The Coolest Place to Get a Drink in Midtown Manhattan Is the New Taco Bell

December 4, 2018 Off By Alex Norcia

For weeks, people were coming by and pounding on the locked door of Midtown Manhattan's new Taco Bell "cantina"—the chain's hip concept for metropolitan diners, complete with faux-graffitied walls and appropriated street art, beer and booze. But installing a gas line was taking longer than expected, delaying the grand unveiling. So, outside, those strolling by the fast-food establishment were left wanting. Now open, the place is packed every day, a manager, Mohamed Monsur, told me, and patrons inside are completely perplexed, both by the cheap prices in a part of town where there aren't many, and about what, exactly, they've discovered. Was this really a Taco Bell? It's easy to see why they're confused.

If a stoner uncle with a bar in his basement was asked to remodel the chain to appeal to his gaming nephew, it might look something like Taco Bell's latest—touch-screen computers to place your order, a visible assembly line so you can watch a lady shoot a giant sour-cream gun onto a tortilla, a fancy beer tap that pumps the suds into the bottom of the cup. (Yes, there's beer. Hard liquor, too.) At night, near the entrance, a multicolored light shines the company logo onto the busy sidewalk, making it look more like a club than a place for fast, cheap eats. On the weekends, once the bar crowd hits the streets, a security guard stands close to the cash registers like a bouncer. It could be the most affordable—perhaps even the coolest—spot to grab a Corona in the vicinity of Times Square. Good news, indeed, for those looking to keep the party going, though you can't yet book one at the location as you can at some select restaurants.

There was no DJ the night I was there, but I sat at a table as the sun went down and the crowd slowly changed, becoming younger and, not shockingly, more inebriated. In stark comparison to that demographic, an older woman, MaryAnn, who lived across the street and asked that her full name not be used, was waiting for her meal with a look on her face that suggested she had stumbled into another dimension. People gleefully slurped booze-infused frozen Mountain Dew Baja Blast and margaritas, and beer filled from the bottom. Then, seemingly right out of a millennial web series, a man named Chaz Meabon, who, decked out in Chanel and a beret, asked me, rhetorically: "What goes better with Chanel than Taco Bell?"

It was a good question—and, honestly, I'm not sure. But I bet Taco Bell has thought of it already. Naturally, Chaz documented his experience on Instagram. His caption read, in part, "im in heaven."