Review: Taco Bell Is Serving Up A Great New Burrito, And A Disappointing One

Taco Bell has an ability unmatched by its fast food competitors, and even the many other Mexican-inspired chains. With a very limited and straightforward collection of ingredients that form the vast majority of its menu, Taco Bell's master chefs can create something entirely new and unique. Instantly, those fresh items seem familiar as well, leading to a quick adoption by Taco Bell's legion of devoted fans and frequent customers.

In 2025, Taco Bell introduced two seemingly new items to its cut-rate Cravings Value Menu. The chain has sold Grilled Steak Burritos before, but it's now celebrating the debut of the Chipotle Ranch Grilled Steak Burrito and the Cheesy Melt Grilled Steak Burrito. How do they measure up to the Taco Bell menu on the whole, and other burritos sold at the mega-chain? Read on for our full assessment, including taste tests, of the newest Grilled Steak Burritos at Taco Bell.

Among the much-missed and discontinued Taco Bell menu items unlikely to ever return: the Chipotle Ranch Grilled Chicken Burrito, which the chain pulled off its national menu during a 2024 overhaul. That dish looks like it could join the little-known Taco Bell secret menu, because a summer 2025 menu addition re-creates that lamentably missing burrito with the main difference being an easily swappable protein choice. 

One of two new burritos added to Taco Bell's low-priced Cravings Value Menu is the Chipotle Ranch Grilled Steak Burrito. Along with Taco Bell's proprietary seasoned steak strips, the inexpensive burrito is made with a Chipotle-kicked ranch sauce, avocado ranch, shredded lettuce, pico de gallo, cheddar cheese, and a handful of those red Fiesta tortilla strips Taco Bell adds to provide a little crunch to its mostly soft and mushy menu items.

Joining that steak burrito on the Taco Bell board is another affordable entree: the Cheesy Melt Grilled Steak Burrito. Cheese is the first thing mentioned in the name and the item delivers, as it's loaded with a melty blend of three cheeses along with the marinated and grilled steak pieces, a spicy Jalapeño ranch dressing, reduced-fat sour cream, and seasoned rice. Both burritos, because they're burritos, are wrapped up tightly in large, soft, warm flour tortillas.

Taco Bell made available across its thousands of stores nationwide on August 7, 2025, two examples of its ever evolving line of tightly-packed and grilled burritos. Both of these Grilled Steak Burritos — the crunchy, spicy, and vegetable-heavy Chipotle Ranch Grilled Steak Burrito, and the creamy, dairy-rich Cheesy Melt Grilled Steak Burrito — can be found in the subset of Taco Bell's bill of fare that it calls the Cravings Value Menu, the spot to find inexpensive mains and sides. The new Grilled Steak Burritos, for example, will cost customers a mere $3 each, not including any applicable taxes or delivery fees they may incur.

Taco Bell's summer of 2025 treats, the Chipotle Ranch Grilled Steak Burrito as well as the Cheesy Melt Grilled Steak Burrito, are limited-time offerings. Taco Bell is yet to announce how long they'll remain on offer, only that they're designed to be sold for a short period of time. Until that time comes, customers can buy these new Grilled Steak Burritos the way they do all other Taco Bell food: at the counter and in person, at the drive-through window, or via Taco Bell's app, which is one of the best apps among fast food chains.

A substantial and heavy rectangular brick of a meal, Taco Bell's new to 2025 Chipotle Ranch Grilled Steak Burrito certainly looks promising. It makes sense why the chain leads with the chipotle, because the burrito offers a level of deep and flavorful spice that's prominent without being abrasive, working in tandem with the other ingredients instead of overpowering the whole thing the way it generally goes in the realm of spicy fast food. Chipotle is the dominant through-line here, however, but that's totally fine. The Chipotle Ranch Grilled Steak Burrito is smoky, creamy, tangy, and provides a wallop of flavor, somewhat unexpected from the generally mild-mannered Taco Bell.

The avocado pairs nicely with the spicy ranch, adding creaminess and some umami heft. The steak is quite robust in both taste and texture — it's soft, well seasoned, and provides a strong counterpoint to the more delicate ingredients therein. Those little red tortilla strips even withstand the pressure and add some nice crunch and chewiness, the interior representative of the burrito's exterior, an alternately crispy and chewy blanket. The only negatives to the Chipotle Ranch Grilled Steak Burritos that the lettuce turns to soggy mush by the time it's been sauced and grilled, and the cheese and pico de gallo don't make their presence known.

When one bites into something called a Cheesy Melt Grilled Steak Burrito, they expect many of their senses to be immediately blasted with the telltale flavor and texture of cheese, either in its more authentic form or as that goopy, oozy, slightly spicy stuff Taco Bell sometimes uses instead of or addition to the genuine article. Confusingly, that cheese doesn't hit immediately, but then it does — all at once. This conveys a very pleasant taste that's reminiscent of a mix of a shredded cheese blend with the gas station-style nacho cheese sauce. Unfortunately, that introduction to cheese doesn't go much beyond that, as it fades away into the background immediately.

In the absence of cheese taste in the Cheesy Melt Grilled Steak Burrito: not much. The supposedly hot jalapeño ranch dressing doesn't allow much spice, but it does a good job of creating a texturally favorable sauce when it combines with reduced-fat sour cream. Overall, there are a few occasional glimpses of chewy, well-cooked and well-seasoned steak, but for the most part it's the rice that does most of the work in the Cheesy Melt Grilled Steak Burrito. The random bit of beef notwithstanding, the Cheesy Melt Grilled Steak Burrito is essentially a rice and sour cream burrito.

With a price point of just three dollars a piece, Taco Bell's summer of 2025 Grilled Steak Burritos didn't really have to be very good, or interesting. They could have existed solely to serve on the Value Cravings Menu and attract some attention to Taco Bell because of their limited-time-only status. 

Nevertheless, one of these burritos that could have been an afterthought wound up being one of the best things Taco Bell has on its entire menu at the moment, and arguably one of its best new products in years. The Chipotle Ranch Grilled Steak Burrito packs in a lot of textures, tastes, and ingredients into its hot tortilla shell, and its interesting layers of melding flavors are all the better knowing that the thing came in at a bargain price of three bucks.

While the Chipotle Ranch Grilled Steak Burrito is something special, the Cheesy Melt Grilled Steak Burrito was a swing and a miss for Taco Bell. It's not without its charms or purpose — it's a meal's worth of food for not a lot of money, and there's even steak inside — but since it's just not very differentiated from all of the rank-and-file Taco Bell fare, there's not much to get excited about.