Latest news with #CrunchwrapSupreme
Axios
14-07-2025
- Business
- Axios
How the Crunchwrap Supreme inspired Columbus' Crunchwerks
There's also an ordering window at the dive next door, Cafe Bourbon Bell's Crunchwrap Supreme turns 20 this year, and in those two decades it's become an "unlikely muse" — and moneymaker — for chefs nationwide, the New York Times reports. Zoom in: Columbus serves up its own version of the iconic, hexagonal burrito at Crunchwerks, inside Summit Music Hall near Ohio State's campus. The dive next door, Café Bourbon Street, also has an ordering window. Flashback: The concept opened in 2021, inspired by the homemade wraps chef Mysti Burris made during the pandemic, per Columbus Monthly. What I ate: The O.G. crunch ($9) with ground beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato and pico de gallo. Compared to Taco Bell's $6 option, it's worth the extra cost for fresher ingredients and bigger portions. There are also lots of other protein options, including chicken, steak and plant-based beef — and walking tacos for an extra serving of nostalgia. The intrigue: The Times notes it's "nearly impossible" to patent food recipes, allowing indie Crunchwraps to not only exist, but flourish. Taco Bell maintains a trademark on the name, but rarely enforces it when it comes to independent restaurant operators. The bottom line: Stop by Crunchwerks the next time you want to "think outside the bun" and enjoy some live music.
Black America Web
10-07-2025
- Health
- Black America Web
Top Unhealthy Fast Food Chains Revealed by World Atlas Study
Source: Anna Karanda / Getty A recent study by World Atlas has unveiled the top 10 unhealthiest fast food chains in the U.S., shedding light on the hidden health risks lurking in popular menu items. With fast food being a staple for many Americans, the findings are a wake-up call for health-conscious consumers. Topping the list is Wendy's, where a Triple Baconator meal can pack a staggering 2,160 calories, 54 grams of saturated fat, and 3,400 milligrams of sodium—exceeding most daily recommended limits in one sitting. Sonic Drive-In follows closely, with meals like the Cheeseburger combo and oversized shakes delivering over 2,000 calories and alarming sugar levels. STAY INFORMED! CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER! Other notable mentions include Taco Bell, where a Crunchwrap Supreme combo hits 1,140 calories, and Dairy Queen, where a medium Oreo Blizzard alone contains 1,080 calories and 44 grams of fat. McDonald's, a global fast-food giant, also made the list, with its Big Mac meal reaching 1,300 calories and half a day's worth of saturated fat. The study highlights how these chains use marketing tactics like value meals, late-night hours, and child-targeted advertising to encourage frequent consumption. The health implications are significant, with excess calories, sodium, and sugar contributing to obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. According to the CDC, 19.7% of U.S. children aged 2-19 are classified as obese, underscoring the urgent need for dietary awareness. Below are the ten most unleathy fast-food chains according to the study. LIKE US ON FACEBOOK . FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM & TWITTER . SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE . HEAD TO THE HOMEPAGE Known for its calorie-dense burgers like the Triple Baconator, Wendy's meals often exceed daily limits for calories, fat, and sodium. Retro charm aside, Sonic's oversized shakes and combos deliver over 2,000 calories, with sugar and sodium levels off the charts. Tex-Mex favorites like the Crunchwrap Supreme combo are loaded with sodium and refined carbs, normalizing late-night indulgence. Famous for its Blizzards, DQ's meals often combine high-calorie desserts with sodium-heavy entrees like chicken strip baskets. Fried chicken buckets and sides like mashed potatoes with gravy pack excessive calories, fat, and sodium in family-sized portions. Toasted subs like the Classic Italian can hit 1,300 calories, with meal deals pushing totals to nearly 2,500 calories. Iconic meals like the Big Mac combo normalize high-calorie, high-fat fast food, with child-targeted ads driving frequent visits. Gourmet-style burgers and sides like Smash Fries disguise indulgent meals that can easily exceed 1,000 calories. Affordable pizzas like the Hot-N-Ready pack over 2,000 calories, with refined carbs and sodium dominating the menu. Despite its wholesome image, Chick-fil-A's fried chicken sandwiches and sugary drinks deliver high sodium and calorie counts.
