Fast Food Deathmatch: Del Taco vs Jack in the Box

There's a saying - "Never order a taco at a burger place, and never order a burger at a taco place..." While the general idea is sound in that you probably shouldn't expect a restaurant that specializes in one kind of food to do a good job with a very different style of cuisine, is it always true that you should forgo cross-cultural menu items? Recently, National Cheeseburger Day and Taco Tuesday fell on the same date, so I thought I would take on this timeless question. Can a burger place make a good taco? Can a taco place make a good burger?

To find the answer, we're going to look at two popular semi-nationwide fast food chains that offer both. In the "Mexican" corner (and I use that term loosely) we have Del Taco. Founded in 1964 in the thriving metropolis of Yermo, California (a former wide spot in the road between Los Angeles and Las Vegas that more or less evaporated when it was bypassed by the I-15 in 1968), the chain metastasized beyond its California origins in the 2000's as far east as Oklahoma, but remains concentrated in the Southwest US with 560-plus locations. Their main claim to fame is being "that place that's like Taco Bell but with better food." They've had burgers on the menu since Day One, so they're legit in terms of our shootout.

Jack in the Box, another chain with SoCal origins, got its start in San Diego in 1951, and currently has more than 2,200 stores nationwide, though it's primarily concentrated west of the Mississippi. Over the years they've been known for their quirky menu that departed from traditional "burger place" food with things like "Dinner in the Box" including shrimp and steak, and more recent weirdness like teriyaki chicken bowls, egg rolls, and their "late night munchie meal" combos aimed at the coveted stoner market (which they have courted for years on the down-low.) A staple crop for those selfsame stoners is the classic JitB taco, prized for both its cheapness (2 for a buck until recently) and its 24 hour availability in many locations.

To rate our contenders, we'll compare four menu items: A basic cheeseburger, the "value" taco, a more upscale taco, and french fries, because both chains offer directly comparable food. Let's get it on!

TL;DR
Cheeseburger: 🍔🍔🍔 (out of a possible five burgers)
"Value" Taco: 🌮🌮 (but so very cheap!)
Upscale Taco: 🌮🌮 (definitely larger, but not any better)
French Fries: 🍟🍟🍟🍟🍟 (literally the best fast food french fries in existence. Fight me on this one)

In the interest of complete disclosure, I am going to say that Del Taco starts this deathmatch at a strong disadvantage. Despite the chain's SoCal origins, they offer burritos that have rice in them. While Bay Area residents may call this a legitimate lifestyle choice, and even have a name for it ("Mission style'), it is a clear hate crime against food. No sane human being asks for a burrito with rice inside, and anyone who assembles such a burrito (especially if they subsequently wrap it in foil, rather than paper, ensuring the tortilla gets gummy too) is a heartless monster. You may say that they are just doing their jobs, but that excuse didn't fly at Nuremberg, and I will not accept it here, either. My strong feelings on the subject notwithstanding, I will do my best to remain objective.

I ordered up the only burger on the menu (not counting just adding bacon to it as a whole separate thing), the Double Del Cheeseburger, a Value Taco, the eponymous Del Taco, and Crinkle Cut Fries. Let's let Del Taco's website describe the DDC:

"Two 100% beef patties, two slices of American cheese, two fresh tomato slices, burger sauce, crisp lettuce, and diced onions on a grilled sesame seed bun."

Not gonna lie - this is a good fast food hamburger. Fresh-tasting ingredients, properly seasoned beef, and not an overwhelming amount of produce to ruin the party. It's not Five Guys or The Habit, but it runs circles around a Quarter Pounder or Whopper for what you pay for it.

On to the Value Taco:

"A crunchy corn tortilla is layered with warm, seasoned beef, crisp lettuce, and freshly hand-grated cheddar cheese."

Well, it certainly has those ingredients. The corn tortilla shell is what you expect from a faux-Mexican chain - pre-fried (or whatever... baked maybe?) like you would get in a box on the supermarket shelf. The seasoned ground beef is what it is, and the lettuce and cheese are definitely there. Considering that this is an anchor item on the under-a-buck menu, it "meets expectations" but doesn't exactly bring you back to that wild weekend in Mazatlan.

OK, let's check out the Del Taco. It's basically the Value Taco's big brother, with some tomato. That's literally it. Tastes the same (plus tomato) but takes a little longer to eat. Like the Value Taco, you get to play the game where you try to eat it without shattering the shell along the fold, dumping the contents of the fried corn tortilla onto your shirt.

Finally, we have the Crinkle Cut Fries. I don't know how Del Taco has managed to do this, but these are without rival among french fries. Crispy exterior, light, fluffy, perfectly cooked interior, exactly the right amount of salt. There is some science to this, of course - the crinkle cut means more surface area per unit of volume, so there is more crispy goodness, but that can't entirely explain how good these are. Those awesome beef-tallow cooked McDonald's fries you recall from the hazy days of your youth? Del Taco fries are better, and you can buy them right now instead of living in the past.

While I decry the fact that Del Taco thinks it's OK to put rice in a burrito, they (slightly) redeem themselves by offering chicken and carne asada burritos with their fries in them. It's the sort of moral ambiguity that's inevitable in the modern world, I fear...

