Not the Choco Taco
Like so many of you, I didn’t want to believe it. Not with
monkeypox on the rise. Not after three long years of
pandemic life. Not after more
anti-trans bills than stimulus checks. Not after they slashed
Roe V. Wade, adapted
Tiger King into a show, and told the climate to cool itself.
After all of that and so much more, now they’re coming for the Choco Taco. As reported far and wide, Klondike confirmed on Monday that it would be discontinuing
arguably its most beloved product.
Why?
I know Klondike put out a statement of some kind, but I didn’t read it, and I don’t care. Sales, business, capitalism — whatever the explanation, we’ve heard it all before. My question is existential. Why, after we’ve been through so much, must the world move like this? How can we proceed as normal without her, our soon-to-be dearly departed frozen treat? Is there any sureness left in this life?
I am weary. I know many of you are, too. Perhaps this can be a place where we might join in our sadness, in our grief, in our everlasting love for the greatest underdog to grace a gas station freezer.
When I was in the third grade, I had no idea I was gay. But I did know love. I found it in a frigid place. She came on Thursdays, stale as the day is long. I would run to her from art class, leaving glued-up popsicle sticks to dry in the wind. Taking the steps two at a time, my rolling backpack clamoring behind me, I entered the cafeteria and went straight to the dessert corner. No sloppy joe or Danimals could come between us. For so long, I thought nothing could.
If you’ve never tried a Choco Taco, stop reading this article. Go, go now. Drive to the corner store, sprint to the bodega, bang down your landlord’s door and raid their freezer. For there’s nothing I can say here that could make you know. You must taste for yourself, while you can. Though if you’re reading this years from today, July 27, 2022, when the last Choco Taco in existence melts on a platinum podium in Elon Musk’s guest room, allow me to inform you of what you — nay, we — have lost.
“Perhaps this can be a place where we might join in our sadness, in our grief, in our everlasting love for the greatest underdog to grace a gas station freezer.”
Born in Philadelphia
in 1983, the Choco Taco is inventor Alan Drazen’s definitive gift to humanity. An original multi-hyphenate, the treat is best appreciated through its component parts.
We start with the shell, whose iconic soggy texture introduced millions to the concept of irony. Coating the roughly four-inch, curved exterior is a layer of chocolate, sprinkled with peanuts. Within the taco sits a crescent of vanilla ice cream and a darker swirl of mysterious origin. Taken together, the Taco does what no cone could: It invites you to enjoy every element of the dessert at once, cone and all. Gastronomically, this is the great disruption of the Choco Taco. But anyone who has tried them knows that their undying appeal goes far deeper than taste and texture alone; that something far more resonant than vanilla ice cream lives in that miraculously delicious shell.
Okay, for the most part, this article is a joke. I mean, duh. The world feels unspeakably dark right now, so why not scream at the sky because of a weirdly appropriative dessert? At the same time, I think there’s something to the way the Choco Taco news has struck a chord. There’s no question that
people are in mourning. And I think that something has to do with arguably life’s great challenge: Accepting that things change; that memory is imperfect.
With the omnipresence of smartphones, we can record a moment, even an entire performance. We can take an infinite number of pictures. But at least right now, we have no way of fully crystallizing what it feels like to eat. If the Choco Taco is truly set for cancellation, which is a big
ifin the age of Twinkie fake-outs, that singular experience will be gone. Finished. Lost to the past. And what does that say about the memories we’ve tied to it? Will they be lost, too, now that we won’t have our frozen bridge to simpler times?
Yesterday, when the sad news broke, I took fifteen minutes from my desk to walk to the carniceria across the corner from where I live. With a heavy heart, I found the freezer spot once dedicated to Choco Tacos empty. I may never again taste my first love. And as not okay with it as I am, I feel supported in the knowledge that I am not alone. I never was.
Three cheers to you Mx. Taco. See you on the other side.
