There is not much that will get me out of my house on a Tuesday night, and there is even less that will get me out of my house and into a party at a club in Hollywood. But this was no ordinary Tuesday, and this was no ordinary party; this was the launch of Taco Bell’s new menu item the Grilled Cheese Dipping Taco, dropping this Thursday at locations nationwide. I get that kind of invitation, and I shine up my Hollywood shoes, I reserve an Uber, and I go. You would, too.
The invitation came from a guy named Rene Pisciotti, and what I am going to tell you about Rene Pisciotti around 75 words from now is going to blow your mind. I met Rene a couple of months ago, when Taco Bell did a collaboration with Yeastie Boys, a popular Los Angeles bagel-based food truck. Rene was working the line, handing out bottled waters to ease the long wait in the hot Valley sun, and because we are both talkers, we struck up a conversation. He was wearing a very official-looking apron, so I asked if he was one of the Yeastie Boys, and he said, “I’m the head chef of Taco Bell,” and then everything sort of went blurry and white for a moment as a choir of angels sang. Rene’s unofficial job title is “Taco Whisperer”; he’s in charge of menu innovations at Taco Bell, and I think we can agree that no fast-food menu has been more consistently innovative than the Bell’s. Nacho Fries? That’s Rene. The Quesalupa? Rene. The Doritos Locos Taco? Probably Rene, I’m not 100 percent sure, but let’s give him the credit. When I regained the use of my mouth and limbs, I pulled my phone out and said, “Give me your information, because I am officially pursuing a friendship with you.”
Erik Voake//Getty ImagesRene Pisciotti's official title is executive chef of Taco Bell, but he's also known as the Taco Whisperer.
So a week ago, he emailed the invite for an event called “Tacos: The Next Chapter.” Anderson.Paak would be DJing under the name DJ Pee.Wee, and Miguel would be performing, but most importantly, the night would feature “our newest product innovation.” I asked Rene if he could confidentially tell me what the innovation was, and he did, because it wasn’t all that confidential in the first place, and since grilled, cheese, dipping, and taco are four of my ten favorite words, I accepted. Rene assured me there would be a vegan option for my boyfriend, Ben, who does not eat red meat, but Ben said, “If we’re doing this, we’re doing this.” And we were doing this.
The event, like so many scene-y Hollywood events, was co-hosted by the h.wood group, a network of upscale clubs and restaurants where Wiz Khalifa is photographed. These guys throw Those Parties, and when I first moved to Los Angeles, I went to a lot of Those Parties. My first good L.A. friend was a male model named Daniel, and while my name would occasionally get us in the door, his face always could. (We’d be whisked in, we’d do a lap, we’d bump into people we knew, Daniel would excuse himself and come back 20 minutes later and I’d ask where he was and he’d say, “I just had sex in the bathroom.” I miss Daniel.) One night at a club called Dublin’s on Sunset the people in my booth included Daniel, Justin Timberlake, Fred Durst, and Verne Troyer. I said to myself, “I will be telling this story for the rest of my life, and nobody will believe me.” Anyway, now it’s twenty years later, Verne Troyer is dead, Dublin’s is an empty office building, I am old, and we have to imagine Daniel is in prison.
Courtsey of Dave HolmesThe author outside the Hollywood club where Taco Bell introduced its Grilled Cheese Dipping Taco on August 1.
As “Tacos: The Next Chapter” suggests, the motif of the night was books. The venue, the Hollywood Athletic Club on Sunset Blvd, had been done up like a library: the walls were lined with bookshelves, spines that read Tacos Break All The Rules, We’re Turning The Page On A Taco Revolution, and The Art Of The Grilled Cheese Taco. The bar was popping with themed cocktails for the evening, and since the theme was “Taco Bell,” the featured ingredient for most of the cocktails was Mountain Dew Baja Blast: a “Sparkling Baja Blast” looked like an Aperol Spritz with MDBB in the role of Aperol; a “Baja Blast Paloma” was a regular Paloma with the fizzy, highly-caffeinated teal substance making a guest appearance. They looked great, and the young crowd took to them, but we went with Ranch Waters: tequila, soda, and lime. We didn’t want to tax our taste buds before the main event, and I am now in middle age, so even one half of a Mountain Dew cocktail would Baja Blast my ass right to the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai with diabetic ketoacidosis.
