Jack In The Box Fried Tacos - Please come to Greensboro?
by Liv | Published on July 29th, 2009, 7:29 am | Food
We need a bloody economic incentive to get one locally. No seriously. I've been patiently waiting for years now with anticipation. My assumption was since Jack In The Box made it to Charlotte, we soon would be next. How much longer do I have to wait? Now before I lose you, before you quit reading, I need to garnish your attention. Why is Jack In the Box important? FRIED TACOS.
I left NC around 1998. Loaded up a huge moving van, tossed my motorcycle in the back and drove to college in California. I knew no one, was 3000 miles away from home and I buried myself in school. As an acting major, you know your quickest way to fitting in, is getting to know everyone behind the scenes. So I took a class, one person of about 3 whom worked on Sets with a teacher named Willy. Willy was an ex-hollywood set man, who had resolved himself to living in the Ventura Hills and had settled down with a family while working at the community college. In return he got a nice paycheck, and no one gave a crap that he did it all stoned. Having the munchies, and being around lunch time, Willy approached me one day and asked if I wanted to go to lunch. We volleyed small talk- "where", "I don't know, what's good?"- "Jack in the Box", "Why"- "FRIED TACOS". Leave it to the stoner to introduce me to Jack In the Box's fried Tacos. For the record, Willy was also the one who turned me onto Tommy's. So in my eyes, Willy was one of the few college teachers who taught me something I still actually use.
Okay. So I'd later find out that (if I had grown up in L.A.) that Jack In The Box tacos play a pretty big part of "Stoner Mythology" in Southern California. Just the same as Jan's House does in Greensboro... but on a much bigger level.
Two regular Tacos come in at $.99 cents. They're deep fryers can candle 5 at a time, so it's not uncommon for people to order a bag of them. Our first apartment in CA was about 500 feet from a Jack In The Box, so I have them to blame for much of the excessive baggage I gained in my 20s and am now trying to lose in my 30s. So it felt like a drug addicts acid trip when we pulled in to the Jack In the Box in Charlotte yesterday. Everything looked exactly the same as my Saticoy location in California.
The food is cheap and good. One of my favorite burgers is their Sourdough Jack, and their deep fried jalapenos are out of this world... but the one you want, the thing they're known for? DEEP FRIED TACOS!!! Which if you think about it, fits perfectly in with our redneck southern diet. We fry everything. Chicken, Funnel Cakes, Tomatoes, Twinkies, Snicker Bars... Taco's are a logical southern food.... and they're super yummy.
(For the record these are nothing like chimichangas, a traditional fried Mexican food.)
All of Jack in the Box's tacos come in with the meat in cheese in the shell. They fry them for a short time, and top it with Jack's special sauce and some lettuce. But don't forget the Jack's Hot Sauce packets. You've got to squeeze some of that on the taco before you delight in these wonderful creation which are just utterly amazing. It's unlike any fast-food you've every had. It's horribly bad for you, cheap as can be, and you'll scratch your head and wonder why you've never had a fried taco before.
