I never eat at McDonalds anymore. I never walk into a KFC. Burger King rarely, Wendy's occasionally, and Taco Johns only on those occasions when I have managed to forget what it tastes like. As a general rule, my fast-food habits have changed pretty drastically in the past decade. 

But damn, do I love me some Taco Bell.

I can't explain why. It's not like the ground beef is any more appetizing than the ground beef at McDonalds. It's just full of cumin and orange grease. The tomatoes there are tomatoes in name and color only. They have horrible, horrible ideas for food that shouldn't exist, like the Chicken Caesar Salad Grilled Stuft Burrito, in which a giant flour tortilla was filled with chicken and romaine lettuce and then put between two very hot metal plates. Or the current Bacon Cheesy Potato Burrito, which is one more inappropriate ingredient away from warranting a War Crimes entry.

They have horrible ad campaigns promoting the concept of "Fourthmeal", because in America, three meals a day simply isn't enough. And, like all fast food, it's at the heart of the big American corporate agribusiness problem, so any meat I eat there was probably processed by an illegal immigrant with hepatitis, a meth addiction, and bosses forcing them to work twelve hour shifts.

But damn, do I love me some Taco Bell.

I've been ordering the grilled taquitos pretty much since they introduced them - tubes of meat and melted cheese, with a small tub full of bright green goo that violates every single principle I espoused in my guacamole post. I'll order either the methchicken or the hepsteak, depending on my mood. Speaking of hepsteak, the grilled steak soft taco is another regular, largely on account of the sauce, which is probably only 30% biological in origin but still tastes vaguely like creamy lime.

And then there's the crapshoot. One of the ways I add a frisson of danger to my otherwise staid, boring lifestyle. The Chicken Baja Gordita. The Russian Roulette of fast food. Why is that? Because about one in every six times I order a Chicken Baja Gordita, which is chicken, cheese, lettuce, and "baja sauce" in a thick soft flatbread taco shell, I instead receive a Chicken Baja Chalupa, which is chicken, cheese, lettuce, and "baja sauce" in a thick soft flatbread taco shell that was deep-fried two weeks ago and tastes like rancid asstoast. 

When it's time for horrible ground beef, though, my preferred venue is the double decker taco supreme. You take the regular hard-shell taco, supreme it with plastic tomatoes and "sour" "cream", and then wrap a soft taco shell full of refried beans around it. Which is geniusly awful, because it prevents the occasional bit of taco-shell shrapnel in the eye, at the expense of making the inner shell go a bit soggy almost instantly. Again, it's not good, but I love it.

I don't even know why I love it. I don't have childhood associations with Taco Bell - that was all McDonalds and a bit of Burger King for me. I think I just love tacos, and Southwestern flavors, so much that even their plasticine knock-off industrial versions hold sway over my soul.