Axios
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
20 years on, Crunchwrap still a boon for Detroit chefs
Picture a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell, oozing warm cheese sauce and cold sour cream against a crispy tostada shell. Now picture that same wrap stuffed with whatever ingredients you imagine: Hot Cheetos, shawarma meat, egg frittata. Why it matters: Taco Bell is celebrating the Crunchwrap's 20th anniversary this year. Since its debut, it has become a novelty and inspiration for chefs riffing on the basic concept to create tasty new varieties — including in Detroit. State of play: The Crunchwrap started as a special item in June 2005 and became insanely popular, selling better than any other item on the menu, per the New York Times. It uses ground beef, nacho cheese, lettuce, tomato and sour cream, separated with a crunchy tostada shell in the middle. All of that is wrapped into a giant toasted flour tortilla parcel. Between the lines: Likely hundreds of chefs across the U.S. create their takes on the Crunchwrap with Mexican, Thai, Middle Eastern and many other flavors. But it's so tough to patent recipes that there's little issue with co-opting the concept, the New York Times reported. In the Crunchwrap's honor, we've listed where to try local takes on the dish — should we call it a burrito? A snack? A sandwich? — in and near Detroit. Street Beet: The popular vegan pop-up with nostalgic food ended its run at Third Street in Midtown and is working on opening a permanent restaurant in Corktown. Among its most beloved menu items is the Crunchywrap with walnut chorizo and dairy-free nacho cheese. "It's the ultimate fast food comfort item — nostalgic, familiar and fun — but in our case, made entirely from plants," chef and owner Meghan Shaw tells Axios in an email. "It quickly became one of our most popular items, and people are genuinely obsessed with it." Frontera Grill: This spot just outside Detroit, in Grosse Pointe Park, sells a traditional Crunchwrap with refried beans, ground beef and all the fixings. Folk: Of course, we need a brunch Crunchwrap. Folk's version uses an attractive green tortilla, wrapping up an egg frittata, tostada, pickled red onion, spicy Jack cheese and spicy aioli, with salsa on the side. El Loco Panda: This take-out restaurant in a gas station building on the east side features a sombrero-wearing panda on its sign. It offers chicken shawarma Crunchwraps, plus meat shawarma, carne asada, chicken and birria. The Spot: This highly Instagrammable food truck in Detroit and Dearborn offers birria ramen, birria pizza and loaded fries — plus a Crunchwrap stuffed with Hot Cheetos.
Los Angeles Times
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The perfect summer corn fritter to welcome you back to downtown L.A. restaurants
Returning to downtown L.A. restaurants after the curfew. The spirituality of red Fanta. 'The most exciting place to eat in the South Bay in recent memory.' And a Crunchwrap Supreme plot twist. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. I was happily eating a light lunch of poached chicken with an array of radishes, tarragon mayonnaise and buttered milk bread toast dusted with sea salt when our friendly and attentive waiter, just four days on the job, walked up holding a plate of sunshine: three beautifully fried corn fritters with flash-fried basil, a wedge of lime and a mound of salt for dipping. There was a dish of chile sauce too, but the corn's sweetness, salt and herbs were all I needed on the day before the official start of summer. I was at chef Giles Clark's Cafe 2001 with the editor of L.A. Times Food, Daniel Hernandez, and every table in the place was filled. The cafe's big brother restaurant, Yess, from chef Junya Yamasaki, was boarded up at the front entrance facing 7th Street — the dinner-only spot closed during the recent downtown L.A. curfew — but we saw activity in the kitchen when we peeked through the glass blocks on the side of the restaurant and were hopeful that Yess would reopen that night. As columnist Jenn Harris wrote this week, the seven-night curfew left downtown L.A. streets empty: 'All along 2nd Street, the windows and doors were hidden behind plywood. ... The frequently bustling Japanese Village Plaza, where shoppers dine at a revolving sushi bar and stop for cheese-filled corn dogs, was desolate.' Now there are tentative signs of recovery. 'Hours after the curfew was lifted Tuesday, downtown started to show signs of coming to life again,' Harris wrote. 'Just before 7 p.m., a line began to form at Daikokuya in Little Tokyo ... known as much for the perpetual wait as it is for its steaming bowls of tonkotsu ramen. It was a hopeful sight.' Yet, as Harris also reported, Kato, the three-time No. 1 restaurant on the L.A. Times 101 list, whose chef, Jon Yao, was named the best chef in California at this week's James Beard Awards, 'was still looking at a 70% drop in reservations for the upcoming week' after the curfew's end. 'The direct impact of the media's portrayal of DTLA being unsafe, which it is not, has impacted Kato,' Ryan Bailey, a partner in the restaurant told Harris. Certainly downtown is frequently portrayed, 'as a sometimes dodgy place to live and work.' But 'despite myriad challenges,' reported real estate specialist Roger Vincent this week, 'downtown L.A. is staging a comeback. ... Occupancy in downtown apartments has remained about 90% for more than a year ... slightly higher than the level before the pandemic. ... In fact, the downtown population has more than tripled since 2000, reflecting a dynamic shift in the city center's character toward a 24-hour lifestyle.' On Tuesday night, I met reporter Stephanie Breijo at Hama Sushi, another Little Tokyo spot where the wait is usually lengthy, and was able to get a spot at the sushi bar by arriving before 6 p.m. The place quickly filled up behind us. Though some were at Hama to support downtown, many came to pay their respects to the memory of recently deceased owner Tsutomu