Taco Bell dialed up the volume for Live Más Live 2025, a colorful bash held in anticipation of the new items and promotions the chain will release this year. The annual event (it’s Taco Bell’s second one) took place on March 5, 2025, at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater in New York City. There were flashing lights, influencers, and (at one point) a torrent of confetti, but most importantly, there were brand-new menu items for the taking. I was there, napkins in hand.
Live Más Live’s “pump you up” energy was centered around Taco Bell’s insatiable quest for innovation and its desire to connect with fans. In both areas, Taco Bell swings big. It riffed on classics by shrinking a Crunchwrap down to slider size and rolling up a cheese quesadilla, filling it with carne asada and poblano peppers. These are just a couple of Taco Bell’s latest brainchildren, and both were available to try at Live Más Live. The Bell is also launching a bunch of new dipping sauces — they’ll be perfect sidekicks to the return of the crispy chicken nuggets, Taco Bell’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it promotion that debuted late last year.
One of the biggest surprises was the announcement of Live Más Café, Taco Bell’s first foray into the fast food coffee space. Live Más Live left no doubt that Taco Bell is ready to push the envelope with new flavors and modern ideas this year. Here’s how it all tasted.
Quesocrisp taco: You’ve never tasted a cheese crisp like this before
For years, Taco Bell has experimented with the idea of what a crunchy taco shell can be. Well, it turns out that it can be way more than a Dorito, or any chip for that matter. It can also be completely made out of hardened cheese. Taco Bell gave the humble cheese crisp a full-on makeover to create the Quesocrisp taco. The taco contains crispy chicken, lettuce, tomato, and sour cream, but there’s no question that the cheese crisp shell is the star of this show.
Since it’s cheese, the shell will be a little greasy, but not so much as to be off-putting. The taco is also a bit more fragile than your average crunchy number because baked cheese has a softer consistency than a tortilla chip. The lettuce, tomato, and sour cream inside the taco provide a nice counterbalance of flavor to the lacy layers of crispy cheese. Without these elements, the chicken and cheese would be too salty.
The Quesocrisp taco is an ode to texture and is a fun, out-of-the-box offering from Taco Bell this year. For Taco Bell fans who like to hit up the drive-thru and chow down behind the wheel, however, the Quesocrisp taco may not be the best choice for that kind of meal. The shell’s fragility makes it kind of messy to eat.
Taco Bell rides the ube trend wave, and it’s good
In the last few years, ube has risen to it-girl status, but it’s actually been a staple in Filipino cooking for hundreds of years. Ube, a violet-hued yam native to the Philippines, lures in the masses with its vibrant purple color and vanilla-esque taste. Ube-flavored baked goods, ice cream, coffee, and tea drinks are everywhere. Taco Bell, a company that takes its purple logo very seriously, realized its time to embrace ube was overdue, and thus, the ube strawberry cookie was born.
The ube strawberry cookie is soft and sand dollar-sized. I wasn’t getting much strawberry from it, but that’s probably because I was so distracted by the sweet splendor of the ube vanilla cream sandwiched inside. The top of the cookie and the outer rim of the cream are encrusted with purple sprinkles, which glittered like tiny amethysts under Brooklyn Paramount’s ambient light. The sprinkles weren’t just there for style points, either; they actually added some crunch to the otherwise soft sandwich cookie.
It’s unclear if the ube strawberry is set to replace the birthday cake churro — Taco Bell’s collab with Milkbar. What I do know is that the birthday cake churro is leaving Taco Bell’s lineup this week. I’m of the opinion that the ube strawberry cookie outshines the birthday cake churro by a long shot. It was honestly one of the tastiest items I tried at Live Más Live.
Baja Midnight blasts off this summer
The release dates for every item featured at Live Más Live weren’t disclosed during the event, but it was announced that the new Baja Blast flavor, Baja Midnight, will hit Taco Bell menus this summer. Many of the new items the chain will release this year are reinterpretations of Taco Bell classics, and Baja Midnight is an expression of that.
