Stuff You Should Know - How Tacos Work

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

It’s Taco Tuesday! If you like eating tacos, you’re going to love learning all about them in this delectable episode. You’ll realize how much you’ve taken tacos for granted and just what a debt we owe our friends in Mexico for inventing them. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's even here and this is Stuff You Should Know. One of the best episode topics I think we've ever come up with.

I agree. Ironically, we're recording on a Thursday. No, it's Taco Thursday. But I ate tacos for lunch, dude. I want a taco so bad but I'm holding out until I see the next good taco truck. Yeah, so what I did, and I'm going to shout out my favorite taco places at the end, but tacos as most people know aren't the best delivery food because you should eat right after assembly basically is your best taco. Totally. That's why when you go to a taco truck or a taqueria, they're putting those things together right in front of your face. But there's a place in Atlanta called Bar Taco in Inman Park which they're kind of fancy schmancy

tacos but they have a couple of really good ones and they deliver a little taco kit like a little bento box almost. You got your meat separate from your tortillas, separate from your fiexins and then you put it all together there at home and it's, I got the pork belly that's flavored with a pineapple sauce. It was sort of an El Pastore kind of flavor. Sounds like it. And then like a shredded beef and boy did it hit the spot after researching this for the past day and a half. I can imagine. I had an open-face deli turkey sandwich with cheese. This was weeping while I was eating it. I could not have tacos. I tried to think of something else but I got my tacos. I think that was the right thing to do. I'll tell you what else was the

right thing to do Chuck, asking Dave Ruse to help us out with this one. Right. Because it turns out that Dave Ruse was apparently born to write this episode. So just a little bit of backstory. Dave and his wife moved to Mexico looking for adventure years and years ago and while he was down there, he'd been the journalist he was and meeting up with like really, really good authentic tacos for possibly the first time in his life. He decided he wanted to write a story, an article about how we got from authentic, you know, real good Mexican tacos like the ones you just described to the kind of tacos we had in America as kids outside of Texas and California, which is like that crispy hard shell, little ground beef, little taco seasoning, iceberg lettuce tomatoes

and just shut up and eat it and don't ask for anything else. Which by the way, I do love those. I think those are delicious. There's a place for them, but it's the same place that grilled cheese occupies. Yeah, exactly. You know, or your square pizza. Yeah, well said. So the thing about Dave though is when he started researching this, he found out like, I guess he reached out to a guy named Jeffrey Pilcher as a source. Jeffrey Pilcher is a Latin American or he's an historian of Latin America. I don't think he's Latin American. And Jeffrey Pilcher realized that he didn't know, actually, the answer to that question, how we got from authentic Mexican tacos to kind of blandish American tacos, right?

Yeah, and it seems like he might have even, like Dave may have possibly been an inspiration for what ended up being the Jeffrey Pilcher book, Planet Taco, colon, a global history of Mexican food because he's even listed in the acknowledgments, right? Yeah, he thanks Dave directly for helping come up with this idea. I can't remember exactly how he put it. So okay, so then now we fast forward to 2021. We asked Dave to help us with the tacos article and Dave goes back to Jeffrey Pilcher's book that he helped inspire as a source for this episode. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty great. And Dave loved Mexico so much, he ended up living there several different times for a total of about nine years. The country he found so nice,

he lived there twice. Thrice, I think. Oh yeah, that's right. Country so nice, he lived there thrice. It still works, yeah. It makes, I mean, I have done very little travel in Mexico. I've done some of the border town stuff in Tijuana and Algodonis, but I really want to go south, south, south into central and south central Mexico. I just got to do it. It's wonderful. I worked at Mexicali Grill and College and ate Mexican food literally every day for three years. And it's just one of my favorite cuisines and favorite cultures in the world. It's pretty good. One of the things that really is kind of shocking about all this though, Chuck, is the taco, the thing that pretty much everybody in the world

associates with Mexican cuisine is possibly the latest comer of all of Mexican, what we would identify as Mexican cuisine. It's actually a fairly recent invention. And that's pretty much what this episode is going to be about, how the taco got invented and then how we got from an actual authentic Mexican taco to the Americanized kind of Taco Bell version of it. Yeah. And Dave makes a great point that growing up in the 70s and 80s like we did, we had our, what's the brand again? Old El Paso. Yeah. The Old El Paso like Taco Kit style tacos. And like I said, I still love them. You love them. There's a place for that. If you get, if you put that, pop that taco shell in the oven and get it crispy.

It's really a beautiful thing as long as it doesn't break in half that you can get a little messy. But while there's a place for those, Dave makes the point and I agree that like, we are truly in the golden age of tacos here in the United States because it used to be like you said, Texas and California, you could always get pretty good tacos once they came on the scene in the 1950s or so. But now every major city has world-class tacos. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, not just like taco trucks that somebody pulled up and thank God for those as well. But I mean like, like multiple taco restaurants, taquerias, like authentic ones all over the place. In just about any town in the country. And I don't know exactly how it happened,

but it happened and it's great that it did. Because it's not like people from south of the border started showing up in, you know, 2005 and then that was it, you know, and they brought tacos with them and that kind of cuisine. Like there've been plenty of Mexican and Central American immigrants that have moved up into the United States for a very long time and they did bring tacos with them. But for some reason, those authentic tacos just took a while to catch on. I think Chuck, it was America that finally came around and caught up to what the Mexican cuisine actually was rather than being like, no, we don't want that. We want this taco bell version. Yeah. I think I agree. And when I said every major American city, I'm talking if you want,

