restaurant review

Since I moved to my new home, a beautiful vintage studio in historic Ravenswood, I've been looking for that perfect restaurant. A place about which I can say to myself or my lover "Hey, you know what sounds good right now...

Well, I've found it on the corner of Clark and Addison in the shadow of majestic Wrigley Field. My little place is called Taco Bell. It's a popular Mexican/American fast food restaurant.

I discovered it as I was riding on the Clark Bus headed towards Boystown in search of my mythical husband. I spied the familiar sign too late to get off at the nearest stop so I had to quickly alert the driver that I wanted to get off and exited the bus about two blocks south of "the border."

The clientele is a mixture of "homeless chic" and "drunk tourist." The staff looks like they want to kill themselves- but the food is familiar and delicious and the prices are remarkably affordable!

Now, I've been a fan of Taco Bell for a while. I remember my mom ordering a "Burrito Supreme, no sour cream." I must have been in a car seat in the back. Did they even have car seats back then? Anyway, my favorite then was a plain tortilla with butter on it. I did not have adventurous tastes as a child.

As I grew older, my tastes changed. When I was about nineteen or twenty, Taco Bell was a late night hot spot in my hometown. Cars wrapped around the building up until two in the morning. At the time, I was performing in an improv comedy group at a place called the Theatre Hut in Ridgefield, Illinois. When we would take a break from rehearsing, we would head down to "the bell." After eating everything out of our thin, white plastic bags and finishing our Mountain Dews (you have to have a Mountain Dew at Taco Bell) we would smoke a cigarette.

Taco Bell always reminds me of Josh, a friend and fellow castmate (now teaching classes at a Chicago improv theatre). As far as I know, he spends the rest of the time in an underground bunker because in the four years that I've lived here I have never once run into him, which I find unusual. It's probably a good thing because a certain female best friend and I had major crushes on him. Crushes so bad that we could spend an evening talking about him and what he was doing and what he liked and what he didn't like and what he smelled like and on and on.

He said that he thought I was really funny.

Annnyyway, I remember that Josh used to say that the best cigarette in the world is after a meal at Taco Bell. I still agree. Well, not counting sex. No, never mind the best cigarette in the world is after Taco Bell.

Times have changed, I haven't talked to Josh in years, and who knows what we would talk about.

But I'm still in love with Taco Bell. They have a new item on the menu and it is an absolute knockout. The Crunchwrap Supreme! It's a crispy tostada wrapped in a flour tortilla, toasted on both sides. Seriously one of the most pleasing things I've put into my mouth at least since I was seventeen.

To top it all off there is a new flavor of Mountain Dew called Baja Blast. The flavor is genius. They say it's an explosion of lime but do I detect a hint of pina coloda? This flavor is exclusive to Taco Bell. If they had it at the grocery store, I'd buy cases of it.

I urge you to take a trip to your nearest Taco Bell.