Taco Bell teamed up with Mountain Dew to launch the original Tropical Lime Storm flavor of Baja Blast 21 years ago. In honor of that anniversary, Taco Bell dreamed up Baja Midnight, a blue-violet soda flavored with passion fruit. Having never tried the original Baja Blast, I didn’t have much to base my Baja Midnight taste test on (other than regular Mountain Dew). When I sipped it, I struggled to identify the passion fruit — a flavor I happen to like a lot. Maybe I let the ice cubes water the soda down too much? Baja Midnight tasted fine, but as a hot new menu item, it’s a bit of a snooze.
Crunchwrap sliders are just cute
As Taco Bell reflected on its own legacy, there were certain milestones it felt inclined to celebrate. To Taco Bell, the 20th anniversary of the Crunchwrap is a big deal. To honor its second decade on the planet, Taco Bell made the Crunchwrap really, really small. The new Crunchsrap sliders are available with either grilled steak or cantina chicken. The adorable little hexagons are served with a side of green chile queso. The green chile queso was the best part.
I could look at a Crunchwrap slider all day. Honestly, it makes me want to dabble in some origami. It never crossed my mind that a Crunchwrap shouldn’t become miniature until I had to think about it. Now, I know that shrinking the Crunchwrap down isn’t so successful. The petite flour tortilla makes the steak pieces feel large and clunky inside it. The other ingredients don’t have room to breathe and take up stagnant space in the middle. This creates pockets of emptiness in the Crunchwrap slider’s corners, which I dipped in the green chile queso, and that made them good.
This was one of Taco Bell’s big swings that resulted in a miss. It’s easy to fall into the trap of all style, no substance once in a while, and the Crunchwrap slider fell victim to that. At least there’s still the real Crunchwrap to fall back on.
The mini Cantina chicken roasted corn bowl packs a big punch
Mini it was not, but nonetheless, Taco Bell has christened the mini Cantina chicken roasted corn bowl as such. This item, set to appear on Taco Bell’s Cantina chicken menu, was a standout. Layers of rice, black beans, corn, Cantina chicken, shreds of lettuce and cabbage, diced tomato, sour cream, and shredded cheese unite in a bowl that has dimension and lets fresh ingredients shine.
The avocado verde salsa served on the side of the chicken roasted corn bowl is no afterthought. It’s a nice complement to the sauce that is pre-poured in the corn and enhances rather than overpowers the rest of the bowl’s components. Would I prefer that the corn be grilled? Yes, but that’s just a nitpick on my end. The avocado verde salsa tasted particularly good with the black beans, which tasted particularly good with the rice. Shout out to Taco Bell for keeping its flavors varied and interesting.
Taco Bells shirks convention with a carne asada poblano rolled quesadilla
Of all the savory items I tried at Live Más Live, the carne asada poblano rolled quesadilla had the most elevated flavor profile. I may be a little biased because poblano is my favorite of all the peppers, but its smoky flavor notes were a perfect match to Taco Bell’s carne asada. This was my first time trying a rolled quesadilla, and I’d be lying if I said it was super different than a soft taco. It’s somewhere between a soft taco and a burrito — a skinny burrito, if you will.
Poblano pepper and carne asada aren’t the only ingredients responsible for what will probably be one of Taco Bell’s most popular new items in 2025. The cheese does not fade into the background of the carne asada poblano rolled quesadilla, because what’s a quesadilla without its queso? Thanks to a generous helping of melty cheese, the meat and peppers don’t dry out the rolled quesadilla’s insides; they just carry the bold flavors along in the soft, warm way only a good comfort food can.
