Taco Smell

Tonight we made a fast food run to Long John Silver's/Taco Bell. I'm always a little intrigued by the way the parent companies mesh two divergent restaurants. This particular place has the bell by the door ("Ring if we treated you well!") and fiesta style decor. We've been other mish-mosh places including a KFC combined with an A&W. The frosty mug goodness goes pretty well with everything, so that combo seems alright. But we seem to have a lot of the LJS/TB around here. It seems to me that if the company is going to combine the stores, they should come up with a few interesting menu items that epitomize the place. You might imagine that fish tacos are available here, but they're not. Perhaps some spicy seasoning for the fish is in order - nope.

While the idea of the two places seems a good one on the surface, the problem comes from sharing equipment that shouldn't be shared. Case in point: a deep fryer. One of my favorite Taco Bell items is the caramel apple empanada, which Jeff and I both ordered this evening. Unfortunately, we think they were fried in the same contraption used to cook the fish. The taste wasn't overpowering, just lingering. Jeff's fries also had the subtle suggestion of fish (which I suppose is alright if you're eating the fish, which he was.) However, the boy and I were eating Taco Bell goodies. His favorite way to order these days is to have a hodge-podge of items from the 99 cent menu. Tonight he had a bean burrito, a five-layer beef burrito, a cheese roll up, some nachos, and two crunchy tacos. His assortment looked pretty good except for the nachos which looked the cheese almost missed them all together. I had the aforementioned caramel empanada and a taco salad, which wasn't bad but looked a little sad in its shell. Once upon a time, the shell was brimming with ingredients (though often it was a lot of shredded lettuce). These days, they apparently don't even try to make you think it is full. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty to eat; however I do wish they had shrunk the size of the shell rather than the amount of ingredients. It would just look better.

Although we have come to expect mediocrity from our local fast food establishments, I'm ever hopeful that we'll be pleasantly surprised some day. Until then, I suppose we'll continue to eat the convenience foods on nights destined for loads of paperwork and take care to pop a few Tums before we start.