(23:13:59) Tracey: This restaurant search thing is going to kill you.

(23:14:07) Tracey: It very well could be your demise.

ColumbusUnderground presents…

TACO NINJA

Welcome to the internet. If you’re anything like me (white middle-class male age 16-35 with a broadband connection), you doubtless spend your days surfing websites like Ogrish, Achewood, The Best Website In the Universe, Mahir’s Site, Newgrounds, and FARK.

When you’re dragged away from your computer to class/job, you doubtless while the day away by doodling Trogdors onto your arm while humming Group X vs. Wesley Willis mashups. If you were to be in a wedge in the Carousel of Progress, you would be defined by Bawls-fueled LAN parties and bangbus-aware ringer t-shirts. Truly this is the greatest age yet known to man.

As a webjockey, then, you know that there is an established heirarchy for what is cool.

Figure 1: Relative coolness (measured in kelvins) Porn (?) Blogosphere Ninjas Pirates Mr. T Strong Bad Chuck Norris Being an operator/admin/moderator ‘Sick’ pictures of people totally being blown up and/or throwing up DragonBall Z/Insane Clown Posse/Hacking/Pitchfork/Avogadro’s number/others (please wait for image to load)

This easy-to-remember royal family of coolness simplifies life on the internet by eliminating the possibility of being “flamed” for your opinions. When your opinion is the same as everyone else’s, the person who says you’re wrong is a troll! Ban that fucker! Microsoft is made up of a bunch of idiots! Even if they do have PhDs in computer science and information systems, my community college degree is leveraged out by the fact that I use Linux! Okay, phew. Crisis averted.

Recent surveys show that the average “mainstream” college student has seen 90% more of the internet than the average “computer nerd” five years ago.

Figure 2: Not pictured: “Yatta!”

Thus it was only a matter of time before OSU’s undergrad population hit critical mass and started to pull its own reality from the dream-fabric of the internet.

Here it becomes obvious that those internet architects of decades past were ahead of their time when they chose the cloud as the symbol for information being passed along the internet. For as rain falls from the insubstantial cloud, so too have the first drops of internet culture begun to drop upon the tongue of the waiting OSU student.

However, with a great metaphor comes great danger, as this rain is not the sweet ambrosia of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” music video, but is rather the bitter acid rain of mediocrity hiding behind a veil of “coolness” and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Taco Ninja, then, is truly a reflection of all parts of internet culture: the good, the bad. The potential for large-scale collaboration, and the reality of people writing stories about fictional men getting pregnant.

Enough! Let this introduction to the world of the internet then serve as a warning to all those who would seek to suck at the deep-fried teat of Taco Ninja! For without a full understanding of the dangers inherent within, you might end up on a first date with a girl you thought was totally hot but who actually leaves peanut butter handprints on the wall.

Finding the Restaurant

Taco Ninja is not its own brick-and-mortar store. Rather, it exists within the gut of “The Cafe Bourbon Street” which is neither on Bourbon Street nor a Cafe. And as you’d expect a parasite to reflect the quality of its host, Taco Ninja’s quality can easily be divined from the greasy pus-filled stomach cavity in which it sops up nutrients from its bottom-feeding host.

The Atmosphere

None.

Note: the sign is for “The Wolverine Fuckers”

Alright, I’ll elaborate. First off, the door has a sign on it claiming that only those 21 and over may enter. While this may be seen as a roadblock towards poisoning your children, my housemate and I were never carded. There was a bouncer at the door taking money for whatever crappy local band was playing on the seven foot-square stage that night. However calling him a “bouncer” may be giving credit where credit is not due. I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie “Roadhouse,” but Patrick Swayze’s complete use of his limbs seemed somewhat responsible for his being the best bouncer in the country. I am not sure exactly what the problem was, and I hate to kick a man when he’s down, but the bouncer at Taco Ninja was on crutches.

Other than that, the bouncer was about what I expect from this level of a bar. Dirty denim jacket, dirty Air Force t-shirt, long hair and full black beard (also probably dirty).

The bar itself followed this trend. Although it was too dark inside to give it the white glove test, I doubt that the darkness was due to a shortage of lightbulbs.

I’ll focus on the “restaurant” itself rather than the surrounding bar, although if you need a summary of what kind of place it was just think “Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys.”

The kitchen of Taco Ninja is an oasis of light in the dismal bar, which is reassuring. The kitchen’s public orifice is a hole cut into a large red door, with a narrow counter attached. A Naruto poster hangs on the far wall, a warning beacon to any women as well as anyone looking for Mexican food. Above the poster, someone has drawn a ninja’s head in sharpie, with the quote “I AM THE GATEKEEPER ARE YOU THE KEYMASTER.” Sort of a mixed message, as I don’t remember any Ninjas in Ghostbusters.

Maybe when they renovate they can put a reference to The Super Mario Bros. Super Show as well.

Note: there is a large sticker on the freezer reading “ACID WASTE”

You’ll notice I didn’t mention a deep fryer. Well, that’s because I didn’t see one. Despite my housemate and I both ordering a deep-fried item, we neither saw nor heard any kind of superheated oil. The chef walked out of my frame of view for a minute, and when he returned he apparently had two chimichangas. I’m still not sure about how that happened. If you see me in David Blaine’s next street magic special in a chimichanga-based trick, let me know.

