Happy Taco Bell Tuesday! I’ll dive right in:

Cantina Bell menu emblematic of fast-food progress: Matthew Yglesias at Slate argues that “The entry of new higher-end places [like Chipotle] is precisely what’s driving the Taco Bells of the world to raise their games” and adds that “[i]n the end, it means that nasty fast food as we know it is almost certainly doomed.” The whole piece is worth a read.

I’m with him on the first point but skeptical of the second. With improved technology and higher standards come change — and in most cases improvements — across society. Many say the ongoing popularity of food trucks is a fad, and to their credit I suspect that ultimately corporatization of mobile restaurants will push many of our current local favorites off the streets. But the food-truck thing is undeniably a product of contemporary technology: The Internet allows truck owners to easily communicate where they’ll be and what they’re serving, which lets hungry lunchers everywhere eschew the crappier nearby options for something more interesting and specialized. As recently as 10 years ago, popular and inexpensive marketing tools like Facebook and Twitter were unavailable or more difficult to update than they are now, meaning that typically food trucks and their ilk needed to anchor to a regular location or neighborhood and rely on word of mouth to foster the lengthy lines we see all the time all over big cities now.

So yeah, it’s reasonable to say that Chipotle has forced Taco Bell to “raise [its] game.” Look at the quality of television now versus the network-dominated 1980s. Sure, there’s plenty of dumb stuff to watch, but thanks to the competition there’s also way more smart stuff to watch. I suspect no one would make Breaking Bad or Mad Men or The Wire if we still only had three or four networks catering to the broadest possible tastes, just like Taco Bell would never have to launch the Cantina Menu if it were still the only Mexican-inspired fast-food joint in the national market.

But does it spell doom for our beloved Crunchy Tacos and Big Macs? I don’t know. Again: The good stuff on TV has not replaced the dumb stuff on TV, it just adds to it. Maybe people soon won’t stand for typical fast food that’s not prepared fresh, but as long as there’s a market for delicious, inexpensive food sold at presumably massive markups and served in seconds, Taco Bell’s not going to stop selling its traditional fare. But then I’m biased and trying to remain optimistic, and I never thought Taco Bell was “nasty” to begin with.

Speaking of which: On a drive to Ithaca for a wedding Saturday night, my wife and I stopped at a Taco Bell Express in a truck stop off the interstate. I ordered a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, but the woman at the register told me they were unavailable at the location — I imagine because they don’t stock the precious Zesty Pepper Jack Sauce. They didn’t have Volcano Tacos either and I wound up ordering a couple of old-fashioned Crunchy Tacos, the staple of the Taco Bell menu but one I normally ignore in favor of more complex Taco Bell fare.

Man, how great are tacos? I mean tacos like the way you used to know them, before anyone told you that the tacos you grew up with in the school cafeteria are “inauthentic” and/or bastardized versions of their Mexican ancestors (which aren’t really that old anyway). The crunchy yellow shell, just thick enough to stay firm despite the orangey grease from the salty and spicy ground beef within, crumbling apart slowly as you chomp each bite of crispy lettuce, tasty cheese and delicious meat but perfectly sized to remain intact until the finish.

You question Glen Bell’s greatness? Glen Bell gave this to you! And we could discuss for hours whether he actually created the thing or even the innovation that allowed it to be produced for the masses, and debate whether the glorious reign of tacos was inevitable regardless of Bell’s role in their ascendance, but what happened happened: It’s Bell, Glen Bell — Taco Bell! — that ushered this perfect treat into ubiquity.

Speaking of which: Did you know that Glen Bell’s ancestor Joseph Bell was the Scottish forensic scientist who inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes? I didn’t, and I know so much about Glen Bell. Now we all know, thanks to OMG Facts and famed WFUV host and MetsBlog contributor Amit Badlani, who passed it along.

Lastly: In Ithaca, there’s a Taco Bell with the old-style sign. I know that a lot of research goes into what color combinations make people hungry and enthusiastic for Mexican-inspired fast food and everything, but I much prefer this scheme to the purple, pink and yellow one you see on most Taco Bell signs now:

And a beautiful Taco Bell Tuesday it is.

NPR reviews Crunchwrap Supreme: The big story is that the review comes as part of NPR’s weekly “Sandwich Monday” series, implying that NPR deems the Crunchwrap Supreme a sandwich. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Y’all know I operate with a pretty liberal definition of “sandwich,” but the Crunchwrap Supreme feels so distinctly like something that could only be created at Taco Bell that it straddles some (awesome) line. Though it certainly meets a lot of the qualifications for a sandwich, I suspect it is more an ingenious Taco Bell creation than a sandwich proper. NPR’s review is predictably a little judgmental, but earns points for several legitimately funny lines.

