tuh-COH-nay
Oct. 12th, 2004 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aEarly this year the Taco Bell in downtown Berkeley went out of business. It was one of those strange "going out of businesses" that seem to plague fast food restaurants. One day the restaurant was there, the next the doors were locked, and a week after that an angry muzak company was pasting stickers on the windows stating that their equipment was still being held inside.
It wasn't that much of a surprise, as the signs had all been there. Topmost, the restaurant had stopped posting their closing time, which always seems like a sign of imminent bankruptcy to me. But, they'd also dramatically cut their staff, to the point where they usually seemed to have two people on: one cashier and one food-maker.
Why exactly they had problems, I don't know, because they were always utterly jammed during lunch (thanks to the local high school, just a block away, who's cafeteria burned down sometime in the 1990s) and in the evenings they were at least somewhat full. I'm sure the Baja Fresh which opened across the street in 1999 or 2000 didn't help, but they should have been able to do OK. But, they didn't.
(2003-2004 was a fairly bad time for franchise fast food in downtown Berkeley, with Taco Bell, Burger King, and KFC all closing up their doors; probably, you can ultimately blame the economy, and thus our fine President who continues to drive this country into the ground.)
Taco Bell was my favorite fast food in Berkeley and thus I was greatly aggrieved to see it disappear, especially since the other Taco Bell in Berkeley, located about 2 miles further on, also closed within a couple of weeks' time. After the Taco Bell downtown closed, I carefully watched its empty storefront, hoping that a new Taco Bell franchise would open up. I mostly gave up after a month or two, but still kept my eye on what was going on there.
A month or so ago, new signage appeared at the former Taco Bello, claiming that "Tacone" would be opening there soon. It was a bit of a mystery.
The first question was, how the heck do you pronounce that? TAH-cohn or tuh-COHN seemed likely, but I also considered tah-COH-nee (home of the tacos that go "nee!" one presumes). My favorite, however, was the Hawaiian pronunciation: tuh-COH-nay, because it looked sort of like a Hawaiian word.
The second question was, what in the world are they going to serve there? I decided that the clear answer was chocolate tacos, and perhaps other types of desert tacos: sherbert served on a sugar-taco shell, a tostado drizzled with semi-sweet chocolate, then layered with vanilla ice cream and sprigs of mint. That sort of thing.
The building sat mysteriously empty for a bit, and then in a flurry of a half-dozen days or less the inside was suddenly renovated. By this last Friday there were tons of staff inside, milling about. They opened up on Sunday and Kimberly and I scored some menus on the way home from the gym.
The menus really didn't do much to reveal the mysteries of the restaurant. They revealed a weird hodge-podge, with South American fajitas next to Asiatic teryaki, healthy smoothies next to greasy fried chicken. There was a lot of produce on the menu, from vegetarian sandwiches to a number of specialized salads. Finally, I decided that they were going for a weirdly mixed Californian cuisine: healthy, full of fruits and vegetables, and mixing food from America, Thailand, Japan, and areas south of the border.
They also sounded pretty good, so Kimberly & I decided to try it out on Monday.
Now, personally, if I'm going to have Californian food, even if it's just high-end fast food, I expect quality components, with good produce and good meat. I know that Kimberly expected much the same, especially given what they were highlighting on the menu. We were both disappointed.
I had a Fiesta Salad, which had decent chicken, but was otherwise full of produce that I could have picked up at Safeway--not a farmer's market. Kimberly had a fillet mignon sandwish which was apparently very chewy & made on grilled Wonder bread (or something very close). So much for our expedition into Tacone. They have some interesting variety, but the clear answer for the food they seem to be selling is actually the Baja Fresh across the street, which does have good produce and high-quality food like they promise.
I guess I should say that their potato chips and their spicy BBQ sauce were both good, but given the price (~$8 for a meal rather than ~$5 at most fast food), I can't imagine going there rather than cheaper fast food or better mid-quality food.
The name was pronounced either tuh-COHN or tah-COHN, by the by. I'm not sure which. It's apparently named after the fact that the founders went down to South America and found them serving all kinds of foods in cones. They didn't think that actually worked, and so they substituted wraps instead. Tacone does indeed have tons of wraps, but when I heard the story from the manager I just smirked: it really is a bad name that doesn't have hardly anything to do with the products they actually sell.
