Taco Bell's new vegan Crunchwrap doesn't taste like meat—just like the original.
Upon finding out that only one location in the great state of New York was serving the Vegan Crunchwrap, I trekked into the belly of the beast—Midtown Manhattan. Had I not known from my online research that the Vegan Crunchwrap was being served at this location, I may have missed it entirely.
At first sight, it looked just like a normal Crunchwrap—which is to say, delicious. And when I bit into the Vegan Crunchwrap, with the OG meaty version alongside it as my control , the differences between the two were also genuinely difficult to discern. The fake meat was, at worst, a bit saucier than the real meat, almost assuming a sloppy joe texture. The real meat crumbled like, you know, ground beef.
I’m not surprised that Taco Bell is able to mimic the texture and flavor of the original in its Vegan Crunchwrap. The main challenge with the veganification of Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap wasn’t to imitate the flavor of meat—because frankly, meat was never the focus of the original Crunchwrap. There’s nothing particularly “natural” about the OG version, which packs savory flavor and crunch into every bite.
Already, the nacho cheese and sour cream of the original are at most dairy-adjacent in flavor. The elements of the vegan version are approximationsapproximations. I don’t eat a Crunchwrap to chase the pure flavor of farm-fresh cow’s milk and sour cream. Since I wasn’t seeking out the taste of dairy when I bit into the vegan version, I didn’t miss it. The lettuce and tomato, mainstays of the original, were reliably crisp and cooling.
In the end, both Crunchwraps taste comparably artificial, and pleasingly so. I don’t expect anything more or less from the Crunchwrap I love. The vegan version, like the OG, is delicious and timeless for its salty, crunchy, gooey goodness—all chemically optimized for my palette.
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