el fucking torito

i ate at el torito yesterday, for a work group lunch. i think you could fairly say it would not have been my first choice had i been tasked with choosing a lunch venue.

since the last time i've been, some 6 or 8 years ago, el fucking torito has updated their menu with calorie counts. i had not considered before that something may be simultaneously unsurprising and appalling, but i was both unsurprised and appalled to find out how calorically costly the "food" items are at el fucking torito.

that helped, actually. see, i'm a food optimist. i know that the food there will be awful. not just awful in it's own right. i sometimes enjoy bad food. i used to love the french toast sticks and deep dish pizza at my college cafetorium. that was bad food. i enjoyed it.

but el fucking torito is much more insidious than that. they start with platonically ideal delicious food, like, say, carnitas. they take the word, "carnitas", which evokes deliciousness in the reader's mind, and apply this word seemingly at random to various items in their kitchen. they take the good name of "carnitas" and tarnish it.

but i'm a food optimist. i figure, well, okay, i'd have to be a drooling moron to order the carnitas here, expecting it to be anything like the carnitas i can get at any of the 10 authentic mexican restaurants within walking distance of home, or any of the dozens of authentic mexican restaurants i enjoyed growing up in southern california, or the great mexican restaurants of the central coast. just recently, i found an answer to the question of "how bad could it be?" in regards to mexican food in missouri (answer: you don't want to know). i grew up on mexican food. if you are what you eat, i'm largely mexican.

but as a food optimist, i make dumb little assumptions. like, okay, the carnitas will be a disappointment. but how could anyone screw up nachos? (answer: "cheese sauce"). a quesadilla? (answer: a fucked up weird-ass missouri tortilla). grilled chicken? (answer: i'll get to that).

so sometimes my optimism gets the better of me, and i make a dumb choice, like ordering a burrito at a chevy's, or going to a chevy's in the first place. this is where the calorie counts saved the day.

the calorie counts for the non-salad items on the menu at el fucking torito put the "fucking insane" in "fucking insane calorie counts". 1800 calories for a taco and an enchilada? are you kidding me? and it won't even taste good? why would... i don't even... i can't -- words! they escape me!

anyhow, the ridiculous calorie debt that the non-salad items boasted steered me clear of them, overriding my food optimism and saving me from the deadly mistake of thinking that el fucking torito couldn't fuck up a lowly quesadilla. instead, it steered me right into the deadly mistake of thinking that el fucking torito couldn't fuck up a chicken salad. but at least that chicken salad didn't have 1800 calories.

so i ordered myself the "grilled chicken mexican caesar salad" (which, for some reason, was not called "césar salad" or "ensalada de césar", like the customers of el fucking torito couldn't cope with translating césar to caesar). after a ridiculously long wait, my alleged salad was delivered. the lettuce looked okay, and the dressing was applied with a surprisingly light touch. but it was the "grilled" "chicken" which really caught my attention. you see, i don't think it was real. it looked rubbery. like the fake chicken you might play with as a kid in some giant play kitchen thingy along with some fake rubber eggs and a rubber lettuce leaf.

it wasn't really warm, but it was above room temperature. well that explained it: cooked at the cisco distribution warehouse in soledad, shipped to el fucking torito, microwaved, plated, heat lamped, and finally delivered.

but you see, dear reader, the horror had not even yet begun. as appalling as the appearance of the chicken was, this was nothing on the taste. the first flavor i noticed upon biting into it was unmistakeable: lysol. yes, that's right, the eponymous grilled chicken of the grilled chicken mexican caesar salad at el fucking torito tasted like lysol. not hints of lysol or faint but cherished memories of a lysol infused summer, no, it tasted like licking a freshly cleaned toilet.

but by then i was starving, and what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, so i ate it anyways.

later, when describing my horrible ordeal to a coworker who shares my disdain of el fucking torito, my coworker made a good point: "you wouldn't want to eat chicken at el fucking torito that has not been disinfected, would you?"

good point.