Review: Taco Bell's Frank's RedHot Menu Brings The Heat On Some Items More Than Others

The favorably reviewed Crispy Chicken at Taco Bell was one of fast food's most heralded new arrivals of 2025. A limited-time offering, the lightly peppery, tortilla chip-covered nuggets were so well received that in October 2025, Taco Bell decided to bring them back to its national menu for another short run. The big difference this time around: They're paired up with another new, imaginative, and even spicier mash-up. 

Frank's RedHot is a household name in heat, the most famous purveyor of buffalo wing sauce. The company has taken its talents to Taco Bell to collaborate on Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce. That and Taco Bell's Crispy Chicken star in a slew of new items, a veritable mini-menu of fiery, flavor-packed takes on Mexican-inspired favorites, including a burrito, a taco, and fries. Here's all there is to know about the new Taco Bell items featuring both the Crispy Chicken and Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce.

The key factor in Taco Bell's new collection of menu items featuring its relatively new Crispy Chicken is a new sauce developed in cahoots with Frank's RedHot. Called Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce, it's a careful and proprietary blend of the zingy, pleasantly spicy buffalo flagship sauce from Frank's and the super-hot Diablo Sauce long available at Taco Bell in packets. The result: Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce, a sweet, smoky, and peppery creation specifically designed to go on crispy fried chicken.

Taco Bell is offering several menu items that feature the sauce with its tortilla chip-covered chicken. Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce is available as an upgrade from Spicy Ranch, the standard accompaniment to an order of Crispy Chicken Strips. The grilled Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Burrito and the Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Soft Taco dress up the protein and sauce with lettuce, cabbage, cheddar cheese, and pico de gallo. The chicken-sauce duo is also in Frank's RedHot Diablo Chicken Nacho Fries, a dish made with nacho fries topped with slow-roasted chicken, nacho cheese sauce, a three-cheese blend, and pico de gallo.

When lunch service began at the thousands of Taco Bell restaurants around the U.S. on October 16, 2025, the Frank's RedHot menu, featuring the new buffalo-tinged Diablo Sauce and the triumphant return of Taco Bell's Crispy Chicken, went up on the menu boards. Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Burrito costs $5.49 on its own, while Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Soft Taco will be available for $2.99 each. The Crispy Chicken Strips, which include Spicy Ranch or Frank's RedHot Diablo sauce for dipping, will run $6.99 for a four-piece order, while the one-size Frank's RedHot Diablo Chicken Nacho Fries is priced at $4.99. Those figures don't include sales tax, where applicable.

All of the choices featuring Crispy Chicken and Frank's RedHot Diablo sauce can be ordered at the counter in the restaurant, in the drive-through lane, or with the aid of Taco Bell's website or smartphone app.

Each item in the Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken lineup represents the main item in a meal, or just one element in a substantial Taco Bell haul. Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Burrito adds 580 calories, 60 grams of carbohydrates, and 23 grams of protein to one's daily total, while the similar Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Soft Taco has 250 calories, 27 total carbohydrates, and 11 grams of protein. Frank's RedHot Diablo Chicken Nacho Fries provide 450 calories, along with 40 grams of carbohydrates and 13 grams of protein. An order of the revived Crispy Chicken strips (without the Spicy Ranch or new Diablo Sauce) doesn't have extensive nutrition information listed beyond a 900 calorie total.

Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Soft Taco is a mouthful, both in name and in practice. That's a good thing: It's a marvelous addition to Taco Bell's ever-changing lineup of tacos with a contemporary twist. As different styles of Mexican and Mexican-inspired food catch on across the U.S., the variety and volume of tacos have exponentially increased. There's a demand out there for tacos with interesting condiments, different proteins, and veggies. Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Soft Taco is the vegetable-forward taco that Taco Bell's menu needed.

It's an original, inspired remix of the chain's titular food. Gone is the mysterious seasoned ground beef slurry in favor of a tortilla chip-breaded Crispy Chicken Strip that holds up its flavor and texture underneath ample helpings of pico de gallo, very fresh purple cabbage, lettuce, and Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce. Any heat from the latter gets buried, but that's okay, because it melds with the other flavors so nicely as to provide a flavorful and creamy final touch.

