Over a year ago, ice cream maker Salt & Straw announced a collaboration with Taco Bell to bring back the beloved Choco Taco. Now, the company’s hard work and innovation have paid off, and you can get a Tacolate starting this week!
Salt & Straw co-founder and head ice cream maker, Tyler Malek, first created the Tacolate for the now-defunct Wiz Bang Bar. “We’d hand-make about 30 to 50 of these a day,” Malek explains. “And it was so hard and we’d sell out by noon and it was so fun, but not sustainable and probably losing a lot of money, but whatever, it was cool.”
This version was designed with large-scale production in mind, while trying to improve the original. “We had this realization that, even if we could remake the original Choco Taco, it wasn’t that good. There were so many flaws with it,” he says. “We wanted to go about completely changing that. Ironically, it sounds hard, and it’s even harder than that.”
Malek then spent years traveling the globe to fully realize his desert taco vision. The answer? Create brand new machinery.
“We literally designed everything from scratch, working with a couple of the top ice cream equipment manufacturers in the world. And are now making these here in Portland,” says the ice cream innovator. “This style of ice cream has never existed before.”
Unlike the original Choco Taco, the Tacolate is made with real waffle cones and way more chocolate to help keep the cone crispy. They will also be served with wild berry cinnamon and mango jalapeño dipping sauce packets.
The Tacolate will be available at all Salt & Straw locations and shipped nationwide starting on Friday, October 3rd.
