Taco Heaven or Taco Hell?

"Kick in the Gut," ep. 1 … 🌮🔔

Since the dawn of language itself, certain questions have haunted us — Why am I here? Is death the end?

Today, however, such concerns are often obscured by an urgent debate that feels less like genteel philosophical inquiry and more like a street fight: “IS TACO BELL EVEN ANY GOOD 😰🗯❤️‍🔥”

And so, in order to unshackle humankind’s thoughts, that they might return to more poignant teleologies, we visited the Taco Bell “Cantina” on New York City’s Avenue of the Americas, just north of 14th Street, last Friday, and ordered $60+ worth of food and drink, and, like a fox whose leg is caught in a trap, we chewed through nearly all of it.

This comes on the (distant) heels of a band quarrel that broke out while we were touring the U.K. in February, the battle lines of which were drawn along that predictable modern divider (“IS TACO BELL EVEN ANY GOOD 😫☄️🥵”). It cut right through the center of our membership, that battle line did, and a poll we asked S.D.I.R. readers to participate in around the same time suggested that it cuts through many of your families and friend groups, too:

The poll we conducted in the Feb. 26 issue of S.D.I.R.

Back then we realized that, in order to be objective about what had devolved into a series of emotional tantrums and ad hominem haymakers, we’d need to convene for a meal, and try just to be honest with each other about the experience. As fate would have it, the first Taco Bell location our path crossed was in a customs stop just outside the Eurotunnel entrance near Folkestone, England, where we waited, one afternoon in March, for a carnet to be stamped so that we could cross into Europe.

Keiths Carne and Murray approach their Folkestone Taco Bell meals with varying enthusiasm.

It sucked. Pretty bad. But we decided it wasn’t a fair test. This TB location surely did not represent the greater chain, a concatenation of some 55,000 restaurants worldwide that many people will say, to your face, is their favorite purveyor of fast food. No, to be reasonable in our judgments, we’d need to taste the Bell at its best. We’d need to visit a Cantina.

First of all, what’s a “Cantina”? According to the Taco Bell website, it’s a TB variation “equipped with a fancy new look, open kitchen, custom menu and specialty alcoholic beverages like beer, wine, sangria and liquor versions of our classic Freezes.” A 2020 article on aptly named website Restaurant Business pushes the idea that Cantinas are used as a sort of experimental workshop, where Taco Bell can try out new concepts — “an updated digital experience,” a “video game lounge,” “a wedding chapel” — on a limited scale. According to Taco Bell’s President Mike Grams (great name for a coke dealer), the open kitchen “breaks down stereotypes. We don’t hide our people… We showcase what we do.” Which seems to suggest that, at least in the minds of Taco Bell brass, a popular stereotype has it that Taco Bell “hides its people.”

There were just 30 Cantina locations when that Restaurant Business article came out, and based on a finger-count I just did using the official Cantina Locator website, there are now around 50, with the highest concentration, for some reason (or none?), in Chicago. So the Cantina model is catching on, guys, and those of you reading this in Europe may not have to wait long to experience one. It is, however, still a real minority among T-Bells’ 55,000 locations, so you might reasonably wonder if we shouldn’t have visited a standard TB in order to conduct our Grand Reckoning last Friday, the better to sample what most people are actually crunching on when they “Run for the Border” (slogan discontinued in 1994).

Well, it turns out that though we really intended to, we actually didn't eat in a Cantina, as I’ve just now learned. (🚨BREAKING!) As you’ll hear us mention in the conversation below, our adventure began in front of a location on First Avenue that I (Chris) firmly believed was a Cantina (it’s also the TB closest to my house). But, standing out front, the Cantina sheen was distinctly missing (I must’ve hallucinated it, maybe in a wishful fantasy involving my property value), and we decided it was worth strolling west in search of greener pastures, and by “greener pastures” I mean a Taco Bell with alcohol. We were all, being rock musicians and it being day time, pretty hung over, and we imagined some dog hair would be necessary to get those Gorditas down. So we shuffled over to what Google Maps labels (to this day!) a Taco Bell Cantina, and when we got there and the sign just said “Taco Bell [plain-ass],” our minds wouldn’t let us notice it (confirmation bias, I guess); and as we pored over the touchscreen menu and found it alcohol-free, our brains failed to make the obvious deduction — for walking any further, even to go after booze, was simply not in the cards.

