Everyone Wants to Drink a Baja Blast

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.