Taco Bell Train surging through the market: Despite struggling in China — its most profitable division — this quarter, Yum Foods announced five-percent higher earnings and attributed the growth to the success of the Doritos Locos Taco. I don’t really know or care much about the stock-market ramifications, but it looks like another early, on-target salvo in the forthcoming Restaurant Wars prophesied by Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. In a related story, Chipotle’s stock has dropped, a loss also attributed to the Doritos Locos Taco.

For what it’s worth to those curious, KFC is ubiquitous in China. From Shanghai in 2007, I joked: “The ominous Big Brother stare of Chairman Mao has been replaced by the perhaps equally ominous stare of Colonel Sanders.” A bit glib, certainly, but I wrote it after spending an afternoon in a beautiful garden under the watchful eye of the Colonel’s disembodied face on a second-story window in an otherwise historic area.

Cantina Bell reviews keep rolling in: Jenn Wohletz at Denver Westword contends that the Cantina Bell menu is not as well-prepared by average Taco Bell employees as it was by chef Lorena Garcia at a tasting event. That seems to make sense given my experience with the Cantina Burrito, but I have no way to compare the two because Taco Bell utterly failed to invite me to one of said tasting events.

Taking the high road: Mother Nature Network considers whether fast-food chains have “crossed the line” by “shamelessly targeting potheads with their ads.” This feels sort of like a New York Times trend piece, acting like this is a new phenomenon. I seem to remember a certain 2000 Jack in the Box ad in which an extremely handsome young backpacker wearing a P-Funk shirt tells Jack that he’s “jonesin'” for a Chicken Fajita Pita. The Fix, linked in the piece, sites a bunch of recent examples including Taco Bell’s “Late Night Munchies” jingle. First of all: Does anyone really care? Second, it’s sort of a chicken-egg thing. Does late-night fast food appeal to potheads or does pot appeal to late-night fast-food heads?

When innovation goes awry: HuffPo relays an unfortunate incident in which a Taco Bell employee included the cardboard Doritos Locos Taco holder inside a taco. The obvious issue: The person ordered a Doritos Locos Taco inside a Cheesy Gordita Crunch — as is recommended by this site — and whoever made it for some reason put together the entire Doritos Locos Taco with holder before embedding it in the gordita.

I tried the burrito from Taco Bell’s new Cantina Menu yesterday. It looks like this. The sauce packet is included for scale:

The Cantina Bell menu is not for me. By that I cannot imagine I am the person Taco Bell had in mind when creating and marketing the new Cantina Bell menu. Celebrity chef Lorena Garcia, while fire-roasting her corn salsa, never stopped to say, “man, I hope this will finally be the innovation that gets Ted Berg into Taco Bell.” I don’t need winning over.

The new burritos and burrito bowls, boasting “citrus-herb marinated chicken,” “guacamole made from real Hass avocados,” and “pico de gallo prepared fresh daily,” seem aimed at the squeamish girlfriends, the healthy-living husbands, the no-beef bros and every other blight on society who seems like a perfectly reasonable person to spend time with until it becomes clear they will refuse to accompany you to Taco Bell.

Here’s the good news, for them: The Cantina Chicken Burrito isn’t bad. It mostly tastes like cilantro, presumably due to the “cilantro rice” and the “creamy cilantro dressing.” Cilantro — unless you genetically despise cilantro — has sort of a clean taste, and because we associate its increasingly popular flavor with table-side guacamole and carefully constructed banh mi, it seems like a great way to code “freshness” into food.

Don’t tell this part to the others: It still sort of tastes like Taco Bell. It’s definitely different from anything previously served at Taco Bell, since that cilantro flavor and the presence of sweet corn kernels are new and unfamiliar to the seasoned Taco Bell palate. But still there’s some subtle, difficult-to-describe aftertaste that is unmistakably Taco Bell’s own. I think it’s in the tortilla. And I like it; it’s grounding.

There’s chicken in there, though not a ton of it. It was reasonably moist and more enjoyable than typical Taco Bell chicken — which I almost never order — but I did not pick up on the citrus-herb flavor. The burrito is nowhere near as filling as the one from Chipotle that pretty obviously inspired it, though it is several dollars less expensive. It’s supposed to come with guacamole, but if mine had any, I couldn’t identify it. There are also black beans, which added some interesting texture but not much flavor.

Will I order the Cantina Burrito on my next trip to Taco Bell? I won’t. Would I choose it over a burrito from Chipotle? I wouldn’t. But then — again — though I’m good for about one Chipotle trip a month, I’m not someone that Taco Bell has ever had trouble convincing to eat Taco Bell. No sir.

This is an effort, we know, to cut into Chipotle’s market. Maybe that works. And by making Taco Bell more enticing to more people, the Cantina Bell menu appears apt to get me and people like me into Taco Bell more often, since we will inevitably sing its praises to those around us reluctant to visit Taco Bell. The Doritos Locos Taco invigorates the base, then the Cantina Bell menu broadens it.

