Since the 1980s, many fans of novelty ice cream have been enthralled with the Choco Taco. The iconic desert featured sugar cone on the outside shaped into a taco shell filled with ice cream and dipped in chocolate.
It was the invention of Alan Drazen, a former Philadelphia ice cream truck driver-turned-manager who was looking to create something uniquely branded to the Jack and Jill Ice Cream Company. Capitalizing on the rise in popularity of Mexican cuisine, the Choco Taco was born in 1983 and gained popularity as “America’s coolest taco” by the mid-90s.
One fan of the confection was Salt & Straw co-founder and ice cream “mad scientist” Tyler Malek. “Oh, I’m obsessed with the Choco Taco,” he laughed. “I think it’s like one of the greatest ice cream truck desserts of all time.”
FILE - Salt & Straw Co-Founder Tyler Malek at the Salt & Straw Production Facility’s test kitchen in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 8, 2022.
Arya Surowidjojo / OPB
Malek had attempted his own version at the now defunct soft serve shop Wiz Bang Bar starting back in 2016, but the process was incredibly labor-intensive.
“We’d make them by hand every day, hand paint the cones [with chocolate] and fill them with the soft serve machine,” he said. “We’d make like 50 a day and we’d sell out by noon every single day.”
Malek dubbed his creation “The Tacolate.”
Then in July 2022, frozen dessert manufacturer Klondike unceremoniously confirmed that the Choco Taco would be discontinued via a tweet, giving an “unprecedented spike in demand across our portfolio” as their reasoning.
Tyler Malek, and his co-founder and cousin Kim Malek, saw this as an opportunity to pay homage to the beloved childhood favorite, pausing regular Salt & Straw production to have his staff hand-make 500 “Tacolates,” all of which sold in just a few hours.
All of this caught the attention of Sean Tresvant, a longtime Portlander and former Nike exec, who Malek says approached Salt & Straw about collaborating. “He’s like, ‘Now that I’m here at Taco Bell, we need to figure out how to make that ice cream taco a thing, and we want to help you.’”
A mango jalapeño sauce gets drizzled on a Salt & Straw Tacolate on Oct. 2, 2025. The ice creamery worked with Taco Bell on branding and innovation, including the faux "hot sauce" packets.
Stephani Gordon / OPB
It may seem strange on the surface for the fourth largest fast food chain in the U.S. to collaborate with a mid-size ice cream brand, but it’s not the first time Taco Bell has made waves with Portland companies.
Last April, they worked with local hot sauce company Secret Aardvark to promote bringing back “fan favorite” items — in this instance the return of Nacho Fries. The same month, they announced a limited edition coverall with the clothing company WILDFANG.
“What we found really quickly, as soon as we started talking to the team at Taco Bell, is there’s this deep affinity for innovation that doesn’t exist in any other company [of its size],” said Malek.
“We thought we were insane — we launch a new menu every single month at Salt & Straw, probably 150 new products a year with 50 locations and they’re doing almost as many with thousands of locations.”
In the more than two years since that first conversation with Taco Bell, Malek has been on a quest to produce the treat in a way that could scale to meet demand. But that’s proved harder than he could have imagined.
The original Choco Taco was made in just one factory in the country which Malek described as a ‘dark hole of information’ — no photos of the inside of the factory or the machinery.
It took years for him to figure out the process, including a weeklong trip to Poland to work with Mariusz Goik, “one of the most renowned ice cream equipment inventors in Europe.”
“We designed this custom piece of equipment that was millions of dollars and there’s about 2,000 different adjustments on it to be made,” Malek explained. “It’s the most precise piece of ice cream equipment probably in the world right now.”
In collaboration with Taco Bell, Portland ice creamery Salt & Straw has put its spin on the iconic Choco Taco, dubbing it "The Tacolate."
Courtesy of Salt & Straw
For now, the Tacolates being made in North Portland are only available at Salt & Straw locations, but Malek said that could change.
“I think they see us as a little bit of an incubator, so we can kind of test this out and if it goes really well, then hopefully we can sell these in Taco Bells,” he said. “But even if not, we’ve got such a great relationship and there’s a lot of different ways that this could evolve.”
