Review: Taco Bell's Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito Doesn't Exactly Light Up The Taste Buds

After a quiet rollout in the early 1990s, Flamin' Hot Cheetos slowly became a brand and a fervently beloved flavor profile unto itself. Predating the ongoing make-everything-spicy craze of the 2020s, Flamin' Hot Cheetos added a surprisingly spicy kick to the salty, cheesy powder usually coating Frito-Lay's crunchy corn snacks, and that substance has apparently outgrown its origin. That highly recognizable and sought after Flamin' Hot substance is now a mere ingredient and powerful flavoring agent for a fast food powerhouse.

Taco Bell is owned by PepsiCo subsidiary Yum! Brands. While PepsiCo owns Flamin' Hot Cheetos' corporate parent Frito-Lay. In an inspired and intriguing bit of synergy, in 2025, all those household names joined forces to create the Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito. It's the kind of big, packed, hot burrito one would expect to find at Taco Bell, infused with Flamin' Hot spice in multiple places. Here's everything you need to know about the latest legendary burrito in the making.

No actual Flamin' Hot Cheetos were used in the creation of Taco Bell's Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito. Instead, the innovative chefs took a spice blend similar to that used on the snacks and treated two burrito ingredients with it. That concoction, consisting of red peppers, cheddar cheese powder, paprika, garlic, and lime has been used to create Taco Bell's new Flamin' Hot Rice. That provides a soft, starchy, and spicy foundation for the burrito, which also includes generous portions of seasoned ground beef, nacho cheese and creamy chipotle sauces, some reduced-fat sour cream, and a shredded mix of three cheeses. 

Countering all that creamy softness is some much needed crunch, and that comes by way of Fritos Flamin' Hot corn chips. Then Taco Bell takes all that stuff, wraps it in a flour tortilla, covers it in another layer of cheese, and grills it until it's toasty and steamy.

With the arrival of lunch service on October 16, the Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito officially went on sale at the more than 8,100 Taco Bell restaurants across the United States. It's initially available under a special, promotional pricing scheme, both on its own as part of an extra-large combo meal. The Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito, when purchased a la carte, costs $5.49 in most locations, not including any local taxes. The new burrito is also the star item in a new Discovery Luxe Cravings Box.That option includes a Chicken Chalupa Supreme, a Crunch Taco, chips and cheese, and a medium drink, and it costs an even $9.

The Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito can be bought in the same ways that every other Taco Bell item can be acquired. Customers can order in the restaurant, in the drive-thru lane, or with Taco Bell's website or app. For this taste test, I ordered my Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito through the app and picked it up in the restaurant. This isn't a permanent menu addition, however; as of the week of the launch, the Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito will only be sold for a limited time.

A soft flour tortilla packed tightly with spicy rice, spicy corn chips, Taco Bell's signature seasoned ground beef filling, multiple iterations of cheese, and a few different creamy sauces are going to result in an item with a substantial calorie count. Taco Bell's Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito is just such a creation, a handheld, all-in-one meal as far as some key nutritional macros are concerned.

The newly arrived burrito adds 730 calories to one's daily intake, along with 41 grams of fat, of which 17 is the more worrisome saturated fat. Those figures represent 63% and 85% of the daily limits that the USDA recommends that adults not exceed. The Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito from Taco Bell also provides a moderate amount of protein, with 26 grams, and 65 grams of carbohydrates. Along with that, the burrito contains 75 milligrams of cholesterol, or 25% of the daily advised total, and 1,570 milligrams of sodium, roughly 68% of what one should reasonably consume in a day.

Don't get too hyped when you go in for that first bite of Taco Bell's Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito, or disappointment may briefly set in. At first, it isn't spicy, or flavorfully hot, whatsoever, and actually kind of bland — just a mouthful of creamy sauce covered rice. But then the Flamin' Hot Fritos hit hard. Even in small pieces roughly the third of the size of a regular Frito, they maintain their crunch through all of the sauces, rice, and proteins as well as that wonderfully corny, oversalted Fritos taste. Only then does the heat arrive, attacking the back of the mouth and halfway down the throat.

Taco Bell's Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito is so weighed down by sauces that one could forget for a second that this isn't a vegetarian burrito. There's so much rice and so many condiments that it's reminiscent of Taco Bell's classic Seven-Layer Burrito, with the spice level turned up a notch and with some very welcome texture and crunch provided by the Flamin' Hot Fritos. The animal protein that comes as part of a standard build of the new burrito gets utterly lost. Grilling the whole thing is a solid idea, because it makes everything compact and of a singular unit. The cheese on the outside is a nice idea, but it adds little in the way of flavor.

Taco Bell's Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito has a long name that's full of promises. And it mostly doesn't deliver on that. One might expect the entire burrito to be flaming hot, but that's really only referring to the special Fritos used as too minor of an ingredient. Nor does it come across as particularly cheesy, despite cheese making appearances on the inside and the outside of the burrito. In the end, the Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito is grilled, and it is a burrito, but it's mostly the result of a lot of flash, employed to make use of a couple of mildly spicy but still interesting new tools in the Taco Bell workspace. 

Those featured items inside the Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito actually are quite special. The hot and spicy rice is so flavorful and such an improvement upon Taco Bell's usual, unheralded rice that it would make a wonderful substitution or upgrade in any number of Taco Bell items. As for the Flamin' Hot Fritos, those are just a wonderful snack food in their own right.