you know, 50 taco places to choose from. Atlanta probably has that many. I've got, I looked on the map today out of curiosity. I counted like 17 taco places within literally three miles of my house. And those are just places that have taco in the name, right? Yeah. I mean, these were places that I, I mean, they weren't, I kind of threw some generic, or not generic, just some overall Mexican restaurants in there that have really great tacos. Okay, gotcha. But most of those were sort of taqueria style or taco trucks. But, you know, forget major American cities, like small towns, like you can find really good tacos everywhere in this country now. Yes. Yeah. The best, the best taco I ever had actually was

in some little countryside rural area outside of Boston. I don't remember, we had a show in Boston, then we had another show somewhere else that was within driving distance. And I was driving there and no, okay. It was driving from Seattle to Portland. Oh, okay. Best taco I ever had. Really? Driving from Seattle to Portland in the middle of the, the like nowhere. And there was a taco truck and they had a beef tongue taco. And it was a hand style and the best taco I've ever had. Yeah. I'm not in love with the tongue. I would, you know, when I worked at Mexicali and college in Athens, there was the guys in the kitchen would, they would make our food. But then on special days, they would make their own food for themselves. And Mexicali didn't have stuff

like tongue. It was a bunch of frat boys and stuff that were eating it. So they weren't into tripe and tongue, but they would make that stuff. And I would always try it. Don't love the texture of tongue. I definitely don't love the texture of tripe. But I gave it a whirl. I did not like tripe. I would eat cabezas, which is cheek and jowl meat. I've had the cheek tacos. Those are, I like those better than the tongue and tripe. I've never had beef cheeks, but I've had, no, actually, I guess I have had beef cheeks, but it wasn't in a taco. It was like prepared like braised beef cheeks and they were delish. Yeah. But give me some carne asada or shredded beef or carnitas or El Pastore. I'm down with chorizo, but that's probably lower on my list just because

I like the others more. Yeah. I'll eat a fish taco. I'll eat a shrimp taco. I love those seafood tacos. I like it all. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. A good, a good fish taco with some red cabbage slaw on there is pretty tough to beat really. Yeah. Let's just do this. We'll talk about the tacos that we like for the rest of this episode. I like the fried fish and the stewed fish. I do too. They're all good. Yeah. It is all good. And so it's worth restating again, I think. We're living in a golden age of tacos here in the United States clearly because you can find all these tacos. And if you're not out there finding all these tacos and this sounds good, make a concerted effort to go find an authentic taco place and see what's what. And I'll bet you never really go back.

That's right. One last taco that I love is the Korean taco. Yes. The little fusion tacos that are out now that are so delicious. Do you know the first time I ever even knew that existed was Chad Crowley, who produced, one of the producers on that show had that catered some Korean taco, Korean barbecue taco place somewhere over on the west side had it catered. You were talking about hand-cooked taqueria, my friend. Is that what it was? Okay. Yes. And it was like, I don't ever want to leave this craft services table. I just want to stay in here and eat these tacos for that. Let's just call off the shoot and do this instead. Yeah. I'd still go there. There's a lot of houseware places over there. So whenever Emily and I go over there to look at

those, I always pop into hand-cooked for some sesame fries and beef bulgagi tacos. Yeah. And the guy there dude still recognizes me from stuff you should know, the TV show. That's awesome. That's really cool. He's like, it was no good, but I recognize you. Yeah. Every time I go and he's, Hey man, how you doing? You still doing the TV show? I'm like, for the 50th time, no. No. He said, get out. Very nice guy though and delicious tacos. We got to shout out though. Roy Choi, apparently was the guy who came up with Korean barbecue tacos. So he's worth mentioning for sure, at least for that. So I guess we should really talk about tacos instead of just salivating and talking about our favorite tacos. Agreed. Because like I said, tacos are fairly recent

creations as far as Mexican cuisine goes, but one of the things that is essential to a taco, the tortilla, is actually very, very, very old. Yes, it is. And technically, if you put something in a tortilla and eat it, you could describe it as a taco. But you know, basically since the domestication in southern Mexico of corn about 8,700 years ago, they have been grinding that stuff up, flattening it out and cooking it near a fire. Usually, you know, back then like on a hot rock or you know, we saw in Guatemala, they were still doing this by hand every morning. Yes. Some of the best tortillas you're ever going to have. Yeah. But that was it. Like then you have a tortilla after that. And they've been doing this for thousands of years. I think it was kicked

off by the Maya who figured this out. And then there was another really important innovation that the Olmec people came up with. And that was to take that corn and soak it in hot water with wood ash, which made an alkaline solution basically. And that actually broke down the, I think the paracarb, the whole of the corn and changed the corn nutritionally. Like it made a lot of the stuff inside more bioavailable. So it took something that was already like, okay, this is fine. We can stay alive on this. And actually turned it into like a really nutrient rich food. So the tortillas you're eating, as long as they've undergone a process called Nyx tamalization is actually pretty, pretty healthy for you.

