What’s more exciting: the queso or the frozen margaritas?
If we’re being totally honest, we didn’t realize Chipotle didn’t sell queso until the announcement that it would was celebrated with great fanfare on Tuesday. Chipotle, dips and the decision to get chips previously always centered around guac, which is infamously extra. In any case, Chipotle debuted several new additions to the menu, most notably, a cheese fan favorite: queso.
For now, Chipotle is only offering queso at a public test kitchen in New York City called the NEXT Kitchen, according to USA Today. After about a month, Chipotle Chief Marketing Officer Mark Crumpacker anticipates queso moving to multiple markets, with California and Colorado likely to be first.
Part of the reason it’s taken Chipotle so long to add queso to the menu is the chain’s commitment to all-natural ingredients. And as such, their queso will have a different texture than what you’re used to. That’s due to the potato starch and tapioca starch the company will use in lieu of synthetic ingredients. But don’t worry, there will also be a ton of melted cheese.
BuzzFeed sent two interprid reporters and queso experts to taste the dip and they reported that it was “slightly spicy, gritty, and lacked the gooeyness of standard queso, but still — pretty tasty!”
The long-demanded queso may be the headline here, but the test kitchen will also debut two types of frozen margaritas and a salad. The margarita come in a boozy classic lime flavor and a nonalcoholic strawberry one. BuzzFeed reports they are very sweet.
Moving swiftly past the salad news, we can also get behind margaritas. More notably, the frozen drink test underscores fast food and fast casual’s intentions to move aggressively into the alcohol game.
Chipotle has been on a slow but persistent climb back into the hearts of millennials and other Mexican Grills enthusiasts. It’s been slow going since the E. coli outbreak and other disasters that tanked their profit in 2016. They’re still here, though, and fans still get hype about news like this.