First, Baja sauce. Now, Mexican Pizza. Taco Bell, just leave it alone.
Have you heard the news of Taco Bell’s latest betrayal?
As if 2020 hasn’t been hard enough, Taco Bell has stopped serving menu items like the Nachos Supreme, Spicy Potato Soft Taco, Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes, Spicy Tostada and the 7-Layer Burrito. This was all done with no warning, no fanfare, not a blip on the fast-food taco-loving radar.
And now, we’re hit with an even more dire situation. On Nov. 5, the restaurant will stop serving Mexican Pizzas, as it ditches pico de gallo for “fresh-diced tomatoes” and removes shredded chicken from the menu. This means no more Shredded Chicken Soft Tacos, Shredded Chicken Burritos and Shredded Chicken Quesadillas.
In the words of Jonathan Van Ness: “Can you believe?” I certainly cannot.
Reader, I’ve been worshipping at the altar of Taco Bell since the late ’90s. It started with the problematic “Yo quiero Taco Bell” commercials, which led to my family adopting a tan and white Chihuahua, lovingly named Taylor, after Taylor Hanson.
Much to my mother’s chagrin, we have kept four Chihuahuas in the past 20 years: Taylor, Chico, Sparky
and Cassandra. My dad, Güero, loves the dogs and shares his Taco Bell with them when he can.
In high school, my best friend Tyler worked his first job at the Port Arthur Taco Bell. He was saving to buy a car and continued working there until college. He introduced me to my signature order: Grilled Stuffed Burrito, no beans with extra Baja sauce and a Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
Hours of my teenage years were spent on the spinning chairs of the eatery on FM 365, getting refill after refill of the blue-green soda. When I wasn’t bugging Tyler at work, I was picking up burritos, tacos and Mexican Pizzas for my crew of misfit friends and our all-night “Dance Dance Revolution” benders.
You would think it would be hard to play the dancing video game with a belly full of burrito at 3 a.m., but honestly, 17-year-olds are magical like that.
It was Taco Bell’s Fourth Meal campaign a few years later that sparked my middle-of-the-night need for sugary drinks and Cinnamon Twists, which are basically gentrified churros. I wrote about this phenomenon for my college newspaper at Lamar University and won my first ever writing award.
Taco Bell means something to me. And yet this isn’t the first time the Taco Bell overlords have treated me like this.
In 2014, the chain quietly discontinued the Baja Sauce option and swapped it for another sauce that looks similar but is not remotely the same. This prompted a Change.org petition that drummed up 255 supporters, to no avail.
I don’t even want to imagine the conversation with my mother — the woman who said, “They can’t take away our liberties, Julie,” when I told her to maybe not go to Taco Bell once a week at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Luckily, we live in Houston, where the options for top-notch Mexican and Tex-Mex food are endless. But it’s just one more thing, y’know?
Nothing is safe in 2020, y’all. Not even our Mexican Pizzas.