Southern California is unique for a lot of reasons: the constant freeway construction; the 68-degree Decembers; an abundance of white guys in reggae bands. But it’s similar to a lot of America in that the people born there crave a basic familiarity when they go back (if they ever leave), which often manifests in the gauche but mostly accepted practice of going to In-N-Out Burger as soon as they land. And then, of course, Instagramming the shit out of it.
The In-N-Out Burger, with its grease-kissed bun and invisible mid-bite crunch, is probably what most people would associate with Southern California fast food. It’s delicious and a guilty pleasure, if chaste in a vaguely Judeo-Christian way. Think of it as the empty-calorie equivalent of getting a boner in church and letting it ride. But I’d argue that the real crown jewel of SoCal fast food is the Jack in the Box taco—a greasy, mushy crescent of nitrates and other salty ingredients that will probably be outlawed in 50 years when we discover it causes cancer. It’s something so malformed, so divorced from the culture from which it originated that it could only have been conceived in the godless crucible of San Diego, where Jack in the Box is based. Calling the Jack in the Box taco a “taco” is like putting a Pop-Tart in front of The Great British Bake Off’s Mary Berry and calling it a mille-feuille.
But you can order two of them for 99 cents, and Jack in the Box is my preferred destination when I’m hungry and touch down in L.A. My fondness for them is just one of many attributes that I share with Selena Gomez.
The taco’s components include a ground mystery meat packed into a corn shell, which is then deep-fried together, rendering the outer edges crunchy while the taco’s soft midsection is imbued with a sloppy patina of corn oil, which often causes them to fall apart. Then it’s stuffed with shredded lettuce, hot sauce, and a lazy slice of American cheese. Apparently, a lot of people eat them—they even outpace McDonalds’ Big Mac. The Wall Street Journal this week noted that the company sold an astounding 554 million tacos last year, vividly describing them in concert as:
- “a wet envelope of cat food”
- “vile and amazing”
- “the most underrated taco of all time”
Which are all correct.
I went to high school in Long Beach, and my friends and I were mostly losers, so we’d spend all our free time getting high and going to this Internet café that charged us $2 an hour to play Counter-Strike. There weren’t many places nearby to eat, save for a Jack in the Box on the corner. My order was always the same: a chicken sandwich off the dollar menu, four tacos, and a side of buttermilk ranch for $3.21, including tax. As you can imagine, cramming dozens of gassy and stoned teenage guys with fiendish metabolisms into a barely air-conditioned room and then letting them subsist on deep-fried food is probably not the most appealing idea in the world. (To be young.) And it’s especially unappealing when those teens are trying to get girlfriends. But still, it was where I learned how to roll a blunt and defrag a hard drive, and to this day, the Jack in the Box taco is one of the things I miss most about California.
Over Christmas break, after a beer with a friend, I pulled up in the Jack in the Box drive-thru down the street from where my parents live. I ordered a crispy chicken sandwich (which isn’t on the dollar menu, flex) and two tacos, because (1) I make somewhat more money than I did as a teenager, and (2) I get tummy aches. Once home, I avoided my parents and made a beeline for the guest bedroom, where I ate them in the dark, wrapped in both shame and splendor. (The trick is to top your buttermilk ranch with hot sauce and dip the tacos in them, don’t @ me.)
I’m not sure what it is about these tacos, though I’m sure it has something to do with the evil chemicals poking at my brain’s nostalgic pleasure centers with their pitchforks. As the Journal notes, Jack in the Box’s tacos are poorly constructed and unquestionably bad. But as we’ve learned in recent months, even the heights of mediocrity can flourish in the right social climate, especially with a little corporate backing. Some earthly pleasures are better left unquestioned. Clearly, the Jack in the Box taco is the work of Satan. It’s lowbrow-despicable. It’s sublime.
Let BD Wong Show You How to Eat a Chicken Wing:
