A Gordita Ain’t a Pita

If you are an American who grew up in small-town Midwest like me and the closest thing you had to Mexican food growing up was Taco Bell (or more dire, Taco Johns), you might be forgiven for having weird ideas about Gorditas. I’d forgive you anyway–I can’t speak for any Mexicans out there. In the late 90s, a time when my go-to item at Taco Bell was the blandly inoffensive chicken soft taco (add sour cream)–mostly because my preferred chilito was no longer available–the exotic-sounding Gordita seemed like an adventurous new thing to try. So when I did, and it turned out to be a pretty normal Taco Bell-style taco that used a pocketless pita as its shell… Well I’ve always hated the word “underwhelm”–what originally was a fun gag reversal of the actual archaic English word “overwhelm” but has become a dull cliche. But Taco Bell’s Gorditas were underwhelming, limp and colorless, soft and stodgy and generally just too bready for the meager amount of filling they were given. After a few…