Wrap a regular hard shell taco with a bean burrito, and you get the latest from Taco Bell, spearheaded by a television advertising campaign featuring the NBA's greatest centers Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O'Neal. (Where's MVP David Robinson? Filming those stuffed-crust ads for Pizza Hut with teammate Dennis Rodman, that's where, which they had plenty of time for during the finals.) The later spots add Spike Lee to the cast, but fail to capture the "best of both worlds" spirit of the original. And as the commercial suggests, the two have indeed come together in a great way: the tastes blend splendidly (more so than, say, a chicken soft taco could possibly have contributed to the effort) at the same time preserving their respective distinctions (the taco shell remarkably stays hard while the beans provide ample filling); the package holds together perfectly until it reaches the mouth (if, for example, you place enough french fries inside a cheeseburger, some inevitably hang out and drop from the sides); and it is especially convenient for someone like me whose typical Taco Bell order consists of tacos and burritos
anyway. My colleague E. Hester commented that with the soft tortilla layer on the outside serving as
containment, the hard shell doesn't shatter in your hands, sending shrapnel dangerously close to the eyes and generally making a mess. Financially, it's quite a deal as well--for seventy-nine cents, you get a whole fifty-nine-cent taco (which I swear is, for some reason or other, better packed than when purchased separately) and more than a third of a bean burrito; granted there is less of the latter, but for those who fear that this will adversely affect the precious equilibrium at work, I promise that it does not. (I don't bother to discuss the merits of the Supreme version of either as I have never considered a pinch of tomatoes and more sour cream than meat worth the price difference.) For those of us who so long ago accepted the soft shell taco as the solution to the design flaws of its hard counterpart and welcomed the higher volume but eventually came to miss the crunch, this may be it.
Rating:
(out of five)
Review: Texas Taco Sandwich
I don't go to Taco Bell for two days, and next thing I know, they have a new item on the menu, albeit for a limited time only. (Come to think of it, they seem to go through an awful lot of these trial products--at the time of this writing they have at least three different ones available--and it's fair to say that they now beat out McDonald's as most experimental fastfood chain; what's amazing is that almost everything they do sell they manage to create with the same old ingredients: ground beef, shredded cheese, lettuce, and a taco shell.) Being a displaced Texan who's just the tad bit homesick, any foreign interpretation was bound to peak my interest; besides, I was terribly hungry, not having eaten since the night before. The picture wasn't all that descriptive, and the cashier not any more helpful--through her thick Middle Eastern accent I understood the yellowish dressing to be salsa. (The commercial says it's a "tangy Southwestern sauce," which sure tells me a whole lot.) I purchased both chicken ($1.19) and beef ($.99) varieties and grabbed a triplicate of hot sauces each for good measure (that is, if they didn't, up to my expectations). Having settled in a comfortable dining niche with a liter of Mountain Dew, I delved into this new experience. The foil wrapping is a sure indication that this was no value menu item, as is the thick pancake pita (or "oven-baked flatbread"), which also out-classes their paper towel-like tortilla. This is Taco Bell at its highest--not its best, mind you, but its fanciest. These things wouldn't survive the dreaded overnight test (or even, I doubt, a nap after half the bag), but, then again, they were neither designed nor meant to. And I never did figure out what that tasty goo was. Maybe it was all that hot sauce, which I poured on like ketchup in a French restaurant, or maybe it was my stomach saying more "it's about time" than "thanks."
Review: Baja Burrito (Baja Fresh)
When a friend of mine suggested we go to have one, I was awfully reluctant; not only was I hooked on the spicy chicken burritos at the Del Taco across the street (well, for the sole reason that I'm in love with one of the cashiers there), but we were also right-smack in the heart of Beverly Hills, and no burrito is worth going into (further) debt for, except for maybe the really huge ones at that Mexican place Orale Orale right outside the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco (their picante, though portioned out like it was blood or something, is just the best...)--and, oh yeah, these, too. Fast food toxoholics like myself sneer at the freshness claims of an establishment so pretentious as to trademark the sentence "Food cannot be made at microwave speed" (and still dispense soft drinks like Pepsi and Mountain Dew), but, truth be told, they do make one helluva burrito. Chicken and/or steak, the "Baja," whose only other ingredients consist of guacamole, melted Monterey Jack, and pico de gallo tightly wrapped in a toasted tortilla, compares favorably with its cheaper and larger competition. The chips, unaided by the tasteless salsa, fail as a side dish, perhaps due to the all-encompassing nature of the burrito itself; I recommend the impressive stock of jalapeños instead.
The fifth point is for the Mountain Dew (which, incidentally, the Pasadena location doesn't earn).
Review: Nuclear Sicilian Sub Rosa (Dive!)
Why it took me this long, internationally-renown food connisseur (make that consumer) that I am, to get around to this place, as I've been in and out of LA since early last year and visited Vegas more than once in my time, but, truth to tell, maybe I avoided the place for the same reason I keep putting off seeing Jurassic Park. The restaurant is immaculately conceived and beautifully laid-out, that much I can say, with the submarine motif everywhere down to the stainless steel toilets; even the service captured that salty smarminess that you'd expect from a pirate that's been offshore for way too long. I passed up my standard test-fare meatball sandwich for the house specialty, recommended by the waiter, but mostly because I thought it'd contain some secret ingredient to combat the uneasiness that the wall-sized video of ocean waves was causing: four types of meat, provolone cheese, marinated roasted red peppers, fresh basil leaf, shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes, onions in balsamic vinaigrette, all crammed into "their" traditional baguette (which I could have sworn previously belonged to Alvin Ord's)--and not a single thing for that sea-sickness. The additional hot peppers that accompanied "nuclear" variant of the sub fizzled like the bomb at the end of a James Bond movie on my curry-trained digestive system. And when I received the check, the experience was complete--I really did feel like I had paid for one of those $500-a-screw government contracts.