That sounds like you said the word tamale in there. Is that right? I did. Yes. Would you like to spill the beans? I'm being coy. So in the Nahuaudal language, the language of the Aztecs, Nyxtile means ashes. And then tamale with an eye means unformed maize dough, which will sound familiar if you've ever had a tamale with an E on the end. Let me ask you this. Do you and Yumi ever do tacos yourself at home? Yeah, we do more like just variations on taco salad typically, but you know, yeah, we'll get like some blue corn tacos once in a while and fill them up or else we'll make,

we'll get like some of those like some, usually we do flour though, like the ones you have to refrigerate, we'll get those, the loosey-goosey ones, make some fish tacos with slaw, that kind of stuff. Yeah, we do sometimes. All right. If you ever want to just kind of take it to the next level, I highly recommend making your own tortillas, get a tortilla press and some maize or some masa maize and just give it a whirl. They're a little tricky, but once you get the hang of it, it really just takes things to a stratosphere that I previously did not know. I can imagine. I'd never really even considered doing that, but I'm going to now. Yeah, maybe I'll buy you a tortilla press.

Would you accept that? Okay. You have to now. You just offered on the podcast. I will hold you to that. Good. I'll sit in your mind and I'll get a new one. I'll be like, there's like old crusty dough on this one. Actually, a worn-in, I don't know if there's anything to that, but if it's like cast iron, that may be something to that. Oh, it's got to be. Yeah, like seasoned, sure. Cool. Thanks, man. Sure. So we've got nixtamolization, which makes the stuff in the corn that was already there, like iron and vitamin B3, way more bioavailable, right? Yes.

It actually sucks calcium into the corn, so it adds a lot of calcium. It fortifies it with calcium. Just this process of soaking the corn in wood ash and water before you turn it into masa. And then it also kills off mycotoxins, which can mess you up pretty good, fungal toxins that can be present on corn. And when you put all this together, especially if you add it together with some beans, you have what's called the complete protein, huh? That's right. And that means you can indulge in those tacos and feel good about it. A complete protein is when you have the nine essential amino acids in basically equal amounts. And here's the little trick to tacos, though, that make it special. You can have beans,

and you're not a complete protein. You can have corn, and you're not a complete protein. But if you put those things together, you do have a complete protein, because beans have all those essential amino acids, but one, it's called methionine. And corn does have that. So it's almost like it was meant to be. Yeah. Corn's like, I'll help you out with some methionine. No problem. Yeah, man. Brief fried beans. I know. There's something about food that when you know that they form some sort of like natural pattern, it just makes them even more satisfying and wholesome.

Yeah. Or when things come together to make a greater whole. Yeah. Exactly. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's take a break, and we'll get back to the, we'll get to contact between the Spanish and the Mesoamericans. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

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Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we've got the invention of the tortilla. That doesn't mean the tacos were invented yet. One of the reasons why you can't say tacos were invented yet is because Mesoamericans use tortillas for just about everything. I think the Spanish said that Montezuma, the emperor of the Aztecs, who was running the show when the Spaniards showed up in 1519, that he would basically use his tortillas as a spoon. Much the same way I've ever eaten Ethiopian food. Yeah. I mean, I do this with tortillas, but sure.

I can't remember the name of the bread, but they use that bread for everything. It's just generally a utensil as much as it is a food. And apparently the Aztecs used to do that with tortillas, and I would guess Mesoamericans as a whole. So Dave points out quite rightly that you can't really say what they were eating were tacos, even though they might have even been putting stuff in these tortillas. And the way that you couldn't say that whatever you were eating was a sandwich because there was a loaf of bread on the table or a basket of rolls on the table in the exact same way that that makes sense. Yeah. I remember when I lived in Yuma 25 years ago, and I went to Al Gadonis right over

the border for the first time, and I saw the local Mexican population with these big plates of stewed meat, and they had the tortillas, and I was like, oh, they're going to assemble that to a taco, but no, no. They ripped it up and they would just use it to grab the meat and put it in their mouth. And I thought that's when the lights kind of went off. And I still love the traditional taco too, but I also love to just put the stuff on my plate and use it as a spoon or a grabber. Sure. It's like, oh, I can't remember what it's called, but there's a kind of sushi. It's almost like deconstructed sushi, where they don't bother to turn it into a roll. It's just a bed of rice, and then they put all the stuff you would put in the sushi just on top of the rice.

So technically not sushi, even though all of the elements are there. Yeah. And I do the same thing with Indian food with the garlic naan. Yes. Which again, is another one of my favorite cuisines too, like Indian food. Oh my God. It's all making me so hungry. I love like all food. Yumi's always saying, she's like, it doesn't really matter whenever you talk about how great a food is because you think all food is good. And it's true. Like I love just about all food. There's really not a food that I'm like, I don't like that whole sale. You know? Yeah. I know. One of my favorite hobbies is eating foods.

It seems so good. So the taco though, back then, like you said, they were using these tortillas and spoons and such like that. And it was about the late 1800s that sort of the Mexican taco that we're familiar with finally kind of comes on the scene. So the word taco is kind of up for debate, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, taco was a word in Spain, you know, hundreds of years ago, but it didn't mean the food. It was, it meant a lot of different things, but one of the things that meant that's going to come into play with the food was it was like a plug or attack stuffed into the barrel of a musket to keep that ball settled. It also was like a shot of wine or a hammer

or a billiard cue you could call a taco. But at the time, none of those words had anything to do with the food. No. So the word taco predates the food taco. That seems to be the clear aspect of this, the clear upshot, as I would say. Yes. There's also a, there's also a rival to the Spanish word taco, T-A-C-O, and that's a Nahuatl word taco. They're with an L in there basically, T-L-A-H-C-O, and that apparently means middle or half. And from everything I've seen that is in incorrect etymology for the word taco, as we understand it today, that it's just total coincidence. Right. But you might see some people claiming that, correct? Yes, but they are wrong from what I can tell.