TL;DR
Cheeseburger: 🍔🍔 (out of a possible five burgers)
"Value" Taco: 🌮🌮🌮🌮🌮 (even though they've cranked up the price)
Upscale Taco: 🌮🌮 (not worth the extra money)
French Fries: 🍟🍟🍟 (they backed away from the existential abyss of the "natural cut fry" but they're still only a little above average)

As befits a primarily burger-based menu, Jack in the Box offers a dizzying array of beef-on-a-bun choices. For this comparison, we went with the Jumbo Jack Cheeseburger, described thusly on the JitB website:

"This is the cheeseburger other cheeseburgers have posters of in their bedrooms. A 100% beef patty topped with two slices of American cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, chopped onions, real mayonnaise, and ketchup on a Buttery Bakery Bun. Now, you want a poster too, huh?"

Ok, good for you, Jack in the Box copywriter person. You may have oversold it a bit. Bun's good, patty is seasoned well, produce is fresh, and the condiments are in pleasing proportions. Still, it comes off as more like a 'value menu' burger than Del Taco's. Hand leafed lettuce is great, but let's face it - for a little burger like this, it ends up mostly being an inconvenience, like when they give you a three inch thick stack of paper napkins in the bag that you have to dig through to get to your food. "Thank you" I guess? 

On to the taco(s). I pluralize that not because I ordered two different kinds of tacos, but because the only way to get Jack's iconic taco is in even numbers. Back in the day, this was the go-to dollar menu item - two tacos for 99 cents. Today, you can still find them at that price in some places, but inflation has crept in and raised the prices to 2-for-a-buck-twenty at many locations, which puts them in line with Del Taco's 59-cent Value Taco. 

While they are comparable in price, that's where any similarity ends. Jack in the Box tacos are unashamedly fried straight out of the freezer complete with their filling. Over the years, many people have asserted that there is no actual meat in JitB tacos, insisting that it's entirely beef-flavored potato or TVP, and Jack does himself no favors with the description:

"Two crunchy tacos with American cheese, shredded lettuce, and taco sauce."

Note there's no mention of the protein. Well, the truth is that there is beef in there, and chicken, and TVP, and a lot of other things.

Doesn't matter, actually. Whatever it is, it's delicious. It's the kind of paste we can only hope to consume when machines inevitably overthrow us and make us work in their silicon mines and robot day care centers for 22 hours a day. Out of the freezer, into the fryer for a couple of minutes, spread it open a little bit like a reluctant clam and jam in some lettuce, a slice of something cheese-related, and a squirt of hot sauce, then into a paper sleeve.

If you are a SoCal resident, you probably have eaten at one of the many *bertos restaurants - Alberto's, Humberto's, Royberto's Juanberto's, Analberto's, etc. - and ordering a crispy beef taco gets you something very much like a JitB taco, but with actual shredded beef as the filling. I'm not going to say that this is a more "authentic" take on a Mexican hard-shell taco, but it's certainly part of the core cuisine of what anybody within 200 miles of the border will identify as Mexican fast food.

But I digress - It's a totally different eating experience than the Del Taco taco, and about a thousand times more satisfying. Yes, it drips with fryer grease. Yes, the lettuce is wilted from the heat. Yes, it's a slice of American cheese instead of hand-grated cheddar. None of this matters. Sober, it just feels better in your mouth. At 2:45 in the morning blowing a 0.12 in the passenger seat of a 1998 Nissan Sentra, it's the only thing you ever needed or wanted in your life.

Ahem. Anyway...

Jack's Monster Taco is pretty much just a bigger version of the regular taco, though they do offer variations with bacon and ranch dressing or nacho cheese and jalapenos, and it has the same virtues and drawbacks. But it doesn't feel like you are getting away with something when you add it to the order like a pair of the regular tacos do. "It's just another buck and a quarter," you rationalize, already thinking about those crispy, greasy, "beefy" tacos and how good that first bite is gonna be. I would even go as far as to say that a pair of regular tacos should just come with every bag they hand you, and they can tack a taco surcharge of like 25 cents on to every other item on the menu to finance it.

Sorry, I got carried away there again.

So, french fries. Over the years, Jack has gone through a couple different versions of their 'base model' fries, from thin shoestring style to the dark hellscape of 'natural cut' fries that managed to be simultaneously both mushy and chewy, to the fries they have today. While the current offering isn't going to be anybody's favorite fast food french fry, it's good enough. If you are the kind of person who uses fries primarily as a way to convey ketchup into the lowest hole in your head, then you will find Jack's just fine. If you want something with more taste, it's worth stepping up to the seasoned curly fry.

The Verdict:

We set out to answer the question, "Can a hamburger place make a good taco, and can a taco place make a good hamburger?" and the answer (at least for Del Taco and Jack in the Box) is that sometimes there's a hybrid vigor about cross-cultural menu items. Del Taco's cheeseburger narrowly edged out Jack in the Box's burger, but both were acceptable. On the other hand, Del Taco's french fries absolutely murder Jack's, and the JitB taco is the textbook definition of "terrible things your traitorous body craves that aren't needle drugs" while Del's tacos are take 'em or leave 'em.

There's no clear cut winner here, but we can definitively say that it is possible to order up tacos and burgers from either of these two joints and not experience buyer's remorse, at least not immediately. What's your opinion? Let us know in the comments below, and if you have a suggestion for our next dining adventure, we'd love to hear it.

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