Iyama. Breijo will be reporting on the life and legacy of Iyama in the coming days, but on Tuesday night the longtime staff was on top of its game, serving affordable but excellent sushi, without gimmicks as Iyama intended. Two days later I was at Cafe 2001, which has become one of my favorite — and most useful — restaurants in the city, open all day and into the evening on weekends. In our recent brunch guide, I wrote about Clark's red-wine-poached egg, my partner, John, swears by Clark's caponata, and deputy food editor Betty Hallock loves 'his versions of a quintessential yoshoku icon, the Japanese potato salad ... [sometimes] kabocha pumpkin and puntarelle with blood orange and fermented chiles [or] a verdant pea and potato salad with lemon-y pea tendrils.' But my current favorite Clark dish? Those light and crisp corn fritters. They were the perfect welcome back downtown gift after a tense week of closed restaurants. 'I've ... had customers come in and tell me, 'The American dream doesn't exist anymore.'' That's Evelin Gomez, a juice bar worker at the Carson location of Vallarta Supermarket, speaking with reporter Lauren Ng. Ng checked social media accounts and conducted interviews with people in grocery stores and restaurants founded by immigrants and the children of immigrants about what they are witnessing with the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement actions in Southern California. The independent-minded Casa Vega owner Christy Vega, who supported Rick Caruso over Karen Bass for mayor in the most recent election, 'has been an outspoken critic of ICE,' Ng wrote. 'I protested in honor of my Mexican immigrant father, Rafael Evaristo Vega, and the very people Casa Vega was built on since 1956,' Vega wrote on Instagram of her attendance at a 'No Kings' protest. 'I will always remember my roots and ALWAYS fight for the voiceless immigrant community.' Some restaurateurs, as Stephanie Breijo reported, have been coordinating grocery handouts and deliveries for those fearing being swept up in ICE raids. 'We understand the feelings that are happening in our community right now, even if we are legal,' said Xochitl Flores-Marcial, a partner in Boyle Heights' X'tiosu with its chef-founders, Felipe and Ignacio Santiago. 'Even if we have documents, that doesn't exempt us from the danger that so many people are facing right now and in our culture.' Meanwhile, assistant food editor Danielle Dorsey, put together a guide to 15 different food fundraisers and events to support those affected by ICE actions. Many are happening this weekend. The young and ambitious staff at Vin Folk — with two alums of Aitor Zabala's Somni leading the team of chef-servers — charmed columnist Jenn Harris during her visits to the Hermosa Beach restaurant created by chefs Kevin de los Santos and Katya Shastova. 'The dining room crackles with the hopeful, earnest energy of a start-up company, ripe with possibility,' she writes in her restaurant review published this week. 'And with food that has all the technique and precision of a tasting menu restaurant with less of the fuss, it is without a doubt the most exciting place to eat in the South Bay in recent memory.' Some of the dishes she highlights: a savory tart that could be 'a love child of mussels in escabeche and pot pie'; headcheese toast, 'a loose interpretation of the patty melt at Langer's Deli'; pritto, 'a take on Taiwanese popcorn chicken'; 'exceptionally tender' beef tongue, 'an homage to Shastova's childhood in rural southern Russia,' and a risotto-style interpretation of Singapore chili crab. Vin Folk is also nurturing a new generation of chefs and restaurateurs: 'Staff are trained in multiple positions, both in and out of the kitchen,' Harris writes. 'Everyone helps with prep, then De los Santos and Shastova [place] members in positions where they may be strongest.' 'We are teaching them,' Shastova tells Harris. 'You go through everything because we believe it's important to learn every single detail of the restaurant if you want to have your own one day.' In her latest Grocery Goblin dispatch, correspondent Vanessa Anderson examines why strawberry red Fanta — 'known as Fanta nam daeng, or 'Fanta red water'' — is seen in so many Thai shrines or spirit houses, many of which are set up at local grocery stores and restaurants. 'Much like those on this earthly plane, the way to a spirit's heart is through his or her stomach,' Anderson reports. 'In the past when we would do offerings to ghosts, it would be an offering of blood,' Pip Paganelli at Thai dessert shop Banh Kanom Thai, tells Anderson, who concludes that 'the bubbly strawberry nectar has since replaced animal sacrifice.' Paganelli, Anderson adds, also posits that red Fanta's 'sickly sweetness ... is beloved by ghosts because of just that. Most spirits have a sweet tooth.' The anniversary none of our social media feeds or TV news anchors will let us forget this week is the release 50 years ago of Steven Spielberg's 'eating machine' blockbuster 'Jaws.' But columnist Gustavo Arellano has another anniversary on this mind this week — the debut 20 years ago of Taco Bell's Crunchwrap Supreme. 'The item has become essential for American consumers who like their Mexican food cheap and gimmicky,' he wrote this week, 'which is to say, basically everyone (birria ramen, anybody?)' The plot twist is that Arellano, author of 'Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America,' had never actually eaten a Crunchwrap Supreme until this month. And when he finally did try it? Let's just say it lacked the crunch he was looking for. I'll let you read his column to find out why he prefers the bean-and-cheese burritos and Del Taco. Bonus: Arellano references Jenn Harris' 2015 story and recipe for a homemade Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme, to be enjoyed in the comfort of your home, without the 'bad playlists, scratchy paper napkins and fluorescent lighting' of a fast food restaurant. I think hers would have the crunch Arellano seeks.
