I used to work at Taco Bell in my youth. We used 100% beef, that we cooked in the store, and seasoned. Now the “meat” comes in bags and is poured out into steamer pans. It’s NOT the same. It’s disgusting slop. We also made the refried beans from scratch with....LARD. And we used REAL sour cream, not the acified foam they use now. They don’t even fry the shells in the stores now, they use pre-packaged. That’s why the shells fall apart so fast. If you could compare the taste of a circa 1990 Taco Bell product compared with one from today, you’d be stunned and disappointed how far they have decreased in quality.
All I know is that the food & srvice went into the dumpster around 25 or so years ago, and I quit going there.
Now I live where we have almost no Taco Bells within 200 miles, but we do have Taco John’s “The fresh taste of West-Mex”.
Part of my point was that NONE of it is really Mexican food; it may be Tex-Mex, or “Mexican inspired”, but definitely not Mexican...and gets less so every year as they keep introducing new “inspirations”.