Friday, January 28, 2005

A Bell Run

That's what we use to call a late night trip to Taco Bell in college. The Bell was open 24-7 and the food there is incredibly inexpensive. ($1 for a normal burrito, $2 for a double decker taco supreme, our favorite value) Since then I have expanded the phrase to include any Bell trip.

Yesterday I had lunch at The Bell. One thought was that this was my second day in a row of having Mexican food for lunch. (Wed. lunch was at the local authentic Mexican restaurant, Monte Alban.) That got me thinking, in what lifetime could anyone ever mistake Taco Bell food for Mexican? Obviously we're dealing with a fast food entity. But how would you classify Bell's food? McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's are all easy ones -- fast food burger joints. But if Taco Bell is not Mexican food, yet it is fast food, what kind of fast food is it? No matter the difficulty, I refuse to use the term "Mexican" in any description of Bell. That would be akin to calling me English merely because I speak English. Just wrong.

The one notable aspect of my Bell run was the chicken quesadilla I ordered and received. Tucked away inside the fold, amidst the cheese and pseudo-chicken, was a long strip of plastic. Yes, that's right, a piece of clear plastic. Shocked the Hell out of me. I briefly considered suing them then promptly discarded that notion and chose instead to merely tell the manager of my find. The sad thing is the story pretty much ends about there. I'd eaten most of the quesadilla and certainly did not want another. No other offer of appeasement was made. I went on my merry way. You can bet that I won't be eating at Bell again any time soon. Not that I eat there regularly or even mildly often but my Bell consumption can now be expressed "as x goes to zero, that being the number of recent Bell runs."