While not a BellBeefer, this is the closest image I could find to the real thing. Pictures of taco burgers are surprisingly scarce on teh internets.
Contrary to their "think outside the bun" philosophy, it's time for
Taco Bell to bring back the BellBeefer, aka Bell Beefer, aka Bell-Beefer. Taco meat, sauce, cheese, onions and shredded lettuce on a plain hamburger bun equals fast-food nirvana.
Sometime in the early to mid 90's, after a several month hiatus from Taco Bell, I went through the drive through and ordered my standard two BellBeefers with no lettuce. The girl at the drive through window was perplexed. "Bell what?" she asked. "We don't have those no more." And just like that, a favorite fast-food icon was "no more".
The closest I came in recent times to getting an actual BellBeefer was a few years ago at a combination Taco Bell/Long John Silvers. I asked them if they could throw some of the taco fixin's on the buns they used for the fish sandwiches, but the half-wit behind the counter said it would "mess with inventory." Whatever. As an aside, one of the worst smells in the fast-food world is the combination of Taco Bell food and Long John Silvers food. The twain should not ever have met.
While I'm on the subject of taco burgers (and places that smell weird), I once ordered one from a now-defunct joint at
Metro North Mall (what isn't defunct in there nowadays?) called Amigos. Let me explain something about taco burgers: no two places make them the same. Some have lettuce, some have tomatoes, some have cheese, some have onions. Amigos used to put some sort of Thousand Island slop on theirs. Because I could never keep straight the make-up of taco burgers across the KC metro area, I would order by telling the cashier what I wanted on my burger, rather than what I didn't want. This avoided the scenario where I ask for a taco burger with no tomatoes, only to be met with hostile confusion because the taco burger at that particular establishment didn't come with tomatoes and what kind of idiot was I, anyway? I digress.
I ordered my taco burger at Amigos thusly: "I'd like a taco burger with just cheese and onions."
The reasoning behind what happened next has been a point of contention in my household ever since. When I removed my taco burger from the paper wrapper,
I was presented with a bun that had nothing but cheese and onions on it. My husband says I got exactly what I ordered, but I argue that the very nature of the term "taco burger" requires meat as a component. If I ordered a McDonald's hamburger with "just pickles and ketchup" I would expect a hamburger with pickles and ketchup - not a bun with pickles and ketchup but no meat. Needless to say, I returned it for one created the right way, but not before asking the person who took my order if they were a fucking retard. Okay, I didn't ask them that because I didn't want the extra ingredient of spit in my taco burger. I probably got that anyway, but I'm still alive, so no worries.
Anyway, I am still on a quest for the perfect taco burger, and to me, it gets no better than the BellBeefer from Taco Bell. I'll probably never see the day it makes its triumphant return, but a girl can hope.