Courtesy of Dave HolmesThe motif of the Taco Bell evening was books. "Book is food?" the guests wondered. "Taco is book?"
At just a little after 8:30, it was time for what Anderson.Paak and Miguel will have to forgive me for calling The Headliner: the unveiling of the Grilled Cheese Dipping Taco. They did it in a clever bookmobile style: the night’s servers wheeled out a giant cart stacked with fake volumes called Grilled Cheese Dipping Taco: The Story.
We opened the book to reveal the taco and its sauces inside, resting in a little cut-out, like a gun in a gangster movie. Table space was hard to come by, and some of the guests seemed confused about not only where to eat these things, but how. “Book is food?” their faces said. “Taco is book?” Just then, Rene spotted us in the crowd and waved us into the kitchen. “Let’s find you somewhere to eat,” he said, and cleared off some counter space. Around us, a fleet of seven cooks and countless servers got the tacos made and moving, by the hundreds, around a thousand by night's end. The Bear but joyful, with music by Kim Petras instead of Counting Crows.
So let’s get into it. The Grilled Cheese Dipping Taco is a hard-shell taco with slow-braised shredded beef— a new, higher-end protein for The Bell!—and a three-cheese blend not only in amid the beef, but also grilled on the outside, to create a protective outer layer for the shell. It feels like the Taco Bell take on a birria taco, and it gives you the pleasing clash of textures you expect from the chain. Rene says, "It feels premium, it feels hefty, it’s really uniquely Taco Bell." And the cheese-crustedness of it all is not only delicious, it is functional: you know how sometimes you bite into a hard shell and suddenly your meal has transformed from “taco” into “pile of ingredients?” The Grilled Cheese Dipping Taco solves this problem for you, as the cheese holds everything in place. You will not believe you used to live the old way. Rene watched our faces closely as we ate, and the choir of angels kicked up inside my head again, this time with their mouths full.
The scene does not evolve, it regenerates. I was in a Max reboot of the WB drama I recurred on twenty years ago.We dipped out of the kitchen back into the party, where the kids were Instagramming themselves eating the Grilled Cheese Dipping Taco. What was truly amazing and had nothing to do with tacos was how little had changed since my brief moment in this scene twenty years ago. A Hollywood party co-sponsored by the h.wood group will keep bringing the same people out. The same tall, slim women in expensive outfits; the same tall, slim men in tank tops. A dozen women I was certain were Scheana from Vanderpump Rules, two dozen guys who I would call “next year’s Fin Argus,” a tasteful sprinkling of new Daniels. They come to Los Angeles, in search of something, and though the exact nature of that thing is elusive, and though the whole entertainment industry is literally on strike because there are like six people in the business who don’t also have to drive an Uber to pay their rent, still they come. The scene does not evolve, it regenerates. I was in a Max reboot of the WB drama I recurred on twenty years ago.
The bookmobile came our way again, and I said, “I bet we could split one more,” and Ben said, “No the fuck we can not,” moved me aside, and grabbed two more. I am a little bit afraid of Red Meat Ben, and I think I like it.
But the night was getting late, we were not getting any younger, and doctors agree that after you’ve eaten Taco Bell, you should go right to bed. So we made our way to the exit, and on the way out, a guy stopped me. “You’re not going to remember me,” he said, “but like twenty years ago, I met you at Dublin’s, and we were at a booth with Justin Timberlake, Fred Durst, and Verne Troyer.” I told him I remembered, and we embraced. This guy was Verne’s manager back then, turns out. We each touched our chests and were silent for a moment. “I’ve been telling that story for twenty years,” he said after, “and nobody believes me.”
Parties by the h.wood group, I will see you in twenty more years. Taco Bell, you can expect me on Thursday.
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