The Yeezy of Fast Food
For the last sixteen years you have not stepped foot in a Taco Bell without the bitter regret of lost love, a pang for scallions. You may not even remember this was a thing. But prior to 2006, the NACHOS BELLGRANDE® was heaped with them, the MEXIMELT® sprinkled with them, and the Mexican Pizza showered with them.
This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when your defenses are down, likely because you’re drunk or high or extremely hungry, you turn in to the Jackass crew, and pursue life-threatening stunts of eatery, all the time risking your health for a bite of The Bell. But, in doing so, you have not totally lost your zest for balance. You know that a speck of green onion is a tiny bit of redemption, a crunchy grassy counterpart to the salty greasy “Mexican” feast headed toward your gullet.
You want the scallions bad. You can’t have them, because of E. Coli. And also, because Taco Bell treats its problems like Henry VIII treated his wives. Which is to say, when thousands of people got food poisoning in 2006 from a batch of bad scallions, the Bell culled them from the supply chain completely.
We would not be having this discursion on scallions, if not for another of the chain’s murderous acts, the banning of Mexican Pizza in 2020. Ostensibly it was because the pizza’s packaging generated seven million pounds of waste. But, Taco Bell also serves almost 300 million pounds of ground beef a year (color-enhanced with cocoa powder FTW), and we know that beef production is basically the pyro-girl in Firestarter (Drew Barrymore or Ryan Kiera Armstrong – make your generational pick) when it comes to global warming.
The cancellation of the pizza was more likely that it was costly to produce. Or, that Taco Bell has been studying Kanye West. Which is to say, when McDonald’s announces that the McRib is back, all the cool kids run like they would to a Yeezy sneaker drop. Manufactured scarcity is the cultural marketing model of these times. Or maybe the change.org petition signed by 171,000 people demanding the return of the frisbee of Mex-italian deliciousness was effective.
You don’t care why it was gone and why it’s coming back. You just care that the Lazarus-tortilla pie will rise again. You care because in the eighties when it was launched, it fed your childish soul. You care because in the nineties after two-a-day football practices, the only thing that could nourish your body was a two liter of cherry Coke, a shared 12 pack of crunchy tacos with your best friend Jason, a Meximelt (also R.I.P.) and crunchy flaky pastry-like tortillas larded with beef, a dual cheese blend, zesty tomato sauce, scallions, and get this, authentic Mexican black olives. That’s right, Taco Bell secretly whacked black olives at some point too. Olives also adorned another discontinued item, the Enchirito, which is obviously a pre-“loco” portmanteau of enchilada and Dorito.
If you weren’t housing Mexican Pizza after football practice, then it was at least two Big Macs. Which is to say, though you would become a food writer and critic, responsible for parsing the purity of cheeses produced by the lacrima of virginal goats (or whatever the current foodway obsession might be), you recognize that the Big Mac, the Mexican Pizza, and Chi-Chi’s fried ice cream also represent the pinnacle of edible achievement.
This all great, but, you have not acknowledged the refried beans? That is because in 1985 they were not part of the mix. The Mexican Pizza was not even a Mexican Pizza at all. It was launched as Pizzazz Pizza, so called because focus groups American white people suggested that “Mexican” had connotations of spiciness which might scare off Donald Trump the timid of palate.
The launch commercial is hilarious. It’s like a Twilight Zone or Frankenstein parody, where second rate stand-ins for Jim Carrey, Ione Skye, and Christopher Lloyd flash goofy grins and declare how struck they are by the pizza.
Taco Bell, however, was struck by a lawsuit from the Pizzazz Pizza chain, and was forced to acknowledge their lack of creativity. They then reaffirmed their dullness by going back to the original name for an item which is neither Mexican, nor pizza. Taco Bell is always gonna Taco Bell tho. The chain was founded on creative thievery as founder Glen Bell studied and replicated the crunchy tacos of the family-owned California-based restaurant Mitla Café.
There is a bright side to the Mexican Pizza for BIPOC folk. It’s one of the most easily customizable halal and vegetarian fast food options available. As such South Asians revered the Mexican Pizza, especially since their alternate option was a McDonald’s filet-o-fish (I a lapsed-Catholic-and-for-Lenten-reasons stan the FOF too, but I get why others might not). That the pizza is coming back during AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Heritage Month seems like a societal victory, especially since another popular AAPI-preferred item, Taco Bell’s 7-layer burrito remains discontinued.
You want to assume everyone’s had the Mexican Pizza before and knows what you’re talking about, but there were some babies born in 2020, so that’s not possible. To those babies, you should know Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza is not the same thing as a taco pizza. The taco pizza is a delicious but ungangly gathering of orange, mostly cumin and paprika-dusted, beef punctuated by shreddy letty, tortilla crumbs, and a swirl of sour cream.
It was invented by Joe Whitty, owner of Happy Joe’s in Bettendorf, Iowa. Pizza Hut prevented it from being trademarked, because like Taco Bell, they wanted to steal the idea too.
The Taco Bell Mexican Pizza is more like the savory essence of a mille-feuille, crisp flour tortilla layers gooey with bubbling cheese and custardy beef bean mix. Tomato glaze and swirl of cheese sub for the marbled sugar crust of the sweet pastry.
This is why you are now rage-refreshing the Taco Bell app. You heard Taco Bell rewards members would be given early access, and get this, a free Mexican Pizza on May 17th. Taco Bell might as well be the Sackler family giving out free samples in West Virginia as part of a Joe Manchin campaign kickoff. You would sell your flat screen for a taste. You will gamble your children’s college fund. The nostalgic pull of Mexican Pizza has set off your dopamine production line.
But Chicago has not been granted early access (which is weird, given its early and often and dead people voting history) and you must wait until Thursday May 19th like everyone else. It’s fine, because you know you will have something no one else will. On that day, as you enter the drive thru, you will have a cup of BYO black olives and scallions sitting in your passenger seat waiting to garnish and fuel the delicious time machine that awaits.
Editors Note: You may notice that this email is now coming from “The Hunger”. I’m not saying Covid-19 is over, but I’m switching from “Love in the Time of Coronavirus” because it’s time to get back to writing about food and not just through the prism of the pandemic. Also I appreciate those of you still here since I took a little food writing break, but I’m now back. The mission of this newsletter was to help fund Gofundmes for restaurant workers during the pandemic. While the new mission is to write about food candidly and passionately, I will still be donating a portion of the proceeds to non-profits (and will always share the donation receipts publicly) since we always need to support people doing good things.
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