Yo Quiero Taco Grande!

I absolutely LOVE Mexican food. I could seriously eat it just about every single day. So when I saw that this month’s special at Papa Murphy's is the Taco Grande pizza, I just knew we were going to have to get it as soon as possible. Seasoned Taco Beef, refried beans, and salsa all on one pizza just sounded delicious. It will be available until the end of the month here in Middle Tennessee, (depending on your local store's supply levels), so if you've been curious about this one but haven't gotten out to try it yet, there's no time like the present!

Big pizza on a budget!

Thing 1 enjoys watching the pizzas get made

I ran to our usual store on South Rutherford to snag one of these babies. I just had to ask the guy working if he had tried one before and get his opinion (particularly since the hubs isn't quite as into Mexican food as I am). He smiled real big and said, "Ma'am, it's one of my favorite ones on the menu." Sounds promising!

New faces, same great service

Almost all put together

Back at home and unwrapped

One thing to note about this particular pizza is that they use the refried beans in place of the pizza sauce. I had been a little curious about that since the sweet tomato sauce seemed like it would clash with the Mexican flavors. This isn't the first day on the job for the pizza creators at Papa Murphy's, though; they're masters at balancing the flavors in pizza, and they nailed it once again. It's topped with seasoned taco meat, salsa, mozzarella, black olives, roma tomatoes, green onions and cheddar cheese. Again, there are those tricky olives, but I was much less worried about them this time.

Quite the festive looking pizza when it's all cooked!

Still missing our true macro lens camera, but still - a close-up!

I think I should have gotten out the big plates

I have to admit, I'm worried I may be running out of things to say about our pizzas. There are only so many synonyms for "delicious" in the English language. But as usual, this pizza did not disappoint. It was, in fact, delicious. It's not what I would really consider "Mexican food," but it's definitely not a traditional flavored pizza. Rather, it was that somewhere in between, but with enough of both worlds to conquer a craving for either. We got adventurous and decided to throw a little sour cream on a couple of slices since I usually add a heaping spoonful to my tacos, but the sour cream definitely threw the flavor off a bit. It could have been the temperature of it, too, since it was right out of the fridge, but I honestly preferred the pizza just as it came. The only thing I might have changed was to back off the olives just a tad, but that is just a personal preference.

Here comes the airplane ... open wide!

Taco Grande with sour cream. Not bad, but it was better without it.

And for those of you that can never finish a whole pizza in an evening, here's something to keep in mind: I typically find a piece of day-old reheated pizza is every bit as good as the day it was cooked, if not better. For whatever reason, this is the first of my Papa Murphy's that didn’t reheat as evenly. Maybe it's the refried beans being a different consistency than the usual sauce, but you may want to check the temps a couple of times, because my piece took a little longer than usual to reach its optimal temperature. I usually don't mind a bite or two of mildly warm or even cold pizza, but the Taco Grande pizza definitely needed to be reheated thoroughly for me to enjoy it. If you like your refried beans cold, however, you may find yourself in love with this pizza straight out of the fridge on leftovers day.

¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!