Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

Was is really named Taco Mayo? Taco Maya, I can kind of understand, but perhaps they were aiming for a quintessential Middle American experience as opposed to Meso-American.

Taco Mayo probably included shredded potatoes on everything.

My home town had no chains or even local chains. We finally got a Dunkin' Donuts when I was in law school - but they couldn't make the donuts there. Today, there's a nice restaurant that was independent that's now part of a 2 or 3 restaurant "chain."

The largest "chain" we frequented was Papa Gino's, a local pizza chain (if you've been in the area the last couple of years, you've likely seen or heard an ad for them featuring Adam Vinatieri). The usual burger chains were occasionally visited, which we would get mad about at times but in retrospect was a good move on my parents' parts.

I was three when we moved to Manassas, and the town had a "Sambo's." It was shuttered soon thereafter.

We also had a "Jack in the Box," and those quickly disappeared from the area as well, although California obviously has them so the entire chain did not dissolve.

Later, my town had a "Po Folks," which featured a white trash/Dogpatch motif. Instead of normal glasses, they served the beverages in Mason jars. I think the chain advertised on my favorite Nashville Network game, "Fandango."

Surprisingly enough, the area was not the most culturally sophisticated.

Taco Mayo was right at the bottom of the pecking order. (Their prices and food quality reflected this.) The Jenks location closed without telling its employees (including my sister, who showed up for work to find the doors locked).

Taco Tico was really more of a Wichita thing, I think. I only knew of one Tulsa location.

And you forgot Taco Bueno, which was, back then, co-owned with Casa Bonita. (We usually called it Taco Malo, as Bell was usually better.) As for Casa Bonita, the food was generally regarded as not great (though I liked it), but the atmosphere was the reason for going. There were several around, but only the Denver location still exists today. (Apparently Eric Cartman sung about it once.)

Crystal's was, if memory serves, also co-owned with the previous two. There were indeed other locations; I personally visited at least OKC, Euless (DFW), and Abilene. Most of these are gone now, of course. They had a nice game room, but what I remember most is watching the monitors around the restaurant for my number to appear (and watching the little fish on the screen eating the numbers that had been picked up).

Tulsa also had a Po Folks at one time.

I assumed Jack in the Box was a national chain (it certainly received national attention during its unfortunate food poisoning incident of 1993), although it dumped its Tulsa locations just before I moved there.

And Braum's (not spelled like the composer) limits itself to locations within 300 miles of its processing center for reasons of freshness. Sadly, my current home falls outside that radius.

They have Braum's in Dallas also.

In the mid-nineties I was in a lunch group, the rules of which required that we constantly seek out new, obscure places to eat. This eventually drove us to find a Luby-esque cafeteria place in Pasadena. That's the only time I recall seeing one in California.

Coincidentally, just last week I had to tell my friend Gene, 36-year-old South Pasadena native, that Fosselman's is not a big chain. They only have one location, but apparently they advertised on TV when he was a kid and this cemented their "bigness" in his mind.

Po Folks still sorta exists in Atlanta, although they've dropped the Po from the name and it's now just Folks -- I suppose to upgrade its image.

Just plain "Folks"? Now that's just wrong.

Another notable thing about Braum's is that its TV commercials featured early (maybe the first?) appearances of Jim Varney's character "Ernest," before he had his own TV show and movies.

Apparently in other parts of the country where Braum's does not exist, Ernest appeared in commercials for different businesses. In Southern California he's in commercials for Cerritos Auto Square.

Yes indeed. "HEY VERN!"

It blew my mind when he gained national renown.

I remember "Hey Vern" appearing in Tysons Toyota ads around D.C., and as for Taco Mayo, I do remember seasoned potatoes being offered as the added side in combo platters.

Bonham, TX (just 15 miles south of the Red River) had a Taco Mayo/Subway combo store, in addition to the Braums, yet the Dairy Queen was converted to something else by the time I got there (perhaps unable to compete with Braum's and the Sonic/Burger King bloc by Wal-Mart).

The closest thing my hometown had to a "local" chain was Stewart's...a restaurant chain from the same people behind Stewart's root beer and orange cream soda. Had an Arnold's Drive-In flavor to it, complete with roller skating waitresses in the parking lot. Typical burger/fries-styles food you would expect.

When visiting Birmingham, AL the first time earlier this year, Susanne (fiancee who spent all of her childhood in Birmingham) introduced me to her local fast food chain, Milo's, which advertises itself as Alabama's first fast-food burger shop.

Milo's is a little like In-n-Out due to its limited menu options (four kinds of burgers, fries, drinks, fried pies and fried chicken). Its two specialties are its iced tea (available at supermarkets all over Alabama) and its "to go sauce". The burgers are topped with sweet onion sauce that ruins your breath after half-a-bite.

Taco Mayo was a hit in our family (but 2nd to Bueno). So much of a hit that my dad opened one up in Albuquerque. It has since been sold and vanished.