Taco In A Cone Is A Taco In A Cone

(With a nod to Ted Berg for the wording of the title.)

Well, that isn't really true; the biggest flaw with Target Field's new Walk-A-Taco (CBS Minnesota news item) is also the reason why this post's title is misleading. The Walk-A-Taco is not, in fact, a taco in a cone. Rather, it's a taco salad in a cone. Now, that isn't the worst thing in the world; the taco salad is a pretty good food item. But what it's not is a taco, which is a better food item. Here's a picture of a taco cone, as it was sold to me at the Twins' home opener on Friday, April 8, 2011:



I guess I had three main gripes with the Walk-A-Taco:

1. The Cone

Now, obviously you can't just take a regular hard taco shell, remake it into the shape of a cone, and call it a day. It'd be far too fragile (I can barely eat a hard taco without getting food all over myself as it is) to be any kind of a portable food item. The shell for the Walk-A-Taco was actually more like a fried taco bowl from a taco salad remade into a cone form. It's marginally more sturdy, yes, but the taste wasn't really right, and it felt vaguely greasy. I had actually guessed it would be in more of a flatbread-type wrapper, like a Taco Bell chalupa, and I still think that would be a better choice, but then I guess it would be more like a gyro-with-taco-filling rather than a Walk-A-Taco.

2. The Filling

As you can probably tell from the picture above, the Walk-A-Taco has a lot of lettuce in it. This wasn't just the case at the top; the proportion of meat to lettuce that you can see is about what it was throughout. The dressing was also more appropriate for a salad than for a taco, more of a southwestern vinaigrette (or maybe it was more or a ranch) than anything taco sauce/salsa-like. The meat was in larger bite-size chunks rather than in ground taco meat form, which I suppose has both good and bad points. There was some chopped tomato and shredded cheese in there as well, but overall, yeah, a lot of lettuce. The jalapenos, sour cream and cilantro featured prominently in the product shown in that CBS story? Non-existent, as far as I can recall.

3. Portability

See the fork there in the picture I included? You're going to need that. This is the case because, as I explained above, what you're really eating is a salad and not a taco, and even if the cone itself were perfectly conducive to walking and eating (and it's not), you'd still want to eat it with a fork. Because of this, my friend and I wound up walking a few sections until we found a ledge where we could put down our beers so we could eat with the provided forks. And you know how, when you're eating an ice cream cone, sometimes the bottom will crack (or just be leaky to start with) and the melty ice cream at the bottom will drop on your shirt? Yeah, that happens with a Walk-A-Taco too, except instead of ice cream it's salad dressing. (A cure for that problem: Dippin' Dots! ICE CREAM OF THE FUTURE!)

(I should add that the line at the stand selling the Walk-A-Taco was one of the longest anywhere in the stadium. However, I think that's because it was a new food item being sold on opening day and lots of people wanted to try it; I would imagine that the lines will die down eventually, so I didn't think this was worth calling a major issue.)

None of this is to say that the Walk-A-Taco is a bad food item, of course. If you're at Target Field and you want something with vegetables, this might actually be your best choice; probably not even all that bad for you if you don't eat the cone itself. But if I find myself back there, I think I'm going to stick to what they're best at: meat in tube form.