[Sca-cooks] Gorditas was New snack treat OT OP

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Sep 6, 2009, at 8:28 PM, otsisto wrote:

> Wow, someone who doesn't eat at Taco Bell. :)
> The TB gorditas have been around for quite a while. They are "tacos"  
> made
> with flat blead instead of reg. taco shells
>
> http://www.tacobell.com/chickenranchgordita/

Yeah, I'm aware of the basic concept, and see television commercials  
and such, and there's a Taco Bell three blocks or so from my apartment  
building, but between what I read about them in Fast Food Nation and  
various other sources, and the fact that, like many of the now- 
surviving fast food chains across the US, they didn't exist in my city  
until fairly recently.

I STR the non-local fast food chains in New York City when I was a kid  
consisted of White Castle, Nathan's (hey, it's Coney Island, after  
all), a hamburger chain called Wetson's. Then there was a [Swiss or  
Austrian] wurst chain called ZumZum, Chock-Full-O'-Nuts coffee houses,  
the NYC-specific Papaya King, Grey's Papaya, a million Sabrette hot  
dog carts, and lots and lots of pizzerias, all mom-and-pop-type  
operations, and all, bar none, monumentally better than the national  
chains.

I think the first McDonald's in Manhattan probably opened in the late  
60's, and I became aware of it maybe ten years later, when I was in  
high school.

Of all the chains that have made various sacrifices in quality to  
favor a product line allowing for the cheapest and least-skilled labor  
imaginable, Taco Bell is, AFAIK, really the only one to actively boast  
of having no real kitchen to speak of, and no actual cooking  
facilities other than things like microwaves, in the majority of their  
retail locations.

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter