Gather round children and I shall tell you a TACO tale of woe.
---------------------------------------------------Long Island, 1984. Most fast food chains would shut by 10 PM. Very few of them had late hours , 24 hours or drive thru windows. It was a different world back then (NO Uber Eats or DoorDash, knuckle-heads).
Most diners closed at midnight. The 24 hour diners were few and far between - compared to today. Basically , if you had the munchies, and little money after 12 AM, you were outta luck. The one glimmer of hope was JACK IN THE BOX! Open 24 hours! Multiple locations all over Long Island. (Mine was the Commack one on Jericho Turnpike). Mainly known as the "third place" with McDonalds being #1, Burger King being #2, Jack in the Box was the sibling that chose not to go to college and just wanted to "hang out". If McDonalds was the Beatles, and Burger King was The Rolling Stones-- Jack in the Box was Seals and Crofts (ask your parents) .
Despite all this Jack in the Box had one mighty ace up it's sleeve: their DEEP FRIED TACOS ! These were basic tacos, with barely and cheese, lettuce, onions or tomatoes BUT brilliantly transformed by frying the who deal and dribbling this weird orange transparent sauce over it . To the Stoned & drunk on a Friday night at 2 Am, this was like Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. And oh, your dinner guests were drunken Pat Benatar wanna-be slut-bags, John Travolta-y Guidos of all shapes and sizes and seedy stoner dirtbags -- the complete cross section of Long Island Trash! As a bonus- you got fist fights, 'roid rages and once an M-80 went off in the rest room! BA-VOOM! Screwed up my friend's hearing for 3 months. So yeah, a 5 dollar bill got ya 3 tacos and a drink...and a show! FAST FORWARD to this week as Burger King debuted their "$1.00 Taco" . Sources say these were a throw-back to the Jack in the Box taco...so I tried 3 tonight. They did in fact LOOK like JITB tacos but they did not seem to be deep fried (shells were very dry-with hard edges). The "meat" inside was tasteless and pasty like meat spackle . Hardly ANY cheese , a few traces of lettuce. Truth be told- they tasted like those roller log-thingies from 7 11 or Wholesale Club frozen "tocquitos" . The taco sauce packets that they came with ALMOST saved the situation. But not quite. So there ya go kids. You really can't go home again. Maybe in the next life........ read more