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:D
Their chicken soft tacos (79 cents!) and those glorious bean burritos with the green chiles (with none of that nasty red sauce they give you so many sachets of) are excellent and long-favored items for me when the urge to snack on Mexicanish food arises. At Taco Bell I've always been a fan of the seven-layer burrito and I kind of like some of their other, newer offerings (among 'newer' I include things like the gorditas that've been around for years now). Never liked the sauces from either, though. Still, Del Taco (and even Taco Bell) can also come in handy on long freeway jaunts when a spot of real food is called for...look around and you can find menu items that are a little better for you than most fast-food offerings and certainly more substantial. They have their place, especially around midnight or later.
Taco Bell's always seemed somehow junkier to me than Del Taco (I was devastated when, on moving to the South, the Del Taco that was there in that town was replaced by yet another Taco Bell -- they're both owned by Pepsi, but supposedly Taco Bell didn't like the competition -- in a move that seemed to affect vast tracts of the country, except the West, during those dark days) but it's better than I remember it being. When I first came to this country, in the mid-'80s, I ate at a Taco Bell (in San Diego...yeah, home to soem of the best Mexican food in the US, but I was out walking miles from where I was sleeping and I had never tried a Taco Bell...had no idea it was a huge chain) and not only could not finish what I ordered (if you know me, you'd vouch that this never happens) but felt vomitously queasy from it. It was nasty. And at that time my palate and my stomach were probably far more robust than now. It took me years before I finally tried Taco Bell again, lucking out with their seven-layer burrito.
But I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking either was anything like authentic Mexican food. Assuming, of course, that I even have any idea what 'Mexican' food really is, given the regional cuisine differences within Mexico and the fact that most of us here and in nations to which US Mexican flavors have been exported is Tex-Mex or some nouvelle Californian take on Mexican food (both of which I love, but they're admittedly cultural mutants). I've been in a few restaurants that purported to sell Mexican food cooked in the style of one or more specific areas of Mexico, and most of what they served was not familiar to me.
Of all I've had, Mexican and sorta-Mexican food, the food from New Mexico remains my favorite. All those green chiles...mmmmm.
At heart, though, I am a burrito man. Even substandard burritos can be good. And give me a tortilla and I can probably eat anything...it's the only bread-like thing I've really had in my larder for years now. :D
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