That's right. So to get from the musket plug to the food in Pilter's books, he makes a guess that I surmise that other people have also made. That sounds pretty good to me. With the story in Hidalgo, it was a silver mining town, Rial Del Monte specifically, and what the guys in the mine would do is they would work in their sometimes daughters and wives would bring them their lunch, which was something a lot like a taco, like beans or that stewed meat or maybe some avocado wrapped in a tortilla. They would put it in a towel-lined basket where they get all nice and steamy and bring it down there for lunch. So while they're working in the mine, they're blasting holes in the rock, which they do by

carving out a hole and then stuffing in an explosive, which they call the taco. So it might seem like a tenuous connection, but in Mexico City in the early of 20th century, there was a taco called Tacos de Monero, a miner's taco, and some other variations. A tacos de canasta, tacos from a basket, or tacos sudados, sweaty or steam tacos, and that kind of draws the line, I think, pretty clearly. Yeah, and all three of those were basically different names for the same preparation where when you fried them and then you stacked them all together, you would cover them with like a little napkin or something like that in the basket to allow them to steam themselves,

to finish, right? And to me, that's where the word taco comes from, not from the food wrapped in the tortilla, but from that kind of food wrapped up in that cloth napkin in the same way that they were wrapping explosive in cloth and stuffing it in there. That, to me, is the correlation, rather than the food, the fact that it was in a basket wrapped up in fabric. Yeah, and food wrapped up in a tortilla. Sure. I mean, I get it. They're both possible. I'm just putting my own hypothesis out there now, okay, everybody? You're like, it's not the tortilla, it's the napkin. Honestly, it makes sense to me when we're talking about explosive plugs wrapped in fabric, you know what I mean? How about an explosive delicious food? Well, that's the thing.

And I totally understand that they could have been like, there's a bomb in one hand and a food bomb in the other hand. So I get it. I'm with it. Taco in print, talking about a taco as food. A belief for the first time was in 1891 in a novel called Los Bandidos de Rio Frio, The Bandits of Cold River. And there's a line in that book where they're talking about a celebration in Mexico City. And they say chito, which is fried goat with tortillas, and the children skipping with tacos of tortillas and avocado in their hand. Sounds great. What an idyllic little bucolic scene that is. I wish I was there. Yeah. Anywhere there's fried goat being served, I wish I was there.

I'm not done with the goat, but sure. I'm with you. So it seems to be, okay, we've got taco as a food. It's appearing in print by 1891 at the latest, which means that if you write something down, this is basically true across history as we've seen in episode after episode. If you write something down and you don't explain it, that means to people coming a hundred or so years later looking back at this, that that means that this has been around and everybody already knows what this is. I'm just referring to something that everybody's familiar with. It's not a new invention. So somewhere between the time that people were creating these taco plugs in the silver mines

in the middle of the 19th century, maybe late 19th century, in 1891, tacos became a thing. They were invented somewhere in there. Yeah. And I mean, it was in an actual Mexican dictionary in 1895 defined as taco as the food in Mexico City as its birthplace. Yeah. It seems like Mexico City was ground zero for this place and that they believed that by the turn of the 20th century, Mexico City was starting to become a bustling metropolis again. Do tell. So apparently by 1910, Mexico City had become like a huge town of a population about half a million people, which is pretty significant, right? Sure. And this is 1910 when this happens. If you went back to about 1500, say about 400 years earlier,

right before contact with the Europeans, the same city, Tenochtitlan, which Mexico City was built on, but the Aztec City that was there before had about 400,000 people, just under half a million. Isn't that nuts? Yeah. I mean, you would think that by 1910, they would have over a million. Right. But they wouldn't. And one reason why is because the population took a nose dive, both between conquest of the Spanish and the violence that broke out from that, but also even worse from the smallpox that the Spanish brought with them, which wiped out 40% of the population of Tenochtitlan in one year. The year after contact, 40% of the city died from smallpox. Jeez. That's amazing. So it took that long to rebound by all the way up to 1910.

It finally surpassed its pre-contact population. So 1910, things are cooking, literally, in Mexico City. And a lot of people from more rural Mexico had moved there to get work, to work in the factories, and they were living in small tenements, basically. And they didn't have these big, full kitchens, usually, to work with. So this is where the street taco, or the taquerias, really started to pop up, where you would go outside for dinner and you would go down to the street and find these delicious, mouthwatering taquerias. And they were bringing in influences from every corner of Mexico because Mexico is a huge country, just like the United States has, and every country has regional food specialties. Same is true in Mexico

and all of these different flavors were coming into central Mexico City and exploding onto the food scene there. Yes. I mean, the very, in various cuisines that are brought by different peoples is not the least reason why multiculturalism is a great thing. Agreed. And Mexico City is a melting pot at the beginning of the 20th century. I mean, all these people were bringing it. And not just from Mexico or every part of Mexico, but there were some influences like outside of Mexico, too, like Tacozal Pastor, right? The one you mentioned earlier that you got kind of a deconstructed version of today? Yeah, with that pineapple flavor. And that one, I think, has a pretty interesting story,