You have two options for your menu. The first is the feltboard on the wall to the right of the ordering window. This is the kind of board they use on the first floor of office buildings where law firms are constantly going out of business. The white letters stuck into the board have become yellowed with age and barsmoke, and although they cheerfully announce that tonight’s chef is “Ninja X” I have a hard time reading anything from them but a message of low funds and even lower expectations.

Your second option for a menu is the OSU saver lying on the counter, opened to the page with Taco Ninja’s menu on it. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a restaurant that couldn’t afford to print its own menus. Certainly not when they have hired a graphic arts firm to design said menus.

Here I’d like to take a moment to point out where my interest in Taco Ninja was originally piqued. On their menu for the OSU saver, Taco Ninja proudly sets itself apart from the competition with this service:

Image provided by Smith2D2

After eating at Taco Ninja, I have a hard time believing that the Columbus health department’s biggest concern with Taco Ninja is their availability of condoms, but whatever.

The gentlemen taking my order looked like the kind of guys in middle school who would quote the most recent Star Trek movie and then punch you in the shoulder or the chest really hard and so you’d laugh at them pretending it was cool and it didn’t hurt but really inside you’d be crying out of rage and wanting to nail a large spike through the center of his chest and nail him to the wall and just shout at him as he screams.

You know the type.

Hair just long enough to peek greasily out of the back of a painter’s cap. Black t-shirts. Army pants.

There were two of them running the restaurant; one to cook, and the other to take orders and handle money. This system is used almost universally, as it guarantees that you don’t get filthy money rubbed all over your meal. Our orders were taken on scraps of cardboard with a pencil.

While the food preparer was making our food, I saw the money-taker sit down behind a large tub of flour, pick out handfulls of it, and then drop them back into the tub. No joke. This went on for a little while.

I got the impression that running this restaurant was their dream, which I fully applaud much like in American Movie. However, also much like American Movie, the resulting product is completely unusable.

On the way home, my housemate and I had the following conversation.

Me: “I just hope we don’t get violently ill from eating this.”

Bob: “I like that you’ve lowered your expectations so that you’ll be happy if we’re not *violently* ill. You sort of take it for granted that we’ll at least be somewhat sick.”

Food

I ordered a chicken gut bomb and some side nachos. Nachos come with salsa. Gut bomb comes with salsa or sour cream, or both for an additional $0.50. I got both. What the hell.

We decided not to eat at the Taco Ninja, because we didn’t want to have to pay to watch some crappy band cover Neutral Milk Hotel songs. So the next part of this review will take place in our apartment.

I thought about grading my apartment’s dining room and ascribing the score and criticisms to Taco Ninja (”garlic butter left open for a week,” “tables covered in garbage,” “oily screwdriver touching placemat,” “Skyy album”), but then thought it would tip the scales in Taco Ninja’s favor.

Let’s get down to business here. The gut bomb is simply a large chimichanga. Supposedly it is a *huge* chimichanga, although I didn’t really notice that much of a difference over my housemate’s “normal” chimi. This is what’s in the chicken gut bomb:

• Chicken
• refried beans
• Mexican rice
• jalapeno chunks
• tomato chunks
• cheese (white and yellow)
• onion

Not immediately gross sounding. However, one of the first things I noticed upon biting into the Gut Bomb was that the chicken was the grayest I’ve ever seen. I don’t mean that they’re using the dark meat, although maybe they are. The chicken is just kind of grey. Brownish-grey. I don’t know. It set a bad tone for eating the rest of the gut bomb.

If you see me in a Buzzkill reunion DVD where they trick people into eating catfood in chimichangas, let me know.

Note: this is an insincere thumbs-up

The tortilla chips were okay… they tasted homemade at least, although that reminded me to be curious about the suspicious absence of a deep fryer in the Taco Ninja kitchen. There was some kind of red powder on some of them… didn’t really taste like much, so I chose to ignore it.

As you may have noticed from the menu posted above, Taco Ninja takes a whimsical approach to their tortilla chips by cutting some in the shape of shuriken. I appreciate the effort, but these fuckers are the sharpest things I’ve deliberately put in my mouth since Kindergarten.

Not to question anyone’s intelligence, because I was certainly mostly responsible for the chips being placed under the crushing force of my palate, but perhaps someone should have thought of this possibility when they were DESIGNING CHIPS AROUND SHARP POINTY THINGS.

A few bites into our chimis, my housemate and I sat at the table silently chewing. I broached the delicate topic first.

Me: “Does the chicken taste like fish in yours?”

[munch munch, munch munch]

Bob: “Yes.”

[munch munch, munch munch]

Bob: “Yes, and I’m glad you brought it up, and not me.”

The chicken Taco Ninja uses tasted more like tuna than the tuna used by Ugly Tuna. It was everything tuna should be: savory, delicate, and juicy. It was even the right color for buffet-style tuna salad.

Taco Ninja does not have a menu item using fish.

Chicken should not taste like fish.

THE LAST WORD

$4.00/$9.00 = 44%

JimL2: well, at least I’ll die doing what I love

Tracey: Good call.

JimL2: vomiting my guts into a toilet in some dingy bar

This entry was posted on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Dining. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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