An Open Letter to Taco Bell

Dear Mr. Bell, a.k.a. Señor Taco, 


First off, I want to state that I am a fan of your establishment.  Many an evening your food has solved my dilemma of being hungry at 2 a.m. but only having $0.69 in my pocket.  And I've been a supporter of many of your menu expansions.  I'm a fan of the chalupa, I can even get behind the grilled stuffed burrito.  But I must question some of your most recent decisions concerning your taco offerings.


The first hint I had that something was going awry or askew was the black taco.  I first became aware of it from a radio ad, and I must admit, I was stumped. 


"A black taco?" I asked myself.


"Well, yes, according to the information." I responded.


"Black how?  Maybe they meant black-ened?"


"The ad didn't say anything about 'ened', just black.  Apparently the taco shell is dyed black"


"But why black?  I mean, even accepting that dying the taco shell is a good idea, which is a tenuous assertion, why, for god's name black?  There is no good black food.  Black food makes me think it is either burnt or moldy."


"Well, maybe The Bell is thinking that burning or molding would improve their food taste and nutritional content."


"Touché"


Anyway, the black taco came and went, and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking erroneously that you had realized your error and moved on.  But, alas, no.  Worse was to come.  Soon thereafter you rolled out the shrimp taco.  Because people don't have enough concern about food poisoning from Taco Bell, let's add seafood to the equation.  And the worst thing was that your advertisements tried to imply that somehow these weren't the worst shrimp in the world, but that they were some sort of gourmet shrimp, a shrimp that other shrimp aspire to be like.  In other words, an übershrimp.  


Finally, in my expansive research for this letter, I was on your website and came across this abomination.  The crispy potato soft taco.  I feel slightly queasy just typing it.  I can just imagine the pitch in one of your brainstorming meetings:


"You know what people like at other fast food restaurants?  Fries"


"Okay, so let's sell french fries."


"But we're a mexican restaurant."


"Damn!"


"But what if we put french fries in a taco?!?!?!"


"Genius!"


And thus this disaster wrought of tater tots and cheese sauce was born.  


But, Mr. Bell, back to my reason for this letter.  I am not writing to disparage your fine establishment, though you have had some missteps of late.  I simply want to ask why, oh why, won't you just offer pork?  It's a staple of mexican cuisine, (unlike black tortillas), it is cheap (unlike the übershrimp), and it is delicious (think bacon wrapped barbeque, fried in pork fat.  Mmmmm).  But if you need to jazz it up, I will accept it if you dye the pork taco shells blue or purple.  Thank you kindly.