Last week I gave a speech at Toastmasters. It was about food. But not toast. Here is the transcript:

Right now it’s about lunchtime, but if you’re anything like me, you’re probably wondering what you’re going to eat for dinner. When looking for a good dinner, I have a set of criteria to help me determine whether the place is worth my while.

First – I don’t want the same old thing.
Second – I’m looking for something creative.
Third – I want meat.
Fourth – The price must be right.
Fifth and finally – The meal should give me a good story.

So what restaurant fits that bill and should be your dinner tonight? None other than Taco Bell!

You see, I love Taco Bell. A lot. Some of you may know about my food blog and think I’m only into gourmet stuff, but I am just as happy with a meal from Taco Bell as I am with a pizza from Pizzeria Mozza. This love is deep and goes back to when my age was a single digit and I would go every Thursday with my dad and eat two soft tacos and some nachos. You probably think I’m crazy, and maybe I am, but it really does fit into that set of criteria I just mentioned.

To start off, Taco Bell is not the same old thing. If you’re tired of eating Mexican food, fear not, because Taco Bell is not Mexican food. Alright, it may be inspired in some way by the delicious cuisine south of the border, but Taco Bell has stepped up its game and created incredible dishes that the Mayans never dreamed of while mashing corn and predicting the end of the world.

Second, you just can’t question the creativity of Taco Bell. Do you realize how brilliant the minds at their headquarters are? I’m pretty sure Taco Bell has turned about 6 ingredients into 50 different menu items. From gorditas to chalupas to five-layer burritos, the menu possibilities of Taco Bell seem endless. Whenever a new item is released I’m amazed to see how they managed to use beef, cheese, a tortilla and beans to create an entirely new product. If that isn’t genius, I don’t know what is.

The epitome of this creativity is called the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. It’s a hard shell beef taco wrapped in a gordita with melted cheese holding the two shells together. To top it all off, they squirt some baja sauce into the taco part, which ties this epic culinary creation together. You can see the creativity just oozing out of it. Throw some fire salsa on top of that and you’ll be breathing and sweating creativity for the rest of your night.

Third, Taco Bell has the meat. I don’t know if any of you were paying attention to the fast food news a few months ago, but someone did research into Taco Bell’s beef and found that it was only 88% beef, with the rest being seasonings and other extraneous bits of deliciousness. Some were outraged, but I can’t understand why. To me this was great news. 88% beef, like from an actual cow! I’ll take 12% beef as long as it’s real and tastes as amazing as Taco Bell.

The fourth reason why you should go to Taco Bell for your next meal is the price. There’s really no questioning that Taco Bell offers some of the cheapest food this side of a Costco Hot Dog. For the price of valet at Beverly Hills restaurant, you can churn out a hell of a feast. You know how a lot of places brag about their dollar menu? Taco Bell laughs at these places with a menu that starts at 89 cents! Start with nachos for an appetizer, a five layer burrito and a taco for your main course and some cinnamon twists for dessert. It will be the greatest meal you’ve ever eaten for a whole 3 dollars and 76 cents. Throw in a handful of those sauce packets and you’ll have yourself a meal worth writing a speech about.

The fifth and final reason you should go to Taco Bell for your next meal is to get a great story. I can’t tell you any restaurant in the world that has given me so many great stories, like the one time I was standing in line with a friend at the Taco Bell in Santa Monica. A girl came up to us and told us we had to order the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Little did she know that we were already ordering this culinary wonder. She then proceeded to tell us how her sister had actually invented the gordita crunch. If the president offered out his hand for me to shake right now, I’d be pretty excited about it. But that would pale in comparison to meeting the sister of the inventor of the gordita crunch. If you find yourself at Taco Bell tonight, maybe you’ll have an even better story!

Wow, this is making me hungry.

And if your mouth isn’t watering right now, check your pulse because you may be dead. Taco Bell fits into my eating criteria perfectly and it should also fit into yours. It’s not just the same old Mexican food, the creativity knows no bounds, is made with 88% beef, is unfairly cheap and can lead to a fantastic story. Oh and did I mention how great it tastes? Those are the ingredients for the perfect meal. So head for the border tonight. You won’t be sorry.

I few months ago, one of the dirty old Taco Bells near me was knocked down. At first, I was upset, but considering the fact that this Taco Bell was only open ’til 11:00 pm (even on weekends!), it wasn’t a huge loss. Then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, construction began on a new Taco Bell in the same place! For months I have waited with bated breath for the grand opening. Driving by it every day, there was no sign as to when it would open, other than the increasing amount of lights and paint. Finally, I passed the new Taco Bell last week and saw patrons inside! A grande opening indeed! I took this as a sign that I needed to stop in and test out their new Beefy 5-Layer Burrito.

I walked up to the counter with an anticipatory grin on my face and ordered this new burrito. What makes this burrito different than all other bean, cheese, meat and sour cream burritos is that it takes that outer tortilla shell, coats it in cheese sauce and then wraps another tortilla around it. Since I love the cheese layer in the Cheesy Gordita Crunch, I hoped that this layer of cheese could take the burrito to a new level. I ordered.

