Beverage director Nick Sinutko always thought Baja Blast tasted “just like a color,” he says: some citrus, sure, but mostly, the soda seemed like the essence of bright aqua blue, no need to think about it further. The Baja Blast was, naturally, Sinutko’s go-to order at Taco Bell, the fast-food chain at which the Mountain Dew variant was exclusive from its launch in 2004 until 2024.
While developing drinks for fried chicken restaurant Chick & Hawk in Encinitas, California, Sinutko thought that a cocktail that riffed on a Baja Blast “just seemed like it was a natural fit” for the ’90s- and aughts-inspired menu. Plus, skateboarder Tony Hawk, who owns the restaurant with chef Andrew Bachelier, has done ads for Taco Bell.
Enter Sinutko’s homage, a fizzy teal highball known as the Neon Bell. It starts with a cordial of black pepper, Thai basil and lemongrass, inspired by a video in which someone puts a Baja Blast through a mass spectrometer and identifies flavor compounds including lemon and basil. That’s followed by green Mommenpop lime aperitif, white vermouth and blue spirulina for color, before the whole thing is force-carbonated. “It all comes out as a bluish, greenish turquoise—Baja Blast,” Sinutko says. The name, he adds, came from “imagining that that iconic Taco Bell logo lit up in the night sky.”
While early reporting on the soda was skeptical that it could gain traction at Taco Bell, for whom it was developed, a Baja Blast and a Crunchwrap Supreme eventually became as standard a pairing as Fire Sauce and a Cheesy Gordita Crunch. It has even more cult appeal than the classic Mountain Dew, and what marketers imagined 20 years ago came true: You go to Taco Bell, you get a Baja Blast. But the soda, no longer solely defined by Taco Bell, has become as much of a template as the endlessly riffed-on Filet-O-Fish. Everyone wants to drink a Baja Blast, so now here come the boozy versions.
In Seattle, the kitschy Dreamland Bar & Diner has served a frozen drink known as the Bajaja Explosion, a chaotic blend of vodka, tequila, Powerade, Mountain Dew, Sprite, coconut and blue Curaçao. Rocco’s Sports and Recreation, a sports bar in New York City, previously made a Florida Gator-ade. With a base of a blue Curaçao-Baja Blast reduction, it evoked both a Baja Blast and the electrolyte drink.
“We can’t escape Taco Bell even when we’re in another restaurant, we still know the original reference even when the name attempts to mask it.”
The rendition at Dirty Pretty, a cocktail bar in Portland, Oregon, is known as the Blåhaj Blast, which is the bar’s best-selling drink by a large margin. While conceptualizing the drink, general manager Emily McLean asked herself, The main thing [Baja Blast] is, is bright blue—what does that invoke? She first settled on a mix of tequila, blue Curaçao, lime, and orange juice to hit the citrusy notes of the original.
There’s something about a blue drink—perhaps the fact that this particular fantastical hue doesn’t really exist in natural foods, but is made possible through the magic of food dyes—that inspires a loosened-up vacation mentality. So when tests with Powerade or a Baja Blast itself didn’t turn out right, McLean shifted to asking, What does “fun-tropical” mean to me? “We ended up with a mix of blue raspberry syrup and guava syrup,” she says. According to McLean, the result is more of a “creative interpretation” than a direct copy.
And did you catch the other reference? The drink, which comes with a gummy shark, is named for Blåhaj, the internet-beloved Ikea plushie that has also become a symbol of the trans community. “We wanted to have a little subtle nod like, Hey, we see you. This is a great place for you to come in,” McLean says.
Of course, the Blåhaj Blast isn’t the bar’s only “creative interpretation” of Taco Bell: It also serves takes on the Cheesy Gordita Crunch and the Crunchwrap. Earlier this year, in a New York Times piece about how the Crunchwrap has inspired all kinds of imitators, Luke Fortney concluded that, while the company could go after smaller businesses for trademark enforcement, all these imitators are “essentially free advertising.” They entrench the original deeper into our collective cultural consciousness until it’s unavoidable: We can’t escape Taco Bell even when we’re in another restaurant, we still know the original reference even when the name attempts to mask it.
“Everyone’s always asking, ‘Is Taco Bell mad that you have one of these on the menu?’” says Melina Moser, owner of Dirty Pretty. “If Taco Bell catches wind, [it means] we’re doing okay.”
