And you thought the KFC Double Down was bad.

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Taco Bell is like the Olive Garden of Mexican food - it's what Americans think it's supposed to taste like. The fast food industry being what it is, there's a constant need to innovate in order to stay relevant. This leads to all kinds of strange abominations. Burger King has its universally reviled hot dogs. Then there's the most-reviled of meals, the KFC Double Down, the "sandwich" that's just bacon and cheese between two pieces of fried chicken .

Taco Bell is not immune to such shenanigans. Behold, in all of its glory, the Naked Chicken Chalupa!

Foolishly I decided to test-drive this new food item at my last trip to Taco Bell. I'm a fairly adventurous eater, and I do enjoy trying new fast food concoctions, so it seemed like a no-brainer to me.

God, what a fool I was.

First Impressions

The first thing I noticed when I unwrapped the thing was that it came in one of those little cardboard sleeves that Taco Bell uses sometimes. Normally these weird taco condoms are reserved for their ultra-brittle Doritos Tacos, another food item that combines the MSG flavors of Doritos chips with the already-delicate cardboard Taco Bell uses for its hard taco shells. The result is a taco that is so brittle that disintegrates if you hold it directly, hence the need for the assistance.

The Naked Chicken Chalupa didn't suffer from this fragility. In fact, if anything the sleeve was being used to keep it in its taco shape, as pulling it from its sleeve resulted in nearly all the diced tomatoes tumbling out as the "chalupa" sprang open.

The Ingredients

The inner workings of the Naked Chalupa are distressingly simple. It's a spicy chicken patty that's been fried just enough to make it malleable to conform to the shape of a traditional chalupa. Stuffed inside this shell is shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, and shredded cheese. Or, in my case, it was just cheese and lettuce stuffed inside a rubbery round of fried chicken.

The Taste

The Naked Chicken Chalupa isn't terrible - fried chicken is pretty much always good. The spices used in the breading give it a little bit of a bite, and the lettuce and cheese (and the tomatoes, once I put them back on) provided a nice fresh note, which is great if you're trying to convince yourself you're trying to eat healthy. Still, I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the sogginess of the chicken patty, as it felt like I was eating a deep-fried kitchen sponge that had been dipped in taco spices.

Overall, the taste leaves you feeling empty and cheated. A "normal" chalupa from Taco bell has a fried flatbread shell, then filled with some sort of protein plus the lettuce, cheese, and tomato, but with the Naked Chalupa the shell is the protein. It leaves you wanting more, which is terrible when you're sitting in a restaurant that sells burritos stuffed with diabetes for $1 each.

The Overall Experience

Despite how disappointing my meal was, I knew I had to finish it. I'd paid good money for this, dammit, and I couldn't just let it go to waste. Besides, nobody else was interested in eating it.

So I finished the stupid thing. I felt immediately empty and ashamed of myself. Not as bad as someone eating the KFC Double Down - that just makes you feel like a disgusting, gluttonous pig. No, I felt like I had been tricked into buying a half-finished menu item. Like someone had told me I was buying a Corvette but just gave me a collection of car parts instead.

In the end, the Naked Chicken Chalupa isn't the most offensive thing I've ever eaten. It's not a paean to gluttony or excess like other fast food items, but it's not exactly innovative either - it's just a sad little meal. All I had to show for my experience was an empty little cardboard sleeve that had come with the offending item. Empty, like my soul after eating the Naked Chicken Chalupa.

Do yourself a favor - if you're looking for good Mexican food, stay away from Taco Bell. Unless it's 3 in the morning and you're incredibly drunk, it's not a pleasant experience.

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