Cantina Bowl

Taco Bell recently introduced their new "Cantina Bell" menu designed by Chef Lorena Garcia.  To promote it, they did a buy one, get one Cantina Bowl free offer on Facebook, which we were more than happy to indulge in for dinner last night.

The Cantina Bowl consists of cilantro rice, romaine lettuce, citrus-herb marinated chicken (or steak or veggie, depending on what you get), black beans, guacamole, roasted corn and pepper salsa, pico de gallo, and cilantro dressing.  Looking at it, it would appear that it aims to be a competitor for the Chipotle burrito bowl as the basic ingredient setup (rice, beans, meat, salsa, lettuce) is the same.

What worked:

• This seems to be a healthier option for Taco Bell than some of the other fare (tasty chalupas with fried shells that I really like, I'm looking at you).

• The crunchy lettuce with the chicken and salsas would make for a good salad on its own. (See first point in the next category about the rice.)

• The pico de gallo and roasted corn and pepper salsa had really good flavor, especially the corn/pepper one.

• Guacamole doesn't cost extra, like it does at Chipotle (but it's more of a smooth guacamole than the chunky one at Chipotle).

• The creamy cilantro dressing has great flavor. 

• The price isn't bad.  In the NYC market, you can get that entire bowl of food for $5.99 (pre-tax). A balanced healthy dish under $7 is not so easy to find here.

What we weren't crazy about:

• The rice.  A thought it was a little salty but made up for the lack of seasoning in other areas.  I just thought it felt out of place.  The bowl (unless you mix it up first, see next point) starts out with salsas, chicken, guacamole and dressing on top of a crunchy bed of lettuce.  The rice is underneath all of that and to me, felt like a misplaced afterthought.  I was left wondering if this should have been constructed as a salad instead, or, like Chipotle, offered with the option of having rice or lettuce as the base.

• The bowl was very compartmentalized.  Unlike Chipotle, where they aim to spread the ingredients over the entire length of the bowl (some do it better than others), each part of the Cantina Bowl had a distinct section to call its own (other than the lettuce and the rice).  Unless you mixed it up really well, it was hard to get one bite with everything in it.  It was harder to mix because the bowl was not that deep and everything was so separated.  The cilantro dressing especially would have been nice spread over the entire bowl.

• I forgot there were black beans in it until I read the bowl description on the Cantina Bell site.  The beans (black or pinto) at Chipotle add a lot of flavor, but these were just kind of there.

• The ingredients aren't quite as good as Chipotle, having more of a chain "feel" to them (like the processed strips of chicken) than the fresh natural ingredients that Chipotle promotes.  Also at Chipotle you can ask for more of the salsas if you don't get that much, while here at Taco Bell, they were just small dollops of each salsa.

The verdict?  Definitely worth a try.  It's cheaper than Chipotle's bowl by almost $2 but there are things about the Chipotle bowl that, to us, are clearly better than this one (and it's also more filling).  I've always liked Taco Bell despite the naysayers (including the new-ish Doritos locos tacos) and I'm glad they've made the effort to try something healthy and new. We prefer the Chipotle bowl but we would get the Cantina Bowl again.