Taco Bell — Restaurant in Portland

Taco Bell was once a cultural staple of the millennial generation. Every demographic melted into the drive thru line, like various cosmic bodies slipping over the event horizon of a black hole. It didn’t matter what you were before you got there, you’re here now, and you’re all the same stream of matter, steadily flowing into an inevitable outcome. There was simplistic beauty to it. Once upon a time. Nowadays, the magic is lost. We didn’t care about the silicone meat filler. We didn’t care about ecoli lettuce. We didn’t care about the racist Taco Bell dog, or even the fact that the entire menu was a hyper capitalized assault on the very idea of actual Mexican cuisine, like a Phyrexian monstrosity, just a carapace of its former self, turned into something new and horrendous and terrifying but a tiny bit beautiful. We didn’t mind any of that. We arrived by caravan; drunken and slack jawed, red eyed, sleep deprived, rowdy, horny, amped up, tuned out, turned up, all of it. But what we’re met with now is a phantom of a memory. It resembles our deepest needs in form, but leaves us empty and alone. Wanting more. Chasing that high we got once upon a time when the world was so full of possibility and the unknown, yet there we were collected around the parking lot in a cacophony that only could have been composed of people feeling invincible and looking towards the future. We wanted that high again. What we got were micro-plastics. Dying heat lamps. Discontinued menu items. Substance abuse. Trauma. Isolation. My nacho fries were in the danger zone by the time I drove to my apartment, 3 blocks away. As if the gods themselves said “No, these are not my children any longer.” My gordita, perfectly room temperature, as if intentionally kept far away from both the radiating protection of the heat lamp, and the cool breeze of refrigeration. Existing in a purgatory of neither good nor bad. Not notable enough for either title. The meals are in a superposition, both digested and not. The ingredients are caricatures of their original forms. Like Swedish fish, calling on your memory and your deepest desires to will themselves into an existence you might find permissible in the context of the failed American dream that you’ve been sold. That you’ve been duped into. Your hopes and dreams no better than the delusions of an addict chasing that one perfect feeling, where the worlds problems melt away and for one instant of time and space you don’t care, everything is fine, the pain melts away into a bliss of zen, where the outlines of your body slip away, and you bleed into the world around you, buzzing with pure acceptance and total oneness, the mental prisons of “otherness” melting away as if they were never really there all along. A liminal space where you can live with not only the terribly brutal and flawed world around you, but also the warped and tortured soul inside of you just searching for temporary solace, unconcerned with the trials and tribulations you’ve endured or the resulting gumption and resilience and drive that pushed you forward from what feels now like such a long time ago.

Now… you wait in line, much as before, but all that awaits you is the heat death of the universe. Your crunch wrap supreme is a microcosm for Newtonian physics playing out over a grandiose scale, so incomprehensible to your battered and micro-plastic stunted mind that it’s no longer comical. You wait in line for entropy, failing to recognize that it comes for us all, whether we enter the line or not.

The service...

So I just went through the drive thru this morning and a homeless person politely walked up to me and asked me if I could order something for him and his girl, I had no problems doing g so as I had a extra $12 to spend I get up to the drive thru window and the cashier named "Mary" was extremely rude and told me that you cannot be ordering food for other people and that is a problem, they can't be walking up to other people and asking for food, first of all they have no clue what people go through or are going through in life, other people have to eat as well, she also informed me that if I do it again they would refuse me service for ordering someone some food that could have possibly been thier only meal for the day, this is the problem with society now a days and is the cause of why the homeless tend to steal food and stuff from the stores, I would love to see someone tell Mary that she can't eat and has to starve for week or two just to see how it would make it her feel, and to see what some homeless people go through on a daily basis just trying to eat food the same way that we all do, they really cannot tell me who I can and cannot order food for, people cannot live without eating, and last of all I have half a mind to call the owner of the location as well seeing as I know who that person is..., I will be also calling...

Well it's Taco Bell and I gotta say they stepped up their menu. Much better selections with vegan options. Depending on what time you go the drive thru can be a bit much, but they keep things moving fast. If you enter the place it's a bit different. They have a kiosk where you can put in your order and actually get what you want they way you want it and pay right there without dealing with a cashier unless you are paying with cash. Be careful on extras because taco bell will charge you more than what you think. I ordered the potato tacos with extra potatoes and less lettuce (which I suggest) and it was good. Could have added more potatoes. However I was happy with the portions not the price, but I get it. No customer service inside, however the drive thru customer service was on point and nice. Definitely would...