...it's them! i, too, grew up in late '60s-early '70s so-cal. and i loved taco bell. i loved the burritos with green sauce, the enchirito, and those crispy tacos. i ate "real" mexican food with my family in those restaurants with strolling mariachi singers and refried beans drowning in greasy cheese. but taco bell was different because it was something i could buy with my allowance, or babysitting money, or as a starving student. one of my college friends loved taco bell so much she'd perform the "taco bell dance" before a food run, and once got a ticket making an illegal u-turn when she spotted a rare parking space in front of taco bell. a sunday morning hangover meant forcing my boyfriend out the door to pick up a green bean burrito and pintos n' cheese. god, i loved the place.

but as i got older, the food just stopped tasting good. that sprinkling of crispy onions was missing from the burritos. the beans tasted like cardboard. i would still go to taco bell, expecting everything to taste the way i remembered it, and was invariably disappointed. but i don't think it's because my tastes have gotten more sophisticated. i think it's because the food has gotten BAD. it's all about cost-cutting and corporate streamlining and fighting for market share with gimmick items packed with 20 million ingredients so maybe people don't notice it all tastes like nothing.

thank god for la salsa. although i do miss that green sauce.

When my grandparents migrated from Chicago to Monterey Park in the early 50's my grandfather would venture next door into East LA on Sunday mornings to buy fresh warm pan dulce. I can't imagine the interactions he must have had, given that he once took Spanish lessons (because he just knew his coworkers were making fun of him behind his back) only to find to his frustration that his compadres were speaking Mexican - a whole different language entirely. Grandma never warmed up to refried beans, always insisting that they "looked like someone had chewed them up before serving them". Needless to say chimicangas never replaced meatloaf and creamed corn for Friday night dinner.

Until the mid 70's in Southern California unless you actually went to Santa Ana or El Monte Mexican food only existed at Taco Bell or Del Taco. Now you can find a passable taco shop in every suburban strip mall south of Pismo Beach. Strangely enough Mexican cheese never really made the transition - queso fresco is far less common than shredded American and Jack cheese even in places where English is barely spoken. An unwitting homage to Taco Bell perhaps.

Regardless, no matter how good Mexican food gets here it seems some magic happens at the border, where the cheapest taco stand on the grungiest street corner in Tijuana makes a better taco al carbon (sliced hot off the spinning spit and served with fresh handmade tortillas) than any place in the States.

This isn't to say I won't still eat at Taco Bell on occasion, but the "new" Enchirito without the sliced black olives simply isn't authentic fast-foot Mexican in my opinion.

Jimbo

I feel sick to my stomach. Not from the Taco Bell, but from the overwrought "foodie" writing. "Proustian"? "Polyvalent"? Come on, it's just cheap tacos, dude. You might be overthinking this by about ten thousand percent.

What's next, Salon, a ten-thousand word treatise on why you mustn't ever put ketchup on a hot dog, complete with historical analysis (fact: Stalin enjoyed ketchup) and interview quotes from intellectual mustard farmers?

Taco Bell takes the idea of a 'foreign' cuisine, and repackages it in a way that appeals to the mainstream American palette. Therefore, Taco Bell is *American* food, just as much as Alice Waters' "California cuisine" is American food, and just as much as Louisiana Creole is American food.

And it's all good :) I think we're fortunate to have a food culture in the US that slices and dices and steals and reinterprets everything from everywhere in every way. Sure makes mealtime interesting!

Although I live in a neighborhood known for its authentic Mexican food (and adore a good taco con carne asada), sometimes that corn chip crunchy cheddar-cheesy Taco Bell taco really hits the spot.

I am eagerly awaiting the next mainstream fast-food sensation. I suspect it will be something related to Southeast Asian food, and I don't mean Jolibee.

There's always a handful of people that'll call "navelgazer" on these Salon articles. Yeah. So what if it is? :) That's the point. It's a social/cultural history lesson, just in an autobiographical context. Sometimes the memoir-iness can be a little nauseating, but I'm not sure what you'd want in its place. Not every article has to be about the Iraq War. And as someone who grew up in LA, I can tell you that this article will be an interesting read for some people. :)

Who needs partial-birth cuisine like the Meximelt or the Crunchwrap Supreme when the real thing, in more and more American cities, is just a barrio away?

Please tell me there's another usage of "partial-birth" that may make this statement not possibly the most repugnant metaphor I've read in quite some time. But I don't think there is.

From a purely aesthetic perspective - I understand the desire to use arresting imagery - I just can't understand the author's choice to use that turn of phrase. Maybe the author can comment.

When you say "palette" do you mean "palate" or do you actually mean "palette"? Since you invoke Derrida, I'm not sure if it were meant as an oblique double entendre, maybe not unlike names for some menu items at Taco Bell. (I would be incredulous if a paid writer--a self-proclaimed "foodie" to boot--and an editor for a publication like Salon didn't know the difference between "palette" and "palate.")

Palette <> Palate. Good catch.

When Taco Bell came to Saudi Arabia in the early 1990ies it was certainly was a welcome addition to the menu of options I and my fellow expatriates had there. Curiously it was one of the few U.S. fast food chains that pulled up stakes just a few years later. It was never clear whether that was for lack of customers, of a disagreement beteen the company and the local prince who's patronage was a necessary prerequisite for doing business in The Kingdom.