Where Have You Gone, Fiesta Veggie Burrito?

By Hilary Sterne

Today, I'm going to move on, high-to-low-wise, from discussing how I somehow came into possession of a vase worth $2200 to the topic of fast food. Specifically, Taco Bell. I am old enough to have watched a TV show called Dialing for Dollars, but until a few months ago I'd never eaten so much as a Cheesy Fiesta Potato. But one day my colleague Yogi, an Indian-American who grew up in a motel in soupy Mississippi, is a vegan and who Is putting herself through culinary school, admitted to me that this was her guilty pleasure encouraged me to join her one lunchtime.

My first visit

That first day as a TB noob, I wasn't sure what to order and honestly don't remember what I wound up with. My friend always went with the Mexican Pizza, but I ordered something with meat that, it turned out, could have been scraped from a cat food tin. You wouldn't think given the experience I'd go back, but I did, knowing now that something stuffed with beef slurry is not what to get when you go to Taco Bell. And that's when I discovered the Fiesta Veggie Burrito ("Fiesta," you TB stans no doubt already know, figures heavily in the TB menu.) And it was way better than cat food. According to the menu, its ingredients are as follows: seasoned rice, black beans, red tortilla strips, creamy chipotle sauce, reduced-fat sour cream, a three-cheese blend, tomatoes, and guacamole.

The allure of the Fiesta Veggie Burrito

I'm not saying a Fiesta Veggie Burrito would ever be confused with something I'd share with my friend Jules at ABC Cocina. The lime juice was definitely reconstituted and somewhat fake-tasting, but the black beans were plump, the tomatoes were reasonably fresh and the guacamole was tangy. Even the crunchy "Fiesta" thingies, reminiscent of fried wanton strips and the color of dyed pistachio shells, somehow worked. It cost three dollars.

Not long after, I found myself going to Taco Bell once a week, either the one near work or the one in my neighborhood, an attempt at urban bougie-ness that features white Caesarstone hightops, dark wood-and-metal stools and light fixtures with Edison bulbs. Not that the collection of FedEx drivers, DoorDash bikers and refugees from the nearby Googleplex noticed or cared.

My son found this all very funny. "You're eating Taco Bell?" Taco Bell was for his cash-strapped generation, for whom food doesn't need to be fancy, remotely healthy or eaten sitting down, not mine. But apparently this was now one thing you'd find in the slim shared lozenge of our Venn diagram, along with The Bear (which we watched together all the way through Season 2) and Courtney Barnett (whose raspy, punk-flecked voice appeals to us both). The unshared bits include the Grateful Dead (him) and contemporary British women authors (me).

But wait

He found it so funny, in fact, he bought me a Taco Bell gift card for Christmas. But then, just as I started using it, the unthinkable happened. Taco Bell took my beloved Fiesta Veggie Burrito off the menu. I one day walked up to the touchscreen and stared blankly when it was not listed under the burrito options, which included the Chicken Grilled Cheese Burrito and the Beefy 5-Layer Burrito. I didn't want a Chicken Grilled Cheese Burrito or a Beefy 5-Layer Burrito. I wanted a Fiesta Veggie Burrito.

A Google search confirmed that it had been 86'd, according to Taco Bell, which released the following somewhat illiterate, circular and annoyingly cheery statement about its disappearance: "With the addition of some new, even more satiating items, the brand removed some others like the Chipotle Ranch Grilled Chicken Burrito, to make room for new innovations on the menu. Taco Bell is excited to be introducing some items that our customers have never seen before, on a national scale, while keeping others as mainstays of the Cravings Value Menu." More satiating. In a cat food kind of way, I'm guessing. The Trader Joe's Discontinued Product Grief Counselor meme suddenly made sobering sense.

I've tried a few of the other vegetarian menu items at Taco Bell since, but none of them compare to the weirdly satisfying Fiesta Veggie Burrito—the Black Bean Chalupa Supreme is just OK, with a gloopy consistency that calls to mind the "mechanical soft diet" my mother was on in the nursing home. It is no longer a weekly visit, and given the trauma I've recently been through, food is not so much on my mind, nor is leaving the apartment, to be honest. Maybe one day I'll come out the other side of all this, feeling hungry again for nourishment and for life and there will be my Fiesta Veggie Burrito, back on the menu at the boho West Village Taco Bell. I will be ready to type in my order for Hilary S., extra fire sauce on the side.

A previous version of this article was edited to accommodate the wishes of a former co-worker. Since then, that person has gone out of their way to try to harm me, but the effort backfired, and the result was that someone who didn't deserve to be harmed was harmed instead. Because I no longer feel the need to accommodate the former coworker, I've republished the original version.