which I never knew. It originated in Lebanon. And specifically in the Mexican state of Puebla, we had these, or they, I say, we feel like I'm living in Mexico right now. After those tacos you had, I can imagine why. I had these Lebanon, or Lebanese immigrants settling there in the early 20th century, and they started selling their Yeros and they had those lambs on the vertical spit like they still have today. And they were cutting off strips of it, putting it on a pita, sometimes a flour tortilla. And in Pueblo, there were and still are known as Tacos Arabis, which is Arab, like Arab tacos. And the Mexicans there said, hey, they're really onto something here with this vertical spit, but let's throw a adobo pork

butt up there instead. And then throw a little grilled pineapple on there as well. And you have what we recognize as Tacozal Pastor, which means shepherd's tacos, which is a reference to the Bedouin roots of the Lebanese immigrants who came over. Great story. It is a great story. And actually, Chuck, that reminds me of another story I was talking about. I was boasting about how I love all food. There's actually one of the few things I've ever sent back in my life. Oh, no. Was at a Lebanese restaurant in Toledo called the Beirut. It may still be there. A little on the nose, but sure. And my family was feeling pretty adventurous and ordered a bunch of stuff off the menu. And one of the things we ordered,

it didn't really sink in what we were ordering, but they brought out a bunt cake, a full-size bunt cakes, a bunt pans worth of raw ground meat covered in raw egg. Oh my gosh. And it was just on this big plate. And it was like, dig in. And we were just like, we can't, we can't. And I still to this day feel bad about wasting that meat. Do you know what it was? Like what that dish is? I don't remember what it's called. Someone to let us know. I sure. And I think it was, I don't think it was like an invention of that restaurant's owners or the cook or the chef, I should say. But I haven't seen it very frequently since then.

But it was, we just, we're like, no, I'm not going to do that one. Well, I mean, hats off to your family in the 1980s in Toledo for going to a Lebanese restaurant. We didn't, we didn't, we had Chinese food and that was about as crazy as we got. Oh, we got fancy. Not only did we go to the Beirut once in a while, we also sometimes went to end Japanese steakhouse, which is a hibachi steakhouse. So we got real ethnic sometimes. Yeah, that stuff was, we couldn't afford that. And not like you were rich or anything, but we ate a lot at home. So we didn't even go out that much. So when we did, it was pretty conservative, but it wasn't until my 20s till I left home and got into college that I really

started exploring foods of the world. Yeah, well, good for you for doing that. Some people never do, you know, especially if they were raised without being exposed to it. So it's good that you did. What's so great about multiculturalism? Food. The food. Beautiful babies. Yeah, beautiful babies for sure. Plenty of stuff, different points of view, all sorts of great things. But really food. Sure. So you want to take another break and then get back to tacos continuing on, because we finally reached the point where we're like, okay, tacos now exist, but they're pretty much being slung out of food carts in Mexico City right now at the beginning of the 20th century. Yeah, we're going to take a trip to Los Angeles, Los Angeles, right after this.

me in this situation. If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Mangesh Atikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Smoggy kind of already overcrowded, gross Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s was a very segregated place. There were plenty of Mexican residents. There were plenty of black Americans. There were plenty of Asian residents. There were plenty of people. It was a melting pot, but there was a white flight that happened and they tended to live apart by the 1940s. Sort of the suburbs in the valley, Orange County maybe is where a lot of white people

fled to, not entirely, but if you wanted to live inside Los Angeles, like maybe East Los Angeles, you may have been from Mexico originally. Yeah, like Cheech Marin. Yeah, born in East LA. Yeah, that's right. Man, what a great song that was. So, in Jeffrey Pilcher, Senior Pilcher, he thought to look around at the... I think he got his hands on some phone books from Los Angeles in the 40s and 50s and started looking up taco joints. Because remember, at the behest of one Dave Ruse, who would become a stuff you should know legendary writer, Jeffrey Pilcher is on this quest now to figure out how we got to the Americanized version of tacos. So, he's tracing it from Mexico City up to California, as one would

do. And he did that by looking at the phone book. And what he found is that outside of East LA, you could find plenty of restaurants that were taco joints. But in East LA, there were only two restaurants in the phone book that had the name taco in them, which would suggest, Chuck, that they didn't eat tacos in authentic Mexican American neighborhoods. But that's not necessarily the case. Yeah, I think what has been surmised, and I fully agree, is that there were plenty of places in East LA serving tacos. They just didn't feel the need to advertise it as a taco place to make it... It was sort of, if you were a white American or a black American in the 1940s and 50s in LA, Mexican food might have seemed exotic and maybe a little dangerous to try.

Like, dangerous for your stomach, that is. So, tacos was a safe sell, essentially, is what has been speculated. Like, to put taco on a sign, people are like, oh, I've heard of tacos. I can try this place out. Right. And so, Pilcher came up with some pretty great names that he found in the predominantly white, predominantly black neighborhoods in LA that had taco in the name. Apparently, the first one in Los Angeles that catered to non-Mexican customers was called Taco House. And that opened up in the early 40s. It's a pretty legit name, especially if you're saying, hey, American people, particularly white people and black people, Taco House. That seems approachable, right? You're not afraid of that. Come eat here.

That makes sense. They didn't even say Taco Casa. No, that would be, whoa, no. That would have blown the minds back in the early 40s. I like any restaurant with town at the end. So, Ernie's Taco Town kind of speaks to me. Yeah. How about Alice and Bert's Places? Bert's Taco Junction? Yeah. That's good. I wonder if it was an old drink of booze. Yeah, Alice's Taco Terrace, which is fine. Yeah. Frank's Taco Inn. That's a good one. I've never gotten why you would call a restaurant an inn, because typically you sleep at an inn, you know? Yeah, I've never gotten that, because we had Village Inn Pizza, and I don't, I never got it. I tried to sleep there and it never worked. No, I'm so full.

