Steveats: Taco Cabana

This feature went away for a while, but now... IT'S BACK! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

Obviously, Texas is more well-known for its Mexican food, and especially TexMex, than New England. When I first moved here, I was delighted to see all of the options, and as I search on Yelp, it returns me 90(!) options within five miles. Wonderful!

While I've really enjoyed some of the higher-end options, there is also a chain that is all over the place out here, even more so than Taco Bell. Since you've read the title of this entry, presumably, you probably already know that its Taco Cabana. Per Wikipedia and company press releases on the web, they had 176 stores as of 2017, and man, there are a TON of them in the Houston area.

As far as the food goes? Eh, it's fine! Here's the thing – My first time there, I went inside to get takeout, but I didn't realize that most of the toppings, you're supposed to put on yourself at a little bar in the store. When you look at the basic, bare taco they give you, it's... very, very bare.

I've been back a couple times since, and I'm happy to report that the product is a bit better with the salsa and sauces you can add in at the toppings bar. We're still not talking about Chipotle-level, five-pound burrito creations, but it's a nice, light meal in comparison to there or Taco Bell.

The other draw for Taco Cabana and my schedule is that they're open somewhat late. There is one less than a mile from my house that's open until 11 on Fridays, and it was a godsend during football season because it offered free wireless Internet too. That's a leg-up on fellow Texas chain Whataburger, although that place has much better food options.

Taco Cabana is also somewhat budget-conscious. I say “somewhat,” because you don't get a ton of food, but you can also eat and drink fairly cheap. After a couple trips, my go-to order is a meal that has two cheese-and-bean tacos, with chips, queso and a drink. The total is about $4.50, and the calorie count is substantially lower vs. the $5 Taco Bell box meals. The queso isn't anything special, but its better than the “sauce in a jar” from the usual grocery stores.

Taco Cabana also offers $3 to $5 frozen margaritas, although annoying, the staff seems to waver on whether or not you need to order food with them. Half the time, the server tells me yes, while the other times, they don't give a crap. (My sample size is only two, here, though.)

Anyway! Taco Cabana is by no means an essential spot to visit. But it's great if you're trying to fulfill a very narrow niche – sports reporter looking to file a story late before deadline – and you're sick of the usual spots like McDonald's and Whataburger. 

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! Or, you know, check the show out! If you have a request for a future Steveats, leave it in the comments on here or on my Facebook. To check out some of the past Steveats, go here!

Steveats: Burger King (and Jack in the Box) tacos

This is a BK taco.

This feature went away for a while, but now... IT'S BACK! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

My consistent nemesis on this blog, Burger King, has been hyping yet another one of their culinary flailings lately – the $1 taco. Now, I'm not as fundamentally opposed to this as one might think! It is a low price point, and hey, it's not like Taco Bell is using grade-A meat in their offerings, which scratch at my lizard brain in a delightful way. Burger King's products theoretically are made of meat, so the King offering a taco doesn't strike me as too outlandish.

However, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Frankly, the product was nearly a 1:1 copy of another disappointing food item I tried during my first week in Texas, when I was desperate for some cheap fast food – The Jack in the Box taco. In fact, I'm going to describe BOTH of them at the same time in this entry, because I'm almost positive they were created by the same culinary master.

Firstly, the shell. It basically tastes like a Frito, and I don't mean this as a positive. I mean that the taco shell is oddly crispy and crunchy, like they double fried the thing or something. Until tasting the Jack taco, I didn't even know a shell could be “too crunchy.”

Secondly, the “meat,” quote usage intentional. I don't know what this sludge was, but it didn't really taste like any normal ground beef. Both Burger King and Jack use a type of meat I would classify as a slurry. It tastes highly pureed, which probably causes all of the good stuff in the batch to sink to the bottom of whatever disgusting urn they're using to cook it in. (I'm picturing something akin to a witch's brew pot.) Jack has a squirt of some red, tomato-y kind of sauce in there, which basically tastes like watered-down ketchup.

My other bulletpoints here: I give the slight edge to Jack, because while the tacos are awful, their version is priced better at two-for-$1. Both had a decent amount of lettuce, but too little cheese, which would have helped to cover up the awfulness of the meat. At both places, I got some other items – mozzarella sticks at BK (very meh, but OK for $1), and the double burger at Jack (standard burger, not bad, but behind the cheapo burgers available at McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King).

As I've noted here, it seems like BK has been casting about for successful items for years now, mostly with limited success, except for the Cheetos mac and cheese items that probably require a hefty licensing fee. According to Restaurant Business Online, BK is in a kind of weird spot. The chain is closing around 200 to 250 low-volume stores a year, but it is also opening 1,000 stores a year. The article notes that the company is growing in Russia, China and Latin America; I'd be shocked if much of the growth was in the U.S.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! Or, you know, check the show out! If you have a request for a future Steveats, leave it in the comments on here or on my Facebook. To check out some of the past Steveats, go here!