And that’s how we ended up eating a perfectly representative meal at one of Taco Bell’s 54,950 plain-ass locations. And if that ended up diminishing our pleasure in the moment — albeit without our knowing — then it had a much greater salutary effect, for the following conversation and its attendant judgments can now be considered CANON.

KC confidently returns from the counter with our order.

For those keeping track, and since Keith Murray and Chris keep using the wrong names for things, here’s what we actually got:

• Nacho Fries (w/ Nacho Cheese Dip)

• Black Bean Crunchwrap Supreme® x2

• Doritos® Cheesy Gordita Crunch - Nacho Cheese

• Black Bean Cheesy Gordita Crunch

• Grande Nachos Veggie

• Nacho Cheese Doritos® Locos Tacos Supreme® x2

• MOUNTAIN DEW® Baja Blast Freeze x5

• 3x ea. Mild and Hot sauce, 8x Fire sauce, and 4x Diablo sauce

We ate almost everything. Almost all the little shapes you see on the table are crumbled wrappers and balled napkins and sapped sauce packets. The five Baja Blast Freezes were slurped completely dry.

The Baja Blast Freezes really were incredible. LEFT: Chris and Keith, terribly hungover, draw comfort from their second round of Baja Blast Freezes. RIGHT: Keith & Keith stand in front of the first meeting place, not appreciating how awesome and important that giant Baja Blast Freeze sign is.

FUN FACT: International Bell-Ends (i.e. huge fans of TB, a contraction of “people for whom eating Taco Bell is considered the highest end”) shouldn't imagine that they’ve been consigned to a life of tears and longing. Taco Bell says that “opening up a location in a country where most people have never tried or heard of Mexican food [???] isn’t easy,” but they’ve managed 300 locations in 26 countries, and some feature unique menu items like the Chicken Tikka Masala Burrito (India); the Banuritto (Cyprus), a “fresh” banana in a tortilla, covered in Nutella, chocolate sauce, and sprinkles 😕; the Beefy Cheddar CHEETOS™ Crunchwrap Slider (all-caps on “Cheetos” theirs; Canada) 🤢; the Beer + Taco (Spain), which is a Taco Supreme and a beer for “under two Euros” 🥹; the Shrimp and Avocado Burrito (Japan) 😋; and many more. This is a great lesson: don’t brood on what you can not now and may never have (meal at a Cantina); but instead call to mind those qualities which give your life its originality (Beefy Cheddar CHEETOS™ Crunchwrap Slider).

FURTHER READING…

• “A forty-thousand-dollar steel device that mimics a chewing mouth tests such factors as the perfect breaking point of a chip.” An article in The New Yorker about Taco Bell’s Innovation Kitchen.

• The songs of Yo Quiero Taco Ballads, a guy who writes music about Taco Bell products. His most popular track, unsurprisingly, is “Baja Blast!”

• Taco Bell’s “Feed the Beat” program, which we babbled inexactly about during our meal, “has helped support more than 1,900 artists/bands” with $500 TB gift cards. The roster of suckled artists is impressive, and includes yours truly.

• This list of the 20 best Taco Bell menu items of all time suggests Keith Carne did a good job assembling our order; and per his assertion, The Bell is once again soliciting fan feedback on which discontinued items to bring back.

• If none of the food mentioned so far sounds any good at all, but for some reason you’re going to Taco Bell anyway, maybe you could try one of these 17 secret off-menu items. (Most of these just seem like the author’s preferred ways to tweak your order. E.g. “The Hulk” is a bean & cheese burrito with added guac, which is totally an option on the menu.)

• The Living Más website, which appears to be operated totally independently from Mama Bell, has a “leaks” section that tips upcoming menu items like the Watermelon Berry Lemonade Freeze 🤗 and the Volcano Burrito 😟.

Don't forget to put a crunchy layer inside your soft layer, and hold them together with glue-cheese.

🌮,

Keith & Chris