No tacos. No cones. Tacone.
That should be their motto.
http://www.tacone.com/
It wasn't that much of a surprise, as the signs had all been there. Topmost, the restaurant had stopped posting their closing time, which always seems like a sign of imminent bankruptcy to me. But, they'd also dramatically cut their staff, to the point where they usually seemed to have two people on: one cashier and one food-maker.
Why exactly they had problems, I don't know, because they were always utterly jammed during lunch (thanks to the local high school, just a block away, who's cafeteria burned down sometime in the 1990s) and in the evenings they were at least somewhat full. I'm sure the Baja Fresh which opened across the street in 1999 or 2000 didn't help, but they should have been able to do OK. But, they didn't.
(2003-2004 was a fairly bad time for franchise fast food in downtown Berkeley, with Taco Bell, Burger King, and KFC all closing up their doors; probably, you can ultimately blame the economy, and thus our fine President who continues to drive this country into the ground.)
Taco Bell was my favorite fast food in Berkeley and thus I was greatly aggrieved to see it disappear, especially since the other Taco Bell in Berkeley, located about 2 miles further on, also closed within a couple of weeks' time. After the Taco Bell downtown closed, I carefully watched its empty storefront, hoping that a new Taco Bell franchise would open up. I mostly gave up after a month or two, but still kept my eye on what was going on there.
A month or so ago, new signage appeared at the former Taco Bello, claiming that "Tacone" would be opening there soon. It was a bit of a mystery.
The first question was, how the heck do you pronounce that? TAH-cohn or tuh-COHN seemed likely, but I also considered tah-COH-nee (home of the tacos that go "nee!" one presumes). My favorite, however, was the Hawaiian pronunciation: tuh-COH-nay, because it looked sort of like a Hawaiian word.
The second question was, what in the world are they going to serve there? I decided that the clear answer was chocolate tacos, and perhaps other types of desert tacos: sherbert served on a sugar-taco shell, a tostado drizzled with semi-sweet chocolate, then layered with vanilla ice cream and sprigs of mint. That sort of thing.
The building sat mysteriously empty for a bit, and then in a flurry of a half-dozen days or less the inside was suddenly renovated. By this last Friday there were tons of staff inside, milling about. They opened up on Sunday and Kimberly and I scored some menus on the way home from the gym.
The menus really didn't do much to reveal the mysteries of the restaurant. They revealed a weird hodge-podge, with South American fajitas next to Asiatic teryaki, healthy smoothies next to greasy fried chicken. There was a lot of produce on the menu, from vegetarian sandwiches to a number of specialized salads. Finally, I decided that they were going for a weirdly mixed Californian cuisine: healthy, full of fruits and vegetables, and mixing food from America, Thailand, Japan, and areas south of the border.
They also sounded pretty good, so Kimberly & I decided to try it out on Monday.
Now, personally, if I'm going to have Californian food, even if it's just high-end fast food, I expect quality components, with good produce and good meat. I know that Kimberly expected much the same, especially given what they were highlighting on the menu. We were both disappointed.
I had a Fiesta Salad, which had decent chicken, but was otherwise full of produce that I could have picked up at Safeway--not a farmer's market. Kimberly had a fillet mignon sandwish which was apparently very chewy & made on grilled Wonder bread (or something very close). So much for our expedition into Tacone. They have some interesting variety, but the clear answer for the food they seem to be selling is actually the Baja Fresh across the street, which does have good produce and high-quality food like they promise.
I guess I should say that their potato chips and their spicy BBQ sauce were both good, but given the price (~$8 for a meal rather than ~$5 at most fast food), I can't imagine going there rather than cheaper fast food or better mid-quality food.
The name was pronounced either tuh-COHN or tah-COHN, by the by. I'm not sure which. It's apparently named after the fact that the founders went down to South America and found them serving all kinds of foods in cones. They didn't think that actually worked, and so they substituted wraps instead. Tacone does indeed have tons of wraps, but when I heard the story from the manager I just smirked: it really is a bad name that doesn't have hardly anything to do with the products they actually sell.
No tacos. No cones. Tacone.
That should be their motto.
http://www.tacone.com/
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-12 01:21 pm (UTC)