Slender Lorises, Duct Tape, and Whataburger: A Fish on Dry Land

Fast Food Review of the Day: Taco Bell

Tacos: America’s favorite food.

Taco Bell is probably one of the most widespread fast food joints in the US that doesn't seem to be particularly common elsewhere. I can’t say I find that fact surprising, as it’s about as American a take on Mexican food as you can get. To get an idea of what they serve, imagine a 19 year-old “gamer bro” making improvised meals with the food and drinks he has in his dorm room and then deciding, “I could build a billion-dollar restaurant company out of this”. It’s a chain where the signature drink is an exclusive flavor of Mountain Dew and where they try to incorporate Doritos into as many of their menu items as possible, in ways that sometimes make even less sense than the general concept of Doritos being food to begin with. The menu is awash with a dizzying list of 50 slight variations of the same basic meal: a tortilla stuffed with ground meat product and (un)healthy doses of nacho cheese and sour cream.

Sounds like a scathing critique so far, right? But let me finish. I eat Taco Bell *frequently* on road trips. It’s generally my go-to for lunches and dinners when a particular favorite like Popeyes isn’t around. For one thing, nobody who’s this deep in reading the thread so far should be surprised that a quickly-made tortilla thing stuffed with meat and cheese is something I’d object to (although a taco made with a Dorito shell *definitely* is). Along with McDonald’s, it’s also the cheapest fast food money can buy; a filling burrito can be had for only a little more than $1, and a satisfying meal with two or three somewhat distinct flavors can be created by only spending $3 or $4. The same money can’t buy you quality items at Mickey D’s, nor indeed at almost any fast food joint.

If you’re not into the whole Mountain Dew and chips-as-fake-Mexican-food vibe, there are some regional chains that are similar but with less obnoxious choices: Del Taco, Taco Time, and Taco John’s to name a few. A nationwide chain is Chipotle, which takes an assembly-line style of ordering that is common with sandwich joints like Subway and applies it to burritos. If you’d like to eschew fast food altogether, Mexican food is also one of the most common types of fast-casual and sit-down restaurants you’ll find across most of the country. And then of course there’s the taco trucks of Los Angeles and other cities... no better food to be had at 3 AM, I promise you. Maybe that’ll work its way in to a Southern California zoo review in the future?

 

I've found myself nodding in agreement with your fast food reviews for the most part up to this point, but this is where I draw the line. I don't care if it's cheap, Taco Bell is a disgrace to American society and I will stand on this hill till the day I die. It's genuinely one of the worst fast food meals I ever had and I will gladly fork up a few extra bucks to get something literally anywhere else. I love tacos, but whatever tacos or burritos Taco Bell serves just aren't right.

Funny you chose today to post this. There was a guy working on my heater earlier this afternoon and asked to use my restroom because he had Taco Bell during his break and it "wasn't sitting right." There's nothing significant about this story, but if I had to hear that you all do too.

 

I quite like Taco Bell... But saying that, I've only eaten it here in the UK.

 

It's not a food adventure for the faint of GI tract - but with food names like "Volcano Quesarito" I'm not sure how much clearer their marketing team could make that for everyone.

I can't begin to imagine how a Taco Bell works in Britain. Can you even say "Volcano Quesarito" with your accent, or do you have to write it out on something and show it to the cashier?

 

When travelling I like to sample the indigenous cuisine and on a road trip a few years ago I had gone through Yelp looking for interesting but basic places to eat. What I didn't know is that Americans like to rate fast food chain outlets, as if the Big Mac in New York is going to be different from the Big Mac in LA. I'd never heard about Taco Bell, and for our first night I'd read a review that made out this place in San Bernardino was really special as the first of the chain and a special menu. When we got there I don't think I have ever been in such a low-rent fast food outlet. McDonalds would have been infinitely preferable. Have to say though, one of the best meals in my life was in a Mexican restaurant in San Diego.

 

Interesting. Having grown up in the culture, it's never even occurred to me to look for fast food outlet reviews - nor even that people would write one - but for a visitor coming here it would make logical sense.

We do have some very good Mexican food in the US, particularly in California and other parts of the Southwest with long traditions of Mexican settlement.

 

I didn't know there was a path along the road to get there, as well. This was the way I was going:



The Discovery Center with a few herps is just to the left of this, next to another gray building.

The exhibits look about how I was expecting, maybe a little nicer given the location. They're clearly still trying to keep up with sticking to the lower/smaller end of AZA standards. It's a cute zoo in a really neat location.

Bonus image of the reason I didn't get to go in the zoo With the entrance being far enough from the parking lot that I couldn't see it after walking a bit, I wasn't comfortable leaving my new puppy in the car alone. He wasn't as amazed by the views from the overlooks as I was.

