4 ms·

It’s a chain that can be found everywhere in America from the Vegas strip (with a VIP party room upstairs no less!) to the smallest town and sells very cheap “M

It’s a chain that can be found everywhere in America from the Vegas strip (with a VIP party room upstairs no less!) to the smallest town and sells very cheap “Mexican themed” food like tacos and burritos. It’s especially loved by people on a tight budget like teenagers and college students as well as drunk people in the middle of the night (most are 24 hour drive thrus) of all income brackets. The calories per dollar spent are hard to beat anywhere else but you are encouraged to not dwell on the quality of the meat.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Gotcha, so it's the US equivalent of the European Döner Kebab.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pkaye 4y ago
  Taco Bell food is more like the Subway sandwich quality food. Its not the best but its available everywhere. We have places that sell Döner Kebab but its small chains here and there.
- saltcured 4y ago
  Maybe in function but not in quality. The kebab places have an honesty to them of an actual pile of meat... imagine if McDonald's decided to sell "Italian themed" food and called itself Spaghetti Bowl.
- ska 4y ago
  Fills some of the same niche but significantly lower than the average quality, I suspect. Little to no variability though, compared to going to an unknown doner place in a new city…
- to11mtm 4y ago
  I mean it kinda depends to an extent. If I had to distinguish Taco bell from, say, McDonalds, I would say that Taco bell has the advantage of being filling but not putting you in a food coma. One of it's biggest unsung heroes is the bean burrito; It avoids most questions about the meat and has been a popular option among folks who wanted to avoid meat in their diets. It's... almost healthy. Almost.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  Mexican food in general would be. Taco Bell would be if a large corporation operated a bunch of kebab shops, but used the absolute cheapest ingredients possible (with said ingredients largely being precooked and prepackaged such that anyone with so much as basic motor skills can slap a kebab together in 15 seconds), "Europeanized" it until there's only superficial resemblance to a kebab at best, and then sold it for similarly cheap prices from drive-thru fast food restaurants.
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    [deleted]
  - mbg721 4y ago
    There are a few diverging forms of Mexican food in the US; Taco Bell is the mass-market version of the 1960s school of thought that said "I've already browned this hamburger meat; if I put the rest of our old jar of ground cumin on it, that makes it 'authentic'." Midwesterners with no Hispanic ancestry at all who grew up with "taco night" are familiar with this. Then there's the taqueria style, where people who don't like cilantro or onions suffer through them anyway, because at least it's 'authentic'. And then there's the Chipotle "we're gonna need a bigger tortilla" style where any pretense at 'authenticity' was traded for jamming another starch in there.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

Gotcha, so it's the US equivalent of the European Döner Kebab.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pkaye 4y ago
Taco Bell food is more like the Subway sandwich quality food. Its not the best but its available everywhere. We have places that sell Döner Kebab but its small chains here and there.
saltcured 4y ago
Maybe in function but not in quality. The kebab places have an honesty to them of an actual pile of meat... imagine if McDonald's decided to sell "Italian themed" food and called itself Spaghetti Bowl.
ska 4y ago
Fills some of the same niche but significantly lower than the average quality, I suspect. Little to no variability though, compared to going to an unknown doner place in a new city…
to11mtm 4y ago
I mean it kinda depends to an extent. If I had to distinguish Taco bell from, say, McDonalds, I would say that Taco bell has the advantage of being filling but not putting you in a food coma. One of it's biggest unsung heroes is the bean burrito; It avoids most questions about the meat and has been a popular option among folks who wanted to avoid meat in their diets. It's... almost healthy. Almost.
yellowapple 4y ago
Mexican food in general would be. Taco Bell would be if a large corporation operated a bunch of kebab shops, but used the absolute cheapest ingredients possible (with said ingredients largely being precooked and prepackaged such that anyone with so much as basic motor skills can slap a kebab together in 15 seconds), "Europeanized" it until there's only superficial resemblance to a kebab at best, and then sold it for similarly cheap prices from drive-thru fast food restaurants.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mbg721 4y ago
  There are a few diverging forms of Mexican food in the US; Taco Bell is the mass-market version of the 1960s school of thought that said "I've already browned this hamburger meat; if I put the rest of our old jar of ground cumin on it, that makes it 'authentic'." Midwesterners with no Hispanic ancestry at all who grew up with "taco night" are familiar with this. Then there's the taqueria style, where people who don't like cilantro or onions suffer through them anyway, because at least it's 'authentic'. And then there's the Chipotle "we're gonna need a bigger tortilla" style where any pretense at 'authenticity' was traded for jamming another starch in there.