I took my waiting time as an opportunity to ask if they would be open past 11:00 now. To my displeasure, the answer was no. But then to my immediate pleasure, my burrito was ready. In my first bite, there was no cheese sauce layer, but I took another bite and the cheese started flowing. This new burrito was a pretty good effort by the good people at Taco Bell who still manage to come up with new ideas, despite using all the same ingredients. It’s a great way to make a regular burrito more interesting and it would be cool to see this cheese layer as an option for every burrito they have. It can’t replace the Cheesy Gordita Crunch, but makes a good backup for only 89 cents.

I started seeing ads for Taco Bell’s new Black Jack taco last week and I knew I had to test it out. There is just something so intriguing about taco shells in different colors, like when they did the red Volcano Taco. As long as they don’t release some sort of awful green-shelled taco with organic vegetables, I will continue checking out these taco color varieties.

When I pulled up to the drive-thru window at my local TB, I asked what came in the Black Jack Taco. The voice in the box told me it was ground beef, Baja sauce, lettuce and a blend of three shredded cheeses. In other words, it is a Cheesey Gordita Crunch without the outer gordita shell and cheese layer. But let’s not forget that this also has a black shell. I ordered mine without lettuce and then set off to do my tasting.

It’s been a long time since I’ve ordered a regular-sized taco at Taco Bell before, so I was a little surprised by how small it was. Even so, I would rather have my taco small and lettuce-free than large and stuffed with green things. I bit into my taco and it tasted exactly how I expected. It was like the innards of the Cheesey Gordita Crunch. The black shell was a nice touch, but tasted no different than the yellow shell. At 89 cents, it’s a good deal if you’re worried you don’t have enough stomach space for an additional gordita, but for anyone that can tackle a healthy amount of Taco Bell, the Cheesey Gordita Crunch is a better option. Now if only they could stick that black shell inside the gordita…

In reading this article today, I knew something had to be done quickly to defend the good name of Taco Bell.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I am uncomfortably (and unhealthily) in love with the Cheesy Gordita Crunch, without lettuce. It represents all that is good in this world and I often find it difficult to push myself to eat anything else.

Recently, a friend alerted me to the newest Taco Bell creation, the Bacon Cheddar Gordita Crunch. The name alone is enough to make the weak queezy, but I simply could not believe that my world could be graced with genius! If bacon can improve donuts, why not the gordita?

The first chance I had, I went to Taco Bell and tried my new gordita, without lettuce. I took the first few bites of what I thought would be my new food staple and swallowed down in mild disappointment. I was eating something great, but nothing amazing. Topping the original gordita crunch was ambitious, and Taco Bell fell a little short. This is not to downplay the significantly delicious taste of the new gordita, for it is a great culinary adventure. This is only to say that the bar was too high and the new gordita was simply unable to grab the rung that the original had already snagged.

To be sure, this new gordita will stand strong with such creations as the Cheesey Double Beef Burrito and the Ranchero Chicken Taco, but it will never reach the upper echelon of Taco Bell delights. It is a place where angels sing in the clouds. Where vegetables dare not grow. Where unvegans rejoice in perfect harmony. Where the Cheesey Gordita Crunch stands alone.

With the Bacon Cheddar Gordita Crunch, I have learned that sometimes there really can be too much of a good thing, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing.

People look at Taco Bell in many different ways. Some worry about the meat quality. Some are willing to wait 30 minutes for it on their lunch break. Some think it is true Mexican food. Some refuse to eat it. Whatever can be said about Taco Bell, there is no denying that it is a late-night refuge for the hungry and/or intoxicated.

I am lucky enough to have a Taco Bell in LA that is open until 4 am. Every time I go, I leave with a story, so with these thoughts in mind, I set off for Taco Bell around 2 am.

I ordered the Cheesy Gordita Crunch and the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito. A little-known fact about Taco Bell is that they always have the Cheesy Gordita Crunch available, whether it is on the menu or not. The Gordita Crunch is a soft shell wrapped around a hard shell with melted cheese in-between. Inside the hard shell is the tasty Taco Bell meat, lettuce, cheese and baja sauce (which I affectionately refer to as smizzle sauce). Another little-known fact is that without the lettuce, the Cheesy Gordita Crunch is perhaps the greatest culinary invention of the post-modern era. In fact, I once met the sister of the girl who “invented” the Cheesy Gordita Crunch at this very Taco Bell. Her think-tank must have been the greatest collection of minds since the Manhattan Project. It was quite a claim, but who was I to argue?

I coupled the gordita with the Cheesey Double Beef Burrito, which is filled with that magical mystery meat, nacho cheese and rice. I threw a little “fire” sauce on that to give it an extra kick and devoured the gordita and burrito in a jiff.

I left Taco Bell with a full stomach and a smile, which is all I could ever ask for in a meal at 2 am.