Review: Arch Deluxe (McDonald's)
Review: Rooster Nuts (Meitze Restaurant)
[REAL Chinese food] ...can only be had when eaten with REAL Chinese people, or so they say. Last night we went to a restaurant without a single word of written English in the whole place as far as I could see (well, maybe except the American Express sign and, of course, there's always the ABC/DEF/etc. on the phone), and my friend asks me, do I eat pig intestines, and I answer, not on a regular basis, no, so and he and this girl we were with go ahead and order: most of the meal was nothing new to my college-hardened palate, chunks of this and a mish-mash of that, animals, minerals, and vegetables of all shapes and sizes, the kinda stuff they use whenever they have dinner scenes on Star Trek; everything went down until the waitress brought a plate of something that looked like giant lima beans--I was told they were "rooster nuts"--what a quaint name, I thought. Haha, I wonder how those Chinese chefs ever came up with that one, I mused; what, did they grow these nuts the size of roosters? Well, whether it was to live up to my well-known claim of "I can eat anything" or just to impress the chick, I quickly picked one of the suckers up and took a bite out of it. The texture was rubbery, so elastic in fact that when my teeth came down on one end, the other ballooned up; I finally had to gnash at it before it succumbed into chewable morsels. It was at this time that it dawned upon me that the translation was a literal one, and that my mouth was indeed full of a chicken's testicle. (It took my friend that long to remember the correct anatomical term in English.) I looked down at what was left of it between my chopsticks, split-open and revealing an irregular lattice-work of hollow caverns within, and I could visualize the seminiferous tubules (it didn't take me long to remember that term) manufacturing sperm and semen for use in chicken sex. My stomach grew weak, but not my pride, so I popped the rest like a giant Tylenol and chugged the glass of ice water at my side. It was the only thing on the table I knew. It was the only thing on the table I could understand.
(Apparently the Taiwanese menu offers pig urethra as well.)
Every time I pass by this place and I see their handwritten sign standing right outside the door I wonder what "Beef Chow Fun" could be, and what it was doing on a human's menu. The one time I had ventured inside before was after three one afternoon and an old lady assumed I wanted the last of their left-over potstickers, offered them to me, and I took them with the exchange of three dollars and less number of words of English. This time I went it was before two-thirty, but once again, the buffet (more cafeteria-like service, actually) had already been practically cleaned out, and the large lunch crowd had long since deserted the Wonder Years-style formica dining tables and wooden chairs. A Chinese man, whom I took to be the proprietor, stood behind the counter chopping broccoli into bits while his wife peddled their wares. What did remain (besides the potstickers, of course) was a selection of items contained in little bowls, the two which I picked (curry chicken and chicken chow mein) were emptied onto a large dish for me. These and a generous helping of fried rice were then microwaved, just as she would have done for me if she were my girlfriend's mother. The food was dry, bland, devoid of love or trust or meaning... there
wasn't a single iota of affection, DAMNIT! I MEAN, YOU'RE WITH HER FOR FOUR YEARS OF YOUR LIFE, AND she--er, yeah. Well, as I was saying, it didn't set my taste buds on fire, but I have paid more than $4.29 for a fill-up like that. Oh, yes, I've paid much more than that...
Restaurant Review: Souplantation
There is a place in Fremont, called Fresh Tomatoes, whose buffet menu offered more delights than my belt has notches, but the ridiculous cost of a roundtrip on BART from San Francisco made even its low price of $5.99 (with local coupon) impractical, unless, of course, I made it an all-day affair (which I have honestly considered, mind you, but abandoned out of fear of what the nice old ladies working there might become had I foolhardishly gone ahead and done so). Lo, and behold, an identical establishment--make that a chain--in Southern California under the curious name Souplantation. Everything is the same: the Chinese chicken salad, the tiny pasta plates heated on demand, and the soft ice cream station; even my few gripes, namely, that the pizza fioricci is too bland, the caesar needs more parmesean, and, most importantly, they close too early. (My advice is to get there around eight--when they kick you out at nine forty-five, they let you take home any remaining muffins, and the blueberry ones are superb, even when left on the kitchen counter for a couple of days.)
Rating:
(out of five)
Rating:
(out of five)
Rating:
(out of five)
B & W photos of children wearing the same kind of deprived look they'll have in a few years when they're still too young to get into bars with such captions as "I'll try it... someday!" and "Spinach. Cauliflower. Now This!" now garnish the walls of your local McDonald's restuarant. For you see, the burger with the grown-up taste (TM, can you believe it) has arrived. This is what they meant by teasing us about them getting older in the weeks prior to its debut--not, as many hoped, the introduction of beer to their menu or topless order-takers. I dared to make mine "bolder" by adding (the price of a) bacon (patty). The late McDLT came to mind; so did the superior McRib, but only because I'd have rather been having it instead. Has the weight of the world left me so cynical that I can no longer appreciate a good-natured advertising campaign and so bitter that I cannot enjoy a simple mayonnaise-laden burger? If it indeed has, then so be it; the McDonald's corporation knows they are not totally blameless.
Rating:
(out of five)
From e-mail entitled "REAL Chinese food" and originally sent on October 16, 1995 to friends, relatives, and the people at Ripley's. Thanks to P. Kang for returning it intact. Edited for content.
Restaurant Review: Pure Delight
Rating:
(out of five)
Rating:
(out of five)
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