These are both, in their own way, clever tricks to get you to eat more Taco Bell, but then I guess life is just a clever trick to get you to eat more Taco Bell. And we can sit here and debate whether this represents Taco Bell’s progress or Taco Bell’s selling out, but the truth is, if it goes as planned, it means we all ultimately eat more Taco Bell. So, you know, I’m for it.

Via Mike DeRita, via Huffington Post, via Reddit:

Sometime after midnight on a recent evening in steamy Manhattan, I stumbled into the Taco Bell on 14th St. for a light Fourthmeal. Here’s what I got:

That’s a Cheesy Gordita Crunch made with a Doritos Locos Taco shell inside. You may recall that upon the nationwide debut of the Doritos Locos Taco, I wrote:

I suspect with some experimentation the Doritos Locos Taco shell might prove a valuable Taco Bell ingredient in other incarnations: A Cheesy Doritos Gordita Crunch would probably be amazing, for example.

As it turns out, I was right. (It’s almost as if I have great Taco Bell instincts by now.) The Gordita wrapper prevents the dry-tongue issue that plagues the regular Doritos Locos Taco, and the Dorito flavoring, in turn, adds a nice bit of spicy cheesiness to the already awesome Cheesy Gordita Crunch. I’ve only had one of these to date, but I might even suggest that this creation is better than the two that inspired it — a strong endorsement, since the Cheesy Gordita Crunch is my favorite thing on the menu.

Our man Catsmeat, I should note, has enjoyed this Taco Bell Frankenstein before. And I’ve even noticed the Taco Bell Twitter account recommending people try it. The guy behind the counter at the 14th St. Taco Bell didn’t act like my order was anything special.

But since I’m on the subject, and because it’s Taco Bell Tuesday, I figured I should mention a series of coincidences that I’m sure is just that, but which is strange enough to have me at least considering otherwise.

OK, so you know that I suggested the Cheesy Gordita Doritos Locos Crunch in my original review of the Doritos Locos Taco, and then a short while after, someone at Taco Bell started recommending it via Twitter.

But consider this, too: I have mentioned on multiple occasions on this site and in the comments section that my wedding party went to Taco Bell between the wedding and the reception. Now there is a Taco Bell commercial featuring a wedding party, in full wedding regalia, enjoying Fourthmeal.

Back in April (and perhaps before that, too) I noted that a Ramon Castro foul ball once ricocheted off Citi Field’s second deck and into my dad’s nachos. Taco Bell’s new Beefy Nachos Burrito is advertised with commercials showing a fan at a baseball game catching a foul ball because he does not have to hold his nachos.

And — and! — you may have seen Taco Bell’s first bunch of Live Mas commercials, mentioning a Taco Bell fan named Nat Christiano who drove to Toledo, Ohio to try the Doritos Locos Taco. That’s this guy. Catsmeat tipped me off to that video the day Nat posted it, and if you look at the statistics for the video on YouTube, you’ll see that its first “significant discovery event” was the time I embedded it on this site.

Again: I am almost certain that this is just a series of coincidences. Every one of Taco Bell’s actions could be explained pretty easily without my involvement, and I doubt anyone in Taco Bell’s marketing department is reading this site, trolling for ideas.

But just in case: Are you listening, Taco Bell? If you are, please contact me. We could have something beautiful here.

Today’s Taco Bell Tuesday bled into two posts. First, the news roundup.

Bethel residents to enjoy Taco Bell after all: Remember the awful hoax that led residents of tiny Bethel, Alaska to believe they were getting a Taco Bell? Taco Bell heard about it and came through. The company shipped the town enough ground beef, lettuce, sour cream, tomatoes and shells to make 10,000 Doritos Locos Tacos. The article doesn’t specify, but presumably they’re Doritos Locos Tacos Supreme or else there’s no need for the tomatoes and sour cream.

The sad thing is that Taco Bell probably just destroyed Bethel, Alaska. The article states that the population there is “transient,” and I have to figure one taste of Taco Bell will send them all scrambling for someplace with better access to Taco Bell.

Link via Dan.

Chris Bosh enjoys celebratory Fourthmeal: Chris Bosh didn’t really enjoy partying at some hot Miami club after the Heat won the NBA Championship. He was too tired from playing basketball, and too full from stopping at Taco Bell between the game and the party.

OK, Chris Bosh, you’re back in my good graces.

(Also worth noting: Dwyane Wade’s postgame press conference flip-up glasses. The problem is, he blew it by not turning the chair around before he sat down to seal the Different World reference.)

Mundane Taco Bell high jinks: The headline: “Taco Bell chair fight leads East Bay to police marijuana grow operation.” The story: Pretty much exactly what you’d expect.