Walmart Debuts The Crotilla—A Croissant-Tortilla Hybrid

Another food mashup in the books.

Because Unicorn Frappuccinos weren’t enough, Walmart had to go and invent a food much stranger than a fluorescent milkshake. The result? The Crotilla: a combination of croissant and tortilla that tastes better than it sounds. (By the way, you pronounce it with the soft “L”s of the word tortilla.)

We recently got to try this latest food mashup. Our consensus? It takes like a croissant. The only characteristics it shares with a tortilla, however, are that it’s flat and round.

They taste quite good heated up in the toaster oven with a slathering of jelly or Nutella, and would probably even be tasty as part of a ham and cheese sandwich or with an egg on top. One person at Simplemost HQ even ate the Crotilla with tuna salad for lunch and gave it a positive review.

The ingredients aren’t actually too outlandish either: just the normal ingredients that go into making a croissant plus some sugar. There are a few preservatives in there, but at this point that’s par for the course in American foods.

As with most pastries, these things are not for the calorie conscious among us—each flattened croissant packs a whopping 260 calories and 14 grams of fat. Unfortunately, the gorgeous flakiness of a true croissant is absent here, and while the traditional pastry is a true mess to eat, the airy layers inside are what make it so good. The Crotilla, on the other hand is dense and somewhat chewy.

But apart from being flat, round and containing flour, we’re not sure how the Crotilla is considered part-tortilla. We couldn’t imagine eating the the Crotilla in place of an actual tortilla. The buttery nature of the dough itself does not lend itself to guacamole or salsa. So why call it that? You can’t just braid zucchini noodles and call it a zucchallah.

It seems we’re not the only ones confused about the thinking behind this pastry hybrid. Eater recently wrote a review of the Crotilla with the title: “Walmart Invents the Crotilla, A Mashup Literally No One Asked For.”

It is hard to improve upon perfection, and the French are known for just that when it comes to pastries. The Crotilla is fine, even moderately tasty. But when brioche, English muffins, biscuits and real croissants already exist, it seems superfluous.

There’s no doubt that the hybrid food trends is one that seems to be sticking around, however. From Cronuts to spaghetti donuts to the Crotilla, who knows what will be next?