Taco Bell Blacktown Westpoint — Restaurant in Sydney

I have waited a long time for Taco Bell to come to Australia after I became addicted to their wares in the States. Considering their last foray into the Aussie market I expected to be disappointed.

Taco Bell has learned their lesson from the past and boy, have they delivered.

Is it "exactly" the same as back home? No, but it's pretty darn close!

For those indulging in "the great Aussie whinge" about wait times, seriously, what did you expect in the first few weeks of the opening of a much anticipated fast food chain in a population dense area? This will obviously resolve once the initial excitement has died down. I visited today at lunch time. Joined the outside queue at 12:12, was finished at the self-order kiosk at 12:18 and had my rather large order at the table at 12:26. That's a time frame that would put other outlets to shame, considering that there was over 30 customers ahead of me and the little store was packed. Over 50 in total.

The location is ideal for a quick, cheap eats, taco joint. They know who their target market is. Located at Westfield Blacktown it's in a major shopping centre food court in a suburb deep in the heart of middle class Sydney. Just far enough away from those latte sipping, PC brigade, hippies that their menu won't be ruined by a carefully contrived social media campaign. I mean, seriously, they ruined pizza and made burgers just "impossible" at least leave us the tacos.

The staff are great! Polite and courteous Millennials (who knew they existed?) working together efficiently. Diverse staff from many backgrounds, visible tattoos, christian necklaces, no older or disabled workers though. Every staff member with long hair up in a bun, only one with a hair net and everyone wearing gloves. I sat there for over 30 minutes trying to find something to criticize in this well oiled machine and came up empty. And I mean "well oiled". Seeing 18 staff members cramped into that little area getting the job done was a choreographical miracle. I've seen less densely packed Japanese trains.

Pricing is spot on. Ten bucks for a regular meal deal is very competitive. Menu variety is enough to not get bored and not too large that you get stuck behind some overwhelmed "variety victim" who just can't decide what to get.

Quality is very good. Everything fresh. No nightmare stories that you might hear about expired ingredients in "footlong" sandwiches. The turnover is just too high.

Chips are perfect. Imagine KFC chips but with a different flavour. Same size, consistency and not cooked to a cinder so you get that crunch popular at other places. You want crunch? They have corn chips for that.

Spiciness is also exactly where it needs to be. Anyone complaining of "blandness" must be accustomed to sucking on a ghost pepper whilst snorting a line of chili flakes! The quesadilla had my nose running it was so spicy.

Burritos were awesome. Not stocked up with cold rice and beans that other franchises seem to do to make their servings seem larger. No, these beauties were saucy and delicious.

Tacos were exceptional. What could be exceptional about a taco I hear you ask, well listen up. No breakage or crumbleage (is that even a word?, well it is now). That's right. No crack down the middle with all the contents spilling out. I swear, I took my first bite, the clouds parted and a ray of sunshine shone down on my taco. There was even an angel choir! The meat, lettuce, tomato, cheese ratio was exactly as was written on the back of the tablets brought down from the mount by Moses.

The gordita had the only flaw. The cheese that sticks the soft taco to the hard one is meant the be that cheap nasty liquid stuff not shredded tasty cheese. I know they had that gooey, guilty pleasure hiding back their somewhere because it was all over my stacked chips. Maybe a design flaw, maybe a staff member going off script, who knows?

The best part of the entire visit was checking my order and finding it all there. #alwayscheckyourorderatKFC...

So first time being here, and I’d say the service and staff were easily a 5/5, but I can’t say the same for the food experience.

Now to be clear, in this review food and staff are kept separate. While yes it can have an effect, in this case it didn’t.

To me the Crunchwrap supreme intrigued me, I’ve never been to a Taco Bell, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

The chips were pretty alright, they were good to eat and the flavouring was good, however I can’t say the same for the beef used in the taco and Crunchwrap supreme. It just, to me it felt like low quality beef that was just really wet, where after finishing the taco I couldn’t get the idea of eating dog food out of my head and it really made it harder to enjoy. The beef here is just, not a place I would come for again, so I’d recommend against it. The taco shell was a hard one (good type not bad) that was semi-soft but not in a bad way, I’d say about 70% crunch and 30% soft. The way the ingredients proportioned in the taco and Crunchwrap supreme were good, the way the meal was assembled was great and I had no problem with it, it’s just the beef quality is really bad, not the fault of staff.

Also, from hearing the past reviews, I’ll admit I was already worried about entering this place, but experience wise and dine in options, they’re all great. One thing that’s a surprise to me though is that they also do free refuels, so that’s pretty great.

Staff and meal assembly wise, 5/5 I didn’t have any problems and I was pretty happy with it, but the beef quality just, really ruins it for me where to me the food is more of a 2/5 since that’s one of the core parts of it that can ruin the whole thing. By the end I was just forcing myself to finish it and I didn’t really go through with it. The average rating, which would come to 3.5 means I’d have to round it up to 4/5, but that feels far too high and I’d rather round it down to 3/5. If this was solely based off the food quality (not the fault of staff), I’d bring it...

Don’t understand why there’s not a -0 star rating but 1 is stretching it. We’ve come down from central coast twice and both time had issues the first time we waited at the drive thru speaker for 10 minutes without any peep from the staff so we walked in to find them standing around in front and behind the counter chatting and laughing amongst each other we went to order but was stopped by the manager placing her order and telling us to wait. But they had to chat again for another 5 minutes before even contemplating making our order. The second time we went through the driveway and someone answer (this time) we placed our order and drove through to the first window we’re we were AGAIN greeting by the staff standing there chatting and laughing while taking out payment. We went to the next window we’re we were told to go to the non existent waiting bay and they’d bring it out (because the reason for a drive thru is so you don’t have to get out of your car.) we waited 10 minutes and I ended up going in and asking where my order was they said they were waiting on the naked chicken tacos (keep this in mind). We waited got our order went back to the “waiting bay” and check to find the order Was wrong and the quesadilla was disgusting we went back in for the second time on our !!drive thru!! order to tell them and this is we’re the part of waiting for the tacos came in they straight away within 2 second cooked & made another one. It’s insane how long that took!! So moral of the story if you want to go back to high school visit Taco Bell in rooty hill, horrible customer service, shocking food, I don’t understand how they are still open. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself. You might even overhear them talking about you...