Taco Bell Lists the Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito at $5.89, Not the $5.49 in the Coverage — and the Mini Taco Salad at $2.49

Taco Bell's featured menu listed the Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito at $5.89 on November 13, checked twice with no restaurant selected. Sporked put it at $5.49, and described that figure as the same advertised starting price as the burrito's previous run.

Forty cents is a small gap, but it is the kind that follows an item around for the length of its run, and the number on Taco Bell's own menu is the one a reader will be charged against. Taco Bell's page carries its own caveat: "Contact restaurant for prices, hours & participation, which vary." The individual burrito product page shows no price at all until a restaurant is chosen.

So the honest version is this: $5.89 is what Taco Bell's national featured list showed, $5.49 is what the coverage carried, and the figure at any one restaurant may be neither. The Mini Taco Salad is the simpler case — $2.49 on Taco Bell's menu, and $2.49 in the coverage.

Taco Bell describes the Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito as a warm flour tortilla filled with seasoned beef, Nacho Cheese sauce, reduced-fat sour cream, Flamin' Hot Fritos rice, creamy chipotle sauce, crunchy Flamin' Hot Fritos and a three-cheese blend, wrapped with a layer of melted cheese on the outside and grilled.

The Flamin' Hot Mini Taco Salad is the new one. Sporked reports it was first teased at this year's Live Mas LIVE event, and the Orange County Register describes both items as built on spicy rice and Fritos.

Neither item is described here beyond what Taco Bell and those outlets have published. Nothing on this page has been tasted.

Taco Bell's newsroom carried nothing on either item when checked on November 13. Its most recent post was dated November 12 and concerned a carne asada test on the Cantina menu — published the same day the Flamin' Hot items reportedly reached restaurants, and about something else entirely.

That pattern is becoming the normal one for Taco Bell: items appear on the menu and in the trade press while the newsroom covers something else. It is why the start date on this page is attributed to outlets rather than recorded as a fact, and why there is no last day here at all.

Taco Bell's featured menu says that all new menu items are available for a limited time. It does not say when this limited time ends, and neither does any of the coverage.

That means the answer to "when does the Flamin' Hot Grilled Cheese Burrito leave" is, today, that nobody outside Taco Bell knows. This page will be re-checked and updated when a last day appears or when the items drop off the menu.