There are Taco Bells in Chicago (and LA, even!) because Taco Bell is its own cuisine. There’s even an LA name for it: Gringo tacos. - identifying characteristics include a hard, pre-fried corn tortilla, mildly spiced ground beef filling, shredded iceberg lettuce and shredded orange cheese of some sort. probably mild cheddar. See also: school cafeteria tacos
Jack In The Box tacos are a more extreme mutation, and I have an undeniable craving for them 2 or 3 times a year that must be satisfied. If often ends, uh… poorly.
And yet, many of my friends from Tijuana would be happy if I could bring back some Taco Bell on my expeditions across the border. They know it’s technically crap, but they still love it.
Put myself through college working at Pizza Hut (with side forays into Taco Bell); managers loved me because I was willing to work the morning prep shifts. Pizza Hut is tolerable pizza, although light on the toppings. I know what goes into it and have no ingredient worries (the assembly team, OTOH…) aside from suggesting not to bother with the 2 types of kibble-like meat toppings, beef and pork.
I’ve noticed that in the suburbs even local mom&pop pizza shops often taste the same as each other. They all seem to get their supplies from the same place, they may as well be a chain. There are large bakeries that just produce dough on an industrial scale to service pizza places within a certain radius, and restaurant wholesalers that supply sauce and cheese. That said, local is still better, but it’s rare that you find one that really stands out.
Eh, I still have a certain fondness for Pizza Hut. Maybe it’s just due to one of those associations of pleasant memories from childhood. Whatever else might be said about the crust, it’s distinctive.
Right, we were supposed to say “kibble” but called them what they looked like; “dogfood”. Both of the pizza chains I worked for converted to dogfood toward the end of my times there, and I can say it was a lot easier to work with than pans full of big lumps of raw, spiced meat. Just sprinkle it on. To handle raw meat, you had to point your fingers like you were gonna fist something, thrust it into the meat, pull back a wad, and use your other hand to rip off little sticky chunks to whip onto the pizza. That crap got under the fingernails and took days to wash off. Couldn’t honestly say any “vegetarian” pizza made after that was genuine.
When I worked for a “mexican” place, the orange grease which would pool at the top of the cooked ground beef was called “moisture” and I was yelled at for trying to skim it off!
A lot of local pizza places are terrible even today. Plenty of them are not much better than 7-11 pizza. Myself growing up in the 80s in small midwestern towns, we didn’t even have many local places to choose from much less good ones. It was more of a question of which chain you wanted: we had Pizza Hut, Dominos, and Godfathers. Age 8 I wasn’t the elitist snob that I am today… In grade school Pizza Hut had a reading promotion where if you read 5 books you got a free pizza. It was the highlight of my week when I got the 5 stars and got to go. As a kid, it was one of the few “sit down” restaurants that we went to.
They were also fast. In high school I had a summer job, and pizza hut was one of the better options for cheap + fast enough to go on your lunch break that wasn’t a fast food burger joint.
Must have been a regional thing. I worked at my Hut right around that time, and the sauce was indeed packed in these bags that came 6-8 to a box, and needed to be cut open and poured into a container. No mixing required or additional ingredients.
It was actually decent, and miles better than the chunky shit they used on the stuffed crust pizzas at first - it was so vile that we just stopped using it after the first few weeks because everyone would just order it with the regular red sauce.
Still the most fun job I ever had, working in that kitchen. It was hard work but we had a blast doing it.
Probably regional, or my Hut was a franchise that didn’t feel like replacing their existing equipment for the new stuff. When I worked at Taco Bell, my morning was spent with four gigantic square aluminum pans filled with raw ground beef which I had to stir vigorously with a tool that looked like a gigantic aluminum potato masher. Scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape. Did I mention the aluminum? Most Bells had switched to bagged beef which was simply boiled in water.
Good point, but those of us who live in areas with local options remain mystified when these chains show up. For years, we’d drive past that one PH, notice the few cars in the parking lot, and wonder how they kept the doors open. Red Lobster survives because it is cheaper than some better quality places. Not sure that PH prices were lower than local options, though.
I went to one in Nebraska I think on a road trip a couple years ago. It barely resembles the old restaurant. It appears they (at least at that time) were trying to compete with places like Buffalo Wild Wings. Literally adding wings as a major menu item and having high top tables with paper towel rolls in the center. And maybe it’s because after college i moved to NYC and grew accustomed to much better pizza, but the pizza didn’t taste as good as I remembered either. I haven’t bothered to go back to one of those places since and have only eaten the pizza at airports when the other options were extremely limited. Person pan pizza always seems like a rip-off as an adult. The slices seem to be mostly crust with only the tiniest of triangles in the center. But again, NYC’s giant slices may have ruined me for small slices. Ha.
but to your and @Mindysan33 's larger point - this snobbish attitude does ignore the vast interior and major portions of the population of the US. are you gonna eat half shell oysters in Des Moines? (not to disparage Iowa, just can’t think of a place farther away from our coastlines)
I pretty much got horror stories from all of my friends that worked in restaurants. After a while, I figured that they were ALL pretty suspect, but I haven’t died yet so…I just stopped worrying about it.
There were a couple times in life when the $3 personal pan pizza got me through the day on budget. Mock all you want but when you don’t have a kitchen and you’re on a very tight budget (and are young and have some health banked up) you find the things that are cheap and extra filling. See also: Long John Silver’s and taco bell.
Both of the pizza chains I worked for converted to dogfood toward the end of my times there, and I can say it was a lot easier to work with than pans full of big lumps of raw, spiced meat. Just sprinkle it on. To handle raw meat, you had to point your fingers like you were gonna fist something, thrust it into the meat, pull back a wad, and use your other hand to rip off little sticky chunks to whip onto the pizza. That crap got under the fingernails and took days to wash off. Couldn’t honestly say any “vegetarian” pizza made after that was genuine. 