Los Angeles Times
20-06-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Taco Bell's Crunchwrap Supreme is turning 20. So I finally tried one, and it's meh!
Twenty years ago this summer, something momentous happened in the annals of Southern California. I'm not talking about Antonio Villaraigosa becoming L.A.'s first Latino mayor in over a century. Or the Lakers rehiring Phil Jackson as their head coach to embark on one final championship run with Kobe Bryant. No, history will look at those achievements as mere blips compared with the debut of Taco Bell's Crunchwrap Supreme. A flour tortilla wrapped around a ground beef tostada and stuffed with lettuce, tomatoes, nacho cheese and sour cream, the item has become essential for American consumers who like their Mexican food cheap and gimmicky — which is to say, basically everyone (birria ramen, anybody?). The Times has offered multiple articles on how to make your own version at home. Celebrity chefs like Matty Matheson have shot videos praising Crunchwrap Supremes while hawking their own takes. Its June anniversary will soon get the star treatment in a national publication for a story in which I was interviewed because I'm literally the guy who wrote the book on Mexican food in the United States. But there was a slight problem that needed to be rectified before I sounded off on the legendary dish: I had to try a Crunchwrap Supreme for the first time. Hell, before a few weeks ago, I had only visited Taco Bell thrice in my life. During the 1980s and 1990s, Southern California underwent momentous shifts. The white middle class was fleeing the state as the defense industry and blue-collar factories collapsed; immigrants from across the globe came in to replace them, jolting the region's politics. Meanwhile, the ideal taco in the Angeleno psyche was transitioning from the hard-shell topped with a blizzard of yellow cheese eaten since the 1930s into the one we all love today: a tortilla — usually corn — stuffed with something and baptized with a sprinkle of salsa. (A quick etymological aside for the kids: Tacos made with non-deep-fried tortillas used to be called 'soft' tacos to differentiate them from hard-shell tacos, which were just called 'tacos.' Now, it's the reverse — progress!) So my childhood wasn't spent at Taco Bell, Tito's Tacos or even Del Taco, whose half-pound bean-and-cheese burrito remains the world's best fast-food item. My tacos were the ones at King Taco when visiting relatives in East L.A., or the Taqueria De Anda chain in Orange County back when it was still good. I had no reason to go to Taco Bell, even as it went worldwide. Nor did it entice me to visit with its half-racist TV ads like the Taco Bell Chihuahua dog or the ones that ended with the slogan 'Make a Run for the Border.' I didn't go to one until the early 2000s, and I can't remember what my cousins and I ordered except it was bland, limp and too salty: A bunch of regret dabbled with nada. I stopped in only twice more: when the Irvine-based company debuted its Doritos Loco taco in 2012, and when I forced the late Times food critic Jonathan Gold to go through a Taco Bell drive-thru for an episode of the hit Netflix show 'Ugly Delicious.' Both times, the experience was like my first. I ordered one at a location in Santa Ana near my wife's restaurant, where I unveiled the dish. While looking as sleek and tightly folded as a dumpling, it was far smaller than I had expected. The tortilla had no flavor; the tostada which supposedly offers textural counterpoint — the whole idea, according to its advocates, like Times newsletter jefe Karim Doumar — was soggy. And once again, Taco Bell's Achilles' heel was its ground beef, which was as pebbly as gravel. I squeezed some of Taco Bell's hot sauce to try and save my lunch, but it tasted like insulin dusted with black pepper. You're better off buying two of Del Taco's half-pound bean-and-cheese burritos for the same $6 price. I am no snob or purist — I think Jack in the Box's hard-shell tacos are magnificent. And I can see the Crunchwrap Supreme working with better ingredients. But the dish is hardly worth the hype. Besides, Mexicans have a far better dish that combines the soft with the crunchy to create something sublime. They're called chilaquiles — ask my fellow columnista Steve Lopez about them sometime. The Black faith community, along with people of faith from across Los Angeles County, marched in solidarity through the streets of downtown L.A. Wednesday for a peaceful interfaith prayer walk for family unity. Gustavo Arellano, California columnistKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