Taco Bell's new Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Burrito is almost exactly the same thing as its soft taco menu-mate. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It has all the same ingredients — a crispy chicken strip, purple cabbage, lettuce, cheddar cheese, pico de gallo, and Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce — stuffed into a large flour tortilla instead of being gently placed into a small one. Then it's wrapped tightly and quickly grilled to make it piping hot on the inside, and both chewy and crispy on the outside.

It's really nice to see a burrito at Taco Bell that doesn't just fill the space with rice and beans, but instead with a couple of tortilla chip-coated chicken strips and a whole punch of crispy purple cabbage. The filling is so tightly packed that the flavors intermingle well, except for, oddly enough, the Diablo Sauce. It gives a slight creamy kick and a little bit of heat in the aftertaste, but otherwise, it's very subtle.

On their own, Taco Bell's Crispy Chicken Strips are quite delicious. Only slightly larger than the nuggets made with the same formulation sold earlier in 2025, they're still quite meaty, hearty, and juicy. The breading is absolutely perfect — it's thin and not overdone, so the strips stay crispy instead of crunchy or soggy, and the batter is made from tortilla chips. They provide a satisfying crunch that quickly dissolves in order to let the tasty white meat chicken inside steal the show.

Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce, the entire point of this new Taco Bell sub-menu that's available by itself in dipping cups, only works well when it's part of a team. At first, it tastes like nothing, and then I tasted buffalo wing sauce that's been softened with sour cream and yellow mustard. Finally, it delivers on what it promised, giving a spicy kick to the back of the throat. But there's not a lot of flavor there to justify the spice, and this is just one of those things that's hot for the sake of being hot. As a dip, the heat gets overtaken by the fat and breading on the chicken, which itself is overwhelmed by the creaminess of the Diablo Sauce.

Across the board, Taco Bell seems to have a problem with the construction of layered dishes. Such is the case with its Frank's RedHot Diablo Chicken Nacho Fries, which just moments after ordering turns into a soft, gloopy, and very cold mess. To make this heaping pile of nacho-like ingredients that sounds great in theory, Taco Bell takes a couple of handfuls of its regular Nacho Fries — julienned potatoes coated in a Mexican-style seasoning blend — and then just throws on way too much stuff. 

Along with fatty, processed dark meat chicken, these potato nachos get some gloopy cheese sauce, shredded cheese, pico de gallo, and some of that new Frank's RedHot Diablo sauce. The nacho cheese isn't hot enough to disperse over the potatoes, so it turns into a clump right away. The pico de gallo goes on straight out of the fridge, which makes everything cold, and then the shredded cheese doesn't melt either. Somehow, the whole thing tastes like sour cream and unseasoned potatoes. The best bites of the Frank's RedHot Diablo Chicken Nacho Fries just had seasoned fries and the Diablo sauce. As a dish, this is a disaster; one might be better served by ordering plain Nacho Fries with some Frank's RedHot Diablo for dipping.

It's ambitious, if not foolhardy, for Taco Bell to unveil so many new menu items at once. The company must really believe in this Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce (or it spent a lot of time and money developing it) to feature it in so many things at once. It may have behooved the Mexican-inspired mega-chain to roll out the Frank's RedHot Diablo Sauce-adorned dishes on a slower, one-by-one basis, to perfect each one. As it stands, the four dishes (if we're counting the Crispy Chicken Strips with the Diablo Sauce for dipping as a "dish") sit on a scale that winds down from excellent to good to okay to dismal. 

Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Soft Taco is one of the most inventive and delightful tacos introduced by Taco Bell in years, and I highly recommended it. If one wants the Mexican-adjacent flavors in burrito form, Frank's RedHot Diablo Crispy Chicken Burrito is a close re-creation of the taco, just built tougher. That sauce takes the terrific Crispy Chicken Strips down to a level of just fine, while the Frank's RedHot Diablo Chicken Nacho Fries are a total misfire.