And then in Watts, which is a predominantly or historically at least black neighborhood, you had Taco Kid and Taco the Town. Yeah, that's a great one for sure. Taco the Town is not around anymore. Oh, that's sad. But apparently there is a Taco the Town in Maine, I believe. Oh, man, Maine tacos. I bet you even Maine has some good tacos here and there. For sure. That would be the least likely state, I would say, like Maine and Alaska. Right. So, we've gotten to the point where now there's tacos in Los Angeles, right? They've crept up, people are starting to create them, and cater to non-Mexican and non-Central American palates. And a lot of people say, okay, well, it was actually Glenn Bell, the guy who founded Taco Bell, which did you know that there was a

person with the last name of Bell that founded Taco Bell? No, I didn't. I didn't either. It's insane. Like my whole worldview has changed. Like Jimmy Hutt's Pizza Chain. Right. I've got one for you, Chuck. Did you know that the very first Pizza Hut was in Wichita, Kansas? Really? Yeah. And the very first KFC, guess what city that was in? Oh, please tell me it's Kentucky somewhere. No. Where? Salt Lake City, Utah. What? Yeah, it's true. The Colonel really was from Kentucky. Okay. But the first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant was open in Salt Lake City. I think it's one of those things where it's like, if you open a thing based on a regional cuisine, the one place that's not going to do well is in the actual region that that cuisine comes from. Well, they don't have

Taco Bells in Mexico. No, we'll talk about that later. We'll talk of that later. All right. So again, Senior Piltr, I got to read this book. It sounds fantastic. He talks about the fact that if you were a Mexican immigrant and you were building a restaurant scene in the United States and you wanted to appeal to the Americans there, then you might want to source ingredients that you're probably not throwing tripe their way right out of the barrel. You might want to look at step by step the ingredients that are readily available that people like. And ground beef is one of them. So that ground beef as a central ingredient to those American tacos was really early on. Dude, I can't tell you how late it was in life before I even had a chicken taco for Pete's

sake. Yeah, no, I'm with you. It was all ground beef. It was like, that's all there was, you know? Even if you went to a Mexican restaurant that was not really a Mexican restaurant, like we used to go to Chi Chi's. Yeah, ground beef. Ground beef in everything. It was just ground beef. And actually, that reminds me, Chuck, I turned up, there's this 1998 onion article that I remember from like 1998, it made that much of an impression on me. Yeah, let's say that line. Taco Bell's five ingredients used in completely new way. The article talks about how you've never had anything like this. This one, the beef is on top of the beans, which is on top of the cheese. It is funny how they do that still. Yeah. You know, just make these crazy combinations of the same thing.

Right. But the upshot of all this is that a lot of people lay or credit Glenn Bell with inventing the Americanized Taco, and that's not necessarily the case. It was some of these Mexican American immigrants who were creating these tacos to cater to American tastes, but then also basically you were saying on stuff that was easily obtained cheap because everybody knows restaurant margins are so thin, it's incomprehensible why anyone opens a restaurant if you're just trying to make money. Right. And when you put all that together, people were making what you and I at age 10 would have recognized as a taco before Glenn Bell came along and started making tacos himself. Yeah. And a lot of people say, well, Glenn Bell at the very least invented the technology

where you could fry up these tortilla, these corn tortillas into these perfectly little-shaped taco shells. And he kind of did. It seems like it was one of the cases where a few different people all sort of had the same idea within a few years of one another without even stealing from each other. Yeah. Because there was a man in 1949 in Arizona named Joseph Pompa who filed an application for a deep fryer basket that made these perfect little taco shells. But a couple of years before them, there was another restaurant to our name, Juvencio Maldonado, great name. Mm-hmm. And he actually won the patent out of New York City in 1947. But Glenn Bell also created his own version, it seems like independently. Yeah. And the reason why everybody was having

this kind of same idea at the same time is because part of like the zeitgeist at the time, as far as food went, was the idea that fast food was awesome. Yeah. And creating food quickly and efficiently was thrilling. Because prior to this, if you made tacos, you made the tacos as, you know, as order, to order. And you took these uncooked flour tortillas and then you fried them up and made tacos that way. And this was like, no, no, just imagine if you had the shells already ready, it would save so much time and knock these bobbysockers socks off. Right. And if you happen to break the shells, it's a nacho. Exactly. That's what my teacher says. So in 1948, Glenn Bell Bell has opened a hotdog and hamburger stand in San Bernardino in San Berdu, California,

across from the original McDonald's, if you remember that episode, which is pretty fun, which started out as a barbecue restaurant. And he was doing okay. He wasn't doing that great. But he noticed across the street, there was a Mexican restaurant called, I guess it's the Mitla Cafe, MIT LA, that had been open since 1937 by the Rodriguez family. And it was, it was not a taco stand. It was like a full sit down, full service restaurant, open breakfast, lunch, and dinner that was killing it. And he was like, I got to get me some of that. Yes. And we've reached the point where I want to point out that Dave Ruse is a born food writer, because the reason both of us wanted tacos so bad is in large part because of Dave's really great descriptive writing.

