When Klondike announced the iconic Choco Taco was being discontinued in the summer of 2022, the bad news triggered a veritable meltdown. The ice cream truck staple, a genius sideways twist on a waffle cone invented in 1983, was just shy of 40 years old.
Generations of kids and adults alike had grown to love that winning combo of chocolate-coated, peanut-flecked crunchy shell with a “creamy inside” (somewhat disconcertingly not called ice cream) rippled through with fudge swirls. Some people hoarded them in their freezers; others tried making them at home.
But if your own stash has long since run out, you can breathe a sigh of sweet relief. A version of the Choco Taco is coming back this summer — thanks to a fast-food chain that knows a little something about tacos.
As part of its new menu items for 2024, Taco Bell partnered with Portland-based ice cream company Salt & Straw to create the Ice Cream Chocolate Taco, which features waffle cones, cinnamon ancho ice cream dipped in chocolate and topped with toasted brown rice.
Get Philly local news, weather forecasts, sports and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Philadelphia newsletters.
Before taking over as the new CEO of Taco Bell, Sean Tresvant had spent time in Portland, Oregon. It was there that he became familiar with local favorite ice cream maker, Salt & Straw, which has been churning out its own take on a Choco Taco — known as the “Chocolate Tacolate” — for over a decade. So when Tresvant wanted to explore the idea for Taco Bell, he knew just whom to call.
“We had no idea how or where this special recipe could ever make it to a larger platform,” Tyler Malek, Salt & Straw’s head chef and co-founder, told TODAY.com. And while you might think an ice cream expert would be used to getting “cold” calls, he wasn’t expecting this one. A visit to the Taco Bell test kitchen soon followed.
“I always loved the layers upon layers of texture in an ice cream taco,” Malek said. “Your teeth rattle through waffle cone, chocolate, ice cream and more chocolate. We tried to lean into that.”
The Scene
The collaboration, which will be available to order nationwide, is the Choco Taco you know and love — but with “a bit of a gourmet twist,” as Malek puts it. “The ice cream is slightly spiced and has significantly more butterfat and less air than anything you’ve had before. We use an especially dark chocolate that still holds a rich flavor even after being frozen. On the very top of the taco, we wanted a bit of crunch, so found a rare blend of toasted brown rice that has that effect while also adding an evocative, almost toasty characteristic.”
In keeping with one of the biggest food trends on menus right now, sweet and spicy (or “swicy”) items, they developed sweet hot sauces for dipping to complete the treat.
For devoted fans of the original, Malek promises the new Choco Taco will scratch the itch, while just maybe delivering on something even better.
“This is what I always romantically dreamt of the old treat tasting like, but that they never lived up to.”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
