You stand in a long claustrophobic line for 30 minutes, and what do you get? 3-minute tacos as washed out as the perpetually unemployed actors insisting on Tito’s brilliance. The tacos had tasteless, cheap stringy meat, soggy shells, and balled-up processed cheese (as if a six-year-old had hand-shredded Kraft singles). You then top the taco with runny salsa that tasted as if someone stepped on a tomato with an old shoe and then watered down the mess. I don’t fault native SoCal folks for adoring Tito’s; I just highly suspect that they adore it for sentimental reasons. They probably ate it growing up, and it transports them back home to childhood. That’s respectable, and I myself am constantly on the lookout for Chinese restaurants that would induce similar Proustian reveries for me. What’s not respectable is the taco’s ability to pass an objective reasonable test of tastiness, not a genuine subjective one. Would a Tito’s taco send a non-native SoCal dude/dudette into euphoric bliss? I doubt it, especially if the non-native ever ate at a real taco stand…or Taco Bell. I went to eat at Tito’s on three separate occasions (foolish hippo!), and its tacos sorely disappointed me each time. On the plus side, I can now say that I have tasted wildly popular cardboard.

My business colleague, Nathan W., once let me take a bite from his burrito at Tito’s. That burrito was like the homely cousin of a Del Taco burrito, and I’m not even a big Del Taco fan.