But he talked about how like the Mitla Cafe, it wasn't a taco joint, but they had killer tacos, and they had something called Tacos Dorados, which is a golden fried taco. And he said that at night, young people would show up at the Mitla Cafe craving a quick bite. And the best seller was a freshly fried bag of Tacos Dorados, golden fried tacos. That is good food writing. It makes me hungry. Imagine that. And these are essentially taquitos, right? Yeah, they would take a corn tortilla, put ground beef in it, roll it up, put a toothpick in it to hold it together, and then fry that. And then they would put the cheese and the lettuce and the tomatoes on the outside. And I shouldn't say wood because Mitla Cafe is still there. And they still serve Tacos Dorados.

Yeah, it's taquitos. I love it. Sometimes I'll get taquitos. Sure. Yeah, if you stop by the racetrack or something. Or the quick trip. Have you ever seen those like, they look like a taquito and a hot dog, like made love or something? I'm not even sure what it is. That sounds hot. No, I like taquitos in a place or floutis is another name. I'm a big fan of the chimichanga, which is different. That's like a deep fried burrito. But that's an American invention. Yeah, put anything in a fryer basket and I'm all over it. Dude, I'm with you. But also that sauce that's peculiar to the chimichanga is so good. It is. Oh man. And plus it's just fun to say when you order it.

Yeah, I haven't found a great one here in Atlanta near me because all the places near me are a little more authentic and they don't have them. Oh yeah, I was going to say like you, yeah. There are places near me, but I just don't go there. Right. But yeah, if it's authentic, they're probably not going to have a chimichanga. That's an American Mexican food, or it's a Mexican place that's catering to Americans. Right, exactly. So the reason that we're bringing up the Meat La Café is because this is where Glenn Bell learned to fry up tacos, to make tacos. And it's not entirely fair to say that he stole the idea from the Rodriguez family who were running the Meat La Café and came up with the Tacos Dorados

because he, Glenn Bell, became a regular customer there, but he was there not just to enjoy the food, but to kind of like spy on them and watch the process and figure out how to do it. And there is a guy named Gustavo Arrallano. Arrallano. He wrote Taco USA colon, how Mexican food conquered America. And he's the guy who seems to be the one who really turned up the story about how the Meat La Café was the basis of Taco Bell originally. And that when the Rodriguez family figured out that Glenn Bell wanted to learn how to make tacos Dorados and was kind of surreptitiously learning by spying, they invited him into the kitchen to teach him how to do it. They just showed him how to do it. See, that's a great culture. So exactly. So Glenn Bell went off and

he basically, he started, he went from making hamburgers and hot dogs to making tacos based on the Tacos Dorados thing, but he was also combining it with inspiration from the McDonald's brothers across the street who had gotten into really efficient fast food. So he's trying to forget how to make tacos Dorados as fast as possible. Yeah. I mean, this is where he comes up with his 1951 frying contraption. And we should point out when it was a very sort of Americanized version of the of the taquito, he actually topped his with chili dog sauce from his hot dog days. I'm not going to hate on that. I bet it's delicious. Sure. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah. But he was looking to open up his first taco restaurant

in 51. And he did so. And a consultant was helping out with the naming. And they said, what about La Tapatia? Sure. Which is a nickname for a woman from Guadalajara. And he said, yeah, La Tapatia is great. But how about just Taco Tia? They said that makes a taco ant. That makes no sense. You know, that's fine. Sure. That's an ant who loves tacos. It makes sense to me. Yeah. An aunt, rather, not an insect ant. Right. To be clear. So he had Taco Tia. And then he went on, he's like, I really like this taco thing. I'm going to start another chain with a couple of Rams football players. They created El Taco. And that went well for four years. And then he sold out his portion of that. And then he finally created the first

Taco Bell in 1962 in Downey, California. Right? 1962. Diarrhea is born. For Taco Bell. I love Taco Bell. We've talked about it before. I'd never, ever have it. But I had it once about four or five months ago for the first time in a couple of years. And it was so good. And I had diarrhea. Oh, yeah. Well, that's why you dissociate that with that, huh? It was worth it, though. So the first one they call it Taco Bell numero uno, the one in Downey, California that he opened in 1962. It is one of the most adorable buildings you'll ever see in your life. The sign is awesome. The front, the overhang is awesome. It's in a mission revival style. And actually, Glen Bell envisioned it as kind of like a community

center. So like he had fire pits. There was like mariachi music and dancing. It was way more than it should have been as just a taco joint, a fast food taco joint. And it took off really quickly within five years. He had 100 stores open. Yeah. And they, you know, they still, even in the 80s and 70s, use the similar signage. Like when I saw Taco Bell numero uno, and that's what they call it, by the way, we're not just trying to be cute. No, it does. I recognize that sign immediately. I was like, oh, yeah, I remember that from when I was a kid. And they did have sort of, and they still sort of had that mission, you know, that sort of stucco look to the restaurant. Until the 90s. I ran across an architectural digest blog and said, we legit want our apartments

to look like 90s Taco Bells. Because there's a lot of like weird Memphis style mixed in. But it was, I remember when it transitioned from the old style. Oh, they don't have those now? No, not really. It's way more slick. Okay. I haven't really noticed. There was a, there was a big transition. There's actually been a couple since that one where they went from the ones where we were kids to the 90s versions. And it was a sad day. I remember being like, something's been lost here. I don't like this new stuff. It looks like Zach Morris took over and redesigned the whole thing. Well, that's just because the big mural of Screech on the side. All right. Screech in a sombrero. Yeah. Oh yeah. He died, didn't he?

