by Bottom Line: The Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries from Taco Bell combine three great items from that chain into a tasty and spicy “new” selection.
Old is new again as Taco Bell has another “new” item in the drive-thru that cobbles together ingredients they already have in the kitchen. This latest selection is the Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries, which come with the following:
Boldly seasoned Nacho Fries topped with savory, slow-roasted chicken, warm Nacho Cheese sauce, Caliente sauce, shredded cheddar cheese, crunchy fiesta strips, and reduced-fat sour cream.
This merges together three Taco Bell favorites: Nacho Fries, Cantina Chicken, and the new Caliente Sauce. All of these are quite good on their own, so certainly putting them all together is a good thing, right? Let me run down the scorecard.
Nacho Fries: Gotta love these, and they should be a permanent menu item. I will admit that the fries in this order were not quite as crispy as usual, but still plenty tasty.
Cantina Chicken: This is the “new” chicken at the Bell, which is tender and flavorful—an upgrade from their previous poultry selections (you can read my review of the Cantina Chicken here). It was rather sparse in the order, but the bites with it were quite good.
Caliente Sauce: This new sauce is a winner (you can read my review of it here) and goes quite well with the fries. I wish they had added more, though I did get extra sauce (for a 60-cent upcharge) because I wanted to be sure there was plenty.
Nacho Cheese Sauce: They were stingy with this (noticing a trend here?), but the cheese sauce is always a good addition for the Nacho Fries.
Shredded Cheddar Cheese: There were only a few shreds here and there, but this did add a bit to the cheese factor.
Crunchy Fiesta Strips: These are mostly superfluous in a dish like this, but they did add a little extra crunch.
Reduced-Fat Sour Cream: This is completely unnecessary, even though they were skimpy with the nacho cheese and Caliente sauce. I ordered without it, but they included it anyway. It didn’t ruin the dish, but I would much prefer more of the other sauces.
When you bring everything together, this is a pretty good Nacho Fries combo—even though they were skimpy on the ingredients. That Caliente sauce is really the kicker and brings everything together. (Hey Taco Bell, allow people to sub that for nacho cheese when they’re getting a regular order of the fries.) Of course, I ordered extra Caliente sauce, but I took several bites before adding it, and the fries were still quite good.
As for the heat (which is what you really want to know), these Nacho Fries have a good kick. (Though the bites with sour cream cooled things down, thus the reason I prefer that to be left off.) And that’s before I added the extra sauce. I would put them close to Medium on my scale served as is, and the extra sauce moves them in the direction of Hot. And that is pretty good for The Bell, which typically leans toward the Mild side.
Calorie-wise, the order of Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries totals up to 540 cals, which is not too high for the drive-thru (though you may want to avert your eyes from those 33 grams of fat). But this is Taco Bell, and you know you’re going to at least get a taco with those fries. So go easy on the add-ons—otherwise, you’ll be paying some penance at the gym.
These run $4.99 in my area, which is not bad for a filling fast food meal nowadays. But they are on loan from Limited-Time-Only-Ville, so you may want to make a trip to your local Taco Bell soon. Hopefully, the Caliente Sauce and the Cantina Chicken will stick around for a while, but we all know how the Nacho Fries come and go. Still, if those other two items are available, there’s plenty to choose from that’s a little different from The Bell’s standards.
Nutrition Info:
Calories: 540
Fat: 33g (6g Sat/0 Trans)
Protein: 14g
Carbs: 45g
Sodium: 1110mg
