variety amidst Taco Bell’s standard fare.

Tale of the Tape:

Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes
Serving Size: 4.3 oz
Calories: 230
Fat: 12g (2g Sat/0 Trans)
Protein: 3g
Carbs: 26g
Sodium: 520mg

Spicy Potato Soft Taco
Serving Size: 1 Taco
Calories: 230
Fat: 12g (3g Sat/0 Trans)
Protein: 5g
Carbs: 27g
Sodium: 460mg