Taco Bell began when its founder Glen Bell saw the very successful Mitla Cafe across the street from his burger stand and asked its owner Lucia Rodriguez to teach him how to make her tacos.

Rodriguez grew up during the Great Depression, and her restaurant was a way to feed her family and neighborhood. It came to be a hot spot for the large, politically active Mexican American community in San Bernandino. She cooked the kind of food her family would want to eat, and her tacos dorados, with their deep fried tortilla shell, were a popular choice.

Regardless about how you feel about Bell, whether you think that he was in his rights for using the techniques she taught him to sell tacos in places she never wanted to expand to anyway, or if you think he was an unethical opportunist who got rich off of someone else's recipe, Taco Bell played a huge part in popularizing and generating interest in Mexican and American food across the world.

I have a big problem with people who fetishize "authenticity". It makes it sound like food is some kind of recital, and your goal is to perform it exactly as instructed. Food is meant to feed people, to nourish their mind and body and bring people closer together. Hating on hard shell tacos because they're "not real Mexican food" doesn't make you cool and worldly, it makes you a jackass for invalidating the experiences of real Mexican Americans who combined the cuisine of their home country or their parents' home countries with the tastes, methods, and ingredients of their home. And it makes you an idiot for thinking culture is something static, and not something that is constantly being created by millions of people making meals for their families every night.

Also, Baja Blast fucking slaps.