A Flamin’ Hot burrito is back by popular demand
People love Flamin’ Hot everything, and Taco Bell is all about giving the people what they want. Taco Bell has had various Flamin’ Hot tacos and burritos on its menu throughout the years, but the Flamin’ Hot burrito unveiled at Live Más Live was totally new. It features beef and rice prepared with Taco Bell’s Flamin’ Hot dry seasoning, nacho cheese, sour cream, and Flamin’ Hot Fritos. Flamin’ Hot seasoning is another one of the latest items to leave Taco Bell’s test kitchen.
The fanfare that erupts every time Flamin’ Hot Fritos and Taco Bell collide is real, so forgive me for feeling underwhelmed. The Flamin’ Hot burrito brings the spice and a touch of naughty decadence that arises when one junk food meets another. It’s a solid choice for a late-night Taco Bell run. I thought it lacked tomato or lettuce, or some other fresh ingredient, but that’s not really what the Flamin’ Hot burrito is about.
Yes, the Live Más Café is a thing
One interesting fact about Taco Bell is that the chain has been toying with the idea of opening a café long enough for there to already be a physical location for product testing. The single Live Más Café location is in Chula Vista, California, but it popped up in Brooklyn for the Live Más Live event. Taco Bell aims to offer upwards of 30 drinks on its café menu, and four of them showed up to Live Más Live. A canned dulce de leche coffee and Mexican mocha iced latte were served alongside a dragonfruit berry limonada and strawberry passionfruit agua fresca.
If Taco Bell is trying to compete with McCafé, it’s got some work to do. All four drinks have a nice taste, but the lineup doesn’t scream café. The strawberry passionfruit agua fresca has an iced green tea base, giving it that refreshing iced tea lemonade vibe, while the dragonfruit berry limonada could go on a standard Taco Bell menu right now and be right at home. Similarly, the canned dulce de leche coffee would be right at home in the supermarket, and it would honestly be interesting to see Taco Bell go that route. The Mexican mocha iced latte was the most McCafé-like of the bunch, but it could stand dial up the espresso flavor by a lot.
Taco Bell dipping sauces are a collaborative effort
A bunch of new sauces are making their way to Taco Bell in 2025, including one I had to sign a waiver to try. Taco Bell worked with specialty sauce companies Zab’s and Weak Knees to make two new spicy sauces: Zab’s Hot Ranch and Weak Knees Fire. The chain also paired with Mike’s Hot Honey for a Hot Honey Diablo sauce. These feisty new condiments were joined by caliente sauce, hatch chile buttermilk ranch, and PAG sauce (that stands for puya, árbol, and guajillo). The purple chile sauce was being talked up as the hottest, most intense sauce Taco Bell ever created — hence the waiver.
After a few minutes of dipping nacho fries into each sauce, they all started to taste the same. In consideration of their minute differences, Mike’s Hot Honey Diablo unsurprisingly had a stickier consistency than the others, and was perhaps less satisfying because of it. The caliente sauce’s tangy notes came through, which allowed it to stand out ever so slightly.
The purple chile sauce was maroon-colored, smelled smoky, and as I signed my waiver, I wondered what it might do to me. I dipped a fry in and was met with a spice level that was hotter than the other sauces but less formidable than the spices of Thai or Indian cuisine. If I wanted to add a hickory smoke element to my taco, I might reach for the purple chile sauce to make it happen.
Final impressions
I am always ready to Live Más. As a child of the ’90s, I lived for a trip to Taco Bell, a sporadic habit that carried into my teen and adult years. The items I tried are just a portion of what Taco Bell plans to release throughout 2025. What was evident from the look, feel, and taste of Live Más is that the chain leans on its past for the creative fuel that drives its future. It’s also obvious how much the chain wants to excite its many fans.
The attention Taco Bell gives to food trends is also clear. The strawberry ube cookie was a fun new addition, and the Quesocrisp taco is unique. If Taco Bell continues to thoughtfully interpret the types of foods in demand today, we should expect the Live Más Live events ahead to be as cheerfully carbo-loaded as this one.