He did. Very sad lung cancer. And even though he didn't smoke. Geez, that's terrible. I remember Del Taco too. That was the other big one growing up. And that went out of business eventually. But Del Taco and Taco Bell were the two biggies. Taco Bell or Del Taco still around. Is it? Oh yeah. They all shut down, no? I had another Del Taco by my house, not very far away from it. And it's, I had not had it until ever, until maybe 2019, 2020. I think they've slimmed though. I don't see those much anymore. It seemed to be like a legit rival to Taco Bell, but Taco Bell squashed them with a tortilla press. Yeah. Cause there's big way.

Just in the US alone, there's 7,000 Taco Bell locations. That is a lot. And they're all over the world except Mexico. Yeah. They tried in 1992 and 2007 to open up Taco Bells in Mexico City. And they did, and they just did not go very far. But they're, and I think in 2015, there was a campaign to save Taco Bell numero uno because they were going to demolish it. There was actually a KFC slash Taco Bell across the street from it. And that lot where Taco Bell numero uno was was being redeveloped. And there was a campaign to save it. And they moved it. In 2015, they moved it, I think 45 miles from Downey to Irvine, where Taco Bell's headquarters is.

And there's, uh, there's a lot of stories on this online, but I would recommend you go to Pee Wee Herman's website, peewee.com. Yeah. Uh, there's a really, really, I found the best article was there. Because it has all kinds of pictures of the restaurant now wrapped up in the parking lot of the headquarters. And then there's a video, there's pictures of it going down the freeway on a truck with, uh, you know, the extra wide load with a police escort. And like, there were 20 or 30 cars of like people that like took the two hour journey honking their horns and stuff. Yeah. So it's really kind of a fun story. They sadly haven't found a place for it

still because I saw a follow up last year. Um, they're still looking for a permanent home for it, though. Yeah. Apparently it's still just like you said, wrapped up in the parking lot, um, in a tarp on the trailer still, just kind of off in a corner of the parking lot, which is a, hopefully not the end of the place, I guess. And big shout out to the conservation group. We are the next because they're who headed up that whole plan to save the building that a lot of people would say is not historically significant. Sure. You should have sent me that Peewee Herman link. I would have liked to have seen that. I'd love that guy. Oh, you didn't see it? No. I mean, it had all the same stuff. It just had a couple of cool pictures.

Gotcha. Um, you got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about tacos, go eat some tacos, find some authentic ones and see what you think. Uh, and since I said see what you think, it's time for listener mail. Well, before listener mail, I did promise to shout out my favorite taco places. So, uh, can we do that? Yeah, let's man. And you feel free as well. Uh, in San Francisco taco bar. Okay. Right there in sort of lower hate. I'm sorry, not lower hate, lower Pacific Heights. Uh, Los Angeles, Yuccas in Los Feliz was one of my favorites. Senior fish in Eagle Rock. And then there was one called, uh, Seven Mayors, uh, in Silver Lake that I think closed down, but has now opened up as playita. And it was very seafood focused.

Mayors like mayors of a town or mayors like horses. Like horses. I got you. I think it was El Siete Marais was how you would really say it. Oh, it's very pretty. Seven Mayors. You wouldn't know that if it weren't for multiculturalism. They had really good, uh, ceviche, really good seafood. Uh, and then here in Atlanta, El Tesoro and Kirkwood, uh, Mescalitos and Oakhurst, um, any place on Buford Highway, you're going to get good authentic, uh, Mexican food and tacos. So those are my shout outs. Yes. You have any? No, I don't. I need to get out to more taco places apparently. Shout out to the, the, uh, food truck whose name I did not get in between Seattle and Portland at one time. Yes. Slater Kenny tacos is what it's called.

That's right. All right. So listener mail. Listener mail. I'm just going to call this nice email from a nice human. Okay. Uh, hey guys, wanted to share with how your show is helpful and enjoyable to me and how I use my experience to help a friend. Uh, my friend started new medication and messaged me expressing insomnia troubles that came on as a result. I empathize and explain how I actually use stuff you should know to help me fall asleep when my mind is running a hundred miles an hour. I put on an older episode with a sleep timer and let my brain focus on the topic of discussion. I also find your voice is really calming probably because I'm so familiar with hearing them almost every day for the past few years. Uh, of course I suggested speaking to

a doctor or two, but I encouraged, encouraged her to look into your podcast, uh, even just for the general curiosity and enjoyment. Uh, since my husband and I moved overseas for his military obligations, I find your show even more important in my life because I feel connected, uh, to the routines and the life I was used to living before we moved. Thanks for all the hard work you put into each episode, your content and enthusiasm truly bring a joy and brightness to this world. I'm extremely grateful. Hope you have a wonderful new year of 2022. I look forward to continuing listening for as long as you're willing to make episodes. That is from Katie Fratonale. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Katie. I remember, I probably said this before a million times.

I used to take, not offense, but I used to be like, what exactly does that mean when people said that they use this to fall asleep? And then I was like, no, this is, that is a high honor that you can put people to sleep, you know? Yeah, you're in bed with somebody and you're soothing them. Yeah, especially if they have trouble sleeping, like to a clinical degree and you can help them. That is, I mean, I'm going to have that put on my, on my tombstone. You should. He could put people to sleep. And now he's sleeping, the big sleep. It's a little birdie. Workshop it. Um, all right. Well, if you want to be like, Kate. Katie. Oh, sorry, Katie, if you want to be like Katie and send us a great email like Katie did,

you can send it to us at stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never,

ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.