Review: Taco Bell Revamps Street Chalupas & Nacho Fries, But Not For The Better

On March 27, 2025, Taco Bell debuted two new promotional items: Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas and Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries. Both are twists on prior promotions. The former is a reimagining of the Taco Bell Cheesy Street Chalupas, which Mashed reviewed favorably just after their January 2024 release. The latter combines loaded fries — a frequent genre of promotion by this point — with a unique Caliente sauce previously available on various promotional Cantina Chicken items.

I visited my local Taco Bell on the date of their release to try both the Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas and the Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries. I think it's worth revealing up front that I'm a Taco Bell regular, and in the past I've had the Cheesy Street Chalupas, the full-sized Toasted Cheddar Chalupa, various loaded fries, and a Caliente Cantina Chicken Quesadilla. So, I was heading in with ample background knowledge. With that said, here's everything a discerning customer should know about these new items as well as my personal thoughts after tasting each of them for the first time.

In each Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupa is meat — either Cantina Chicken or steak by default, with potatoes or black beans available by substitution — shredded cheddar, raw onion, cilantro, and a new Chile Lime Crema sauce. Housing those ingredients is a thick chalupa shell encased in crispy, toasted cheddar cheese. This is a significant revamp of the Cheesy Street Chalupas, which lacked Chile Lime Crema sauce and were encased in an extra soft tortilla housing a comparatively smaller layer of toasted cheddar. Also of note is the fact they're mini taco-sized and come in pairs.

Each platter of Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries starts with the popular but still never permanently available Nacho Fries as its base. Those are topped with Cantina Chicken, fiesta strips, nacho cheese sauce, shredded cheddar, sour cream, and Caliente sauce. The Cantina Chicken can be substituted for steak, Taco Bell's somewhat controversial seasoned beef, or black beans.

Like the majority of big-name national chains, Taco Bell is franchised, so prices can vary from location to location. I picked up my items from a Taco Bell in Henderson, Nevada, a suburb of Las Vegas. Typically, prices in Henderson are close to whatever is standard for most of the U.S., even if the nearby Las Vegas Strip Taco Bell Cantina, famously featured in a viral wedding Tik Tok, is a bit more expensive.

Before tax, I paid $5.69 for my Cantina Chicken Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas, $5.99 for the steak version, and $4.99 for the Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries. On each of these items, swapping protein lacks an upcharge, most likely because steak and Cantina Chicken are two of the protein options that typically warrant an extra fee. While these prices weren't exactly the same at a few locations I checked online for comparison's sake, they were typically within 50 cents or so outside of large metropolitan areas. In big cities, prices increased by closer to a dollar in some cases.

When ordering either the Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas or the Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries online, each item's photo is accompanied by a sizable graphic emphasizing that they're only available for a limited time. Taco Bell didn't announce an end date for these new items at the time of their release, but they should stick around for at least a month, if not more.

The two major promotions prior to the Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas and the Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries were the Caliente Cantina Chicken menu and the Steak & Queso Crunchwrap Sliders — which Mashed reviewed during Taco Bell's Live Más Live 2025 event. They launched simultaneously on February 27. As of the March 27 release of the new Street Chalupas and loaded fries, the Crunchwrap Sliders are gone, but the full Caliente Cantina Chicken menu remains. So, it's entirely possible that the Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas and/or the Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries could stick around for longer than a month if they're well-received. It's just as possible they'll disappear by April 27 if their reception is icier.

One order of Cantina Chicken Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas — consisting of two small chalupas — totals 580 calories, 38 grams of fat, 10 grams of which are saturated fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 1,030 milligrams of sodium, 37 grams of carbs, 5 grams of fiber, and 4 grams of sugar. The Steak Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas are practically identical, totaling 580 calories, 38 grams of fat, 10 grams of which are saturated fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol, 1,090 milligrams of sodium, 37 grams of carbs, 4 grams of fiber, and 5 grams of sugar.

Coincidentally, the Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries are pretty nutritionally similar to both kinds of Street Chalupas. One platter of the fries equals 540 calories, 33 grams of fat, 6 grams of which are saturated fat, 40 milligrams of cholesterol, 1,110 milligrams of sodium, 45 grams of carbs, 5 grams of fiber, and 3 grams of sugar.

As far as I can recall, I liked the Toasted Cheddar Chalupa and particularly enjoyed the Cheesy Street Chalupas from Taco Bell. So, I was pretty sure I would like the Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas. It brings me no pleasure to share that this new menu item let me down. Theoretically, Taco Bell's meat, cheese, onion, and this new Chile Lime Crema sauce should taste pretty good together. But I can't really confirm or deny this hunch because the toasted cheddar shell so thoroughly dominated each bite of my chalupas. Even though there were so many raw onions on each chalupa that they were spilling all over my kitchen table as I was trying to photograph them, what should have been a boldly onion-y flavor was eclipsed by that all-consuming chalupa shell.

Because none of the ingredients inside contributed enough on its own, I enjoyed my chalupas more with the aid of sauce packets, but then they just tasted like sauced chalupa shells. For what it's worth, I just slightly preferred the steak version to the Cantina Chicken one because I thought the chicken was a little drier, whereas the steak counterbalanced the prevailing breadiness just a tad better. Overall, though, I would recommend against trying either variant of Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas and instead suggest sticking to the cheaper and tastier Chalupa Supreme — No. 1 on my Mashed list of Taco Bell tacos ranked worst to best.

I couldn't help but think that a big reason the Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas let me down was because they strayed from what Taco Bell does best — typically messy, indulgent blends of various goopy meats, beans, and sauces. The Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries strayed from Taco Bell's strengths too, though their particular crime was a bit different in nature.

First of all, Nacho Fries, chicken, fiesta strips, nacho cheese, and sour cream taste pretty dang good together, falling well within the bounds of classic Taco Bell. But the very reason these fries exist is to showcase the Caliente sauce. I'd tried a Caliente Chicken Quesadilla just weeks earlier and thought the Caliente sauce was straight up bizarre. My order of Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries confirmed that my previous experience was not a fluke but representative of the sauce's intended flavor. It's satisfyingly spicy, which is nice, but more dominant than that is a prominent orange-y character that really doesn't go well with any of the ingredients it accompanies. Simply put, Taco Bell tried to do a little too much with the Caliente sauce, and these fries clearly showcase the sauce's deficiencies.

On March 27, just hours after the new menu items officially debuted at Taco Bell, I purchased one order of Cantina Chicken Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas, one order of Steak Toasted Cheddar Street Chalupas, and one order of Caliente Cantina Chicken Nacho Fries on the Taco Bell app. I picked them up in the drive-thru of a location just about five minutes away from me and brought them home to eat.

I finished eating everything in one sitting and sat down to write what I thought about each item immediately afterward. Taco Bell had no indication that any of these items were for the sake of an official review rather than just my own enjoyment.