Yet again I have descended to the depths of depravity at the 'Bell I’m not drunk, just working late and hungry so I don’t even have that excuse, and once again I have succumbed to the siren call of the only fast food joint still open in this little burg. Taco Bell.
Over the years ever time I dine at Taco Bell I swear the solemn oath “never again!” afterwards as the scope of my miscalculation becomes clear as synthetic aftertastes of tire cleaning compounds, and pump gun delivered bean paste burbles up from the depths to dance a Tarantella on my palate.
I wanted to play it safe and stick with a steak Gordita as every time I’ve gotten adventurous at the Bell it’s never ended well… but human nature and an appetite for risk took over, and I decided to get the Fiesta Chicken Salad. One of the more expensive items on the menu at over 5.00 I figured I would try one of of their more ambitious offerings. The “salad” delivered in a large plastic bubble was a regular Taco Bell mash up of bean paste, some nasty chicken and chopped lettuce, and the most generic of salsa. Then… there were these deep fried taco shell things that cradled the concoction like the hands of a loving mother cradles her child.
Oh Mother of God these were nasty! The weirdest taste I’ve put in mouth since I mistook a mini-bar of Ivory soap for a chunk of white chocolate on a long ago Christmas eve. Weird, nasty, chemical, and slightly greasy. Who taste tastes this stuff before they offer it to the public? Hyenas? I mean… it just doesn’t even *pretend *to taste good. It gives you the culinary finger from the first bite to the last.
No I do love me some Cilantro. This was the taste of the shell itself. My mouth is still burning from the wilderness an hour later at this point. Beyond the horrid taste (and I’m not a picky eater, trust me) there were these weird smell notes I could detect as I crunched it as if every grease odor and industrial chemical smell from the inside of the food prep area has been sucked into this thing. Just unbelievably nasty.
Yeah, I hear ya. I don’t know if Taco Bell has gotten nastier in the last couple years or if my taste buds are finally starting to mature, but that shit is getting to be downright repulsive. It was my favorite fast food joint for a long time. The steak has gone from pretty decent to tasting exactly like feet. I used to think it was just a meme/urban myth that Taco Bell gives you the shits but it started happening to me awhile back. I was careful to come to any conclusions for awhile but I’ve run enough experiments now, I’m sure of it.
I confess: that new Bacon Cheddar Gordita Crunch they have is…oddly tasty. Tastier than it should be. And I and my roommate still regularly load up on 4 soft tacos each for a quick and relatively cheap meal.
Anyway, I don’t trust the taste buds of someone who claims to love that devilweed cilantro. I’m watching you, astro. :dubious:
Okay, it’s been twenty-five years since the summer I worked as a fry cook at Taco Smell, but that was when they were just coming out with those deep-fried tortilla salad shells.
The tortilla soaks up the grease of the fryer, which accumulates into the bubbles that form in the tortilla skin, and which then congeal as they sit there for hours under the heatlamps. And it is the same grease that everything else is being deep-fried in. You really are tasting the tastes of everything else in the food prep area.
Also, horribly, horribly unhealthy, that salad shell is.
Mind you, I would hope that Taco Hell has changed some of their practices – in particular, that awful gray meat they bought (used to be a really, really low USDA grade; fortunately for the Taco the USDA doesn’t use that grading system any more). But I suspect my experiences with frying the tortilla shells still apply.
I love me some Taco Bell but it is amazing to me how one menu items tastes exactly like another menu item!
One thing I did notice though on a recent business trip to California - somehow the Taco Bell food tastes SOOO much better than the ones here in Ohio. Any idea why that might be??