A lamentable trend at Taco Bell

Other Than... You Know, The Smell
For most of my life, Taco Bell has been the only game in town when it comes to Mexican food here in St. Louis. Er, at least as far as fast food-type places are concerned. There's always been sitdown places like El Maguey (like the Kennedy Fried Chicken of Mexican joints here in Missouri), but why the fuck would I need to sit down to eat a burrito anyway?

Back when I was in high school, they opened up a couple of Tomatillos (I'm not sure if this is a national chain or not) and a place called Flaco's Tacos, but they all folded in a matter of a few years despite my best efforts to keep them in business.

[Back when it was announced that Flaco's Tacos might go out of business, there was a story on the news about how mad people were going in there and buying empty soda cups in order to help boost profits. I thought about doing it myself, but I was roughly as broke then as I am today. I couldn't just part with a dollar like that.]

I wasn't sweating it that much though anyway, because Taco Bell is the shit. I don't care if it's real Mexican food or not. If actual Mexicans had come up with brilliant ideas like putting sour cream and shredded cheese on a plain-ass taco (not to mention the almighty Fire sauce) maybe mad people wouldn't be risking life and limb trying to break into the US. No, that's called American Ingenuity, my friends.

But recently, i.e. in the past several months they've put in a Chipotle and some shit called Moes and a La Salsa and Qdoba. I'm not sure what the hell is going on. It's not like Creve Coeur is suddenly overrun with anything other than it's usual assortment of Asians and Jews. My guess is that at least half of them will eventually go the way of Tomatillo and Flaco's Tacos. I've mostly been hitting up Chipotle myself, so hopefully it manages to stay in business.

Unfortunately, this has meant that I've been to Taco Bell less times this year than probably any year since I was a baby. When I went the other day, I don't think I'd been there in a good month and a half. And even then, it was more a matter of I just happened to drive by and figured what the fuck.

It seems like they used to introduce a new menu item every other week, but apparently they haven't managed to come up with anything that's genuinely worth a shit since they started selling quesadillas. Half the time, I'll just cop regular tacos anyway, since I'm gully like that, but the other day I figured I might as well try a couple of new things they've introduced recently.

I tried both the new grande quesadilla and the cheesy beefy melt, and, to make a long story short, both of them pretty much sucked balls. Come to find out, both of these are just versions of shit they already sold at Taco Bell with lots filler to make it that much bigger without making it cost too much more.

The grande quesadilla is basically a regular (Taco Bell) quesadilla, but with less meat and a thick-ass shell that pretty much tastes like white bread. It was way worse than the cheesy beefy melt. For what it's worth, I think it was twenty cents less than a regular quesadilla. But if I'm six bucks for a burrito on the regular, what the fuck do I care about saving twenty cents on a two bucks and eight cents quesadilla?

Similarly, I should've recognized when I saw the commercial that the cheesy beefy melt is basically a beef meximelt (one of the best items on the whole menu), but padded to roughly the size of a normal (Taco Bell) burrito with rice and government cheese.

Um, why?

As a society, when did we arrive at this point where cheap-ass fast food suddenly wasn't cheap enough? If anything, fast food is the one thing that's remained remarkably affordable in an age when it costs so much more to drive to work, pay off your greedy Jew landlord and what have you.

Granted this isn't such a huge tragedy, since a brother such as myself can always just cop two regular meximelts rather than one welfare meximelt, but you have to wonder: how come every time these fast food places introduce a new menu item these days, it's something designed to meet a single mother price point?

Eventually, it's going to get to the point where I'm left with no other choice but to stick to classy fast food joints like Chipotle. Which is a shame, really. They don't even serve ground beef in that bitch.