 

You were not the only one - that's why the Taco Bell references were changed to Pizza Hut (both owned by PepsiCo at that time) for the movie release in Europe.

For me, Taco Bell has always been the "plan B" (or C-F) fast food place whenever other dining options didn't work out. I once attended an AAZV / AAWV conference in which the food ran out during the social dinner. So me and and a bunch of colleagues had to storm the local Taco Bell store afterwards just to get at least one bite to eat...I'm surprised to read that Taco Bell exists in the UK.

As for "Chinese" restaurants outside of China: same situation here in Europe. Most buffet / menu items have been adopted and standardized to local European preferences, so that it can be pretty difficult to get genuinely Chinese food that also acknowledges local Chinese culinary differences. Funny enough, there are even local peculiarities: for whatever reason, Chinese (or rather Asian) buffet restaurants in NE Germany always offer roasted chicken livers, which is uncommon in the rest of Germany. Apparently, NE Germans seem to have a special craving for this dish. *shrugs*

 

Quite frankly, I've not a clue how to even attempt saying that... Our menu is very limited compared to yours, we really only have 4 or 5 main meal options with a small number of different combinations.

 

"Kay-sa-ree-toe" Please attach a recording of you trying to say it in a British accent.

 

Chapter 8: Coelacanth Bueller’s Day Off: Farming Likes By Recycling Old Material

Hope you’re all having a super-relaxing Thursday! With a lot of work still to be done on some of the remaining reviews – namely, that none of them have technically be written yet – I decided to give myself a bit of a “cheat day” and re-review a facility I reported on a couple years ago. The title is more a joke than admission of guilt, however; after re-visiting in roughly the same timeframe as the previous two zoos, I thought it would be a good comparison as a small Appalachian zoo that has chosen a different focus and approach to the other two. Also, the first review I did was bare-bones and didn’t include any media embeds... and everybody is liking those, right? I’ve gotten zero feedback on it, but as usual I’m sure I’m right.

Western North Carolina Nature Center
Location: Asheville, North Carolina
Size: ~5 acres
Species Count: 38
Closed Areas: none
Noteworthy Species: none
Price: $14 admission
Recommended Time: 1 hour or less

Species List (updated from Jan 2020): Species List and Review (Jan 2020) [Western North Carolina Nature Center]
Media Gallery: Western North Carolina Nature Center - ZooChat

Asheville is an interesting little city located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Appalachians, arguably one of the most picturesque parts of the mountain range; the famous Blue Ridge Parkway runs through here, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park is 90 minutes away. The city itself has a bustling downtown area, stocked with one of America’s largest collections of Art Deco architecture (protected from redevelopment by 50 years of financial stagnation after the regional banking economy collapsed in 1929). The city is one of both tourism and the arts: local art galleries and live music fill the storefronts and the streets, while organic restaurants abound alongside Western mystic shops selling crystals and dreamcatchers. Coffee is served out of a renovated red double-decker bus while microbreweries around the corner fill countless growlers with craft grog. And on the outskirts of this place is the third and final small Appalachian zoo I’ll be reviewing – the Western North Carolina Nature Center.

The W-Double-NC is – like everything in the Appalachians – surrounded by and within dense woods, and feels very much like a “center of nature” while you weave along the fairly short path through the forest and past enclosures for almost entirely native species. In the spirit of @lintworm's “Europe’s 50 must see zoos” (which is well on track to win a title for Best Thread of All Time – if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best!), I like highlighting this place because it feels like a prime example of what a small, well-done zoo for local species looks like in the US of A. On a personal note, it’s also one of my favorite small zoos I’ve been to and I’m enthusiastic about the developments they have in the pipeline for the new future.




1st photo credit: @Chili

Par for the course compared to last time, don’t expect anything big from this place; the entire zoo has roughly the same number of non-domestic species as Mill Mountain, and more than half are located in one building. The remaining animals include 12 wild mammals, 4 wild birds, and a farm area with chickens and various barnyard hoofstock. In a rare twist for an American zoo (at least in my experience), one has to walk through the red farmyard barn and around the petting area to even *get* to the rest of the exhibits – there’s no ignoring the goats and pigs here! On the opposite side of the barn from humanity’s best food friends, a Striped Skunk was dozing the winter away in a wooden barn-themed exhibit.



Past that is the main loop. A string quartet of raptors live in a row of small aviaries – Barn Owl, Great Horned Owl, Red-tailed Hawk and Turkey Vulture. I’d make a joke about which one plays the cello and why, but I’m not well-versed enough in classical music to make a good quip about it. The raptors look across a large meadow with a boardwalk going across it, which is where the Black Bear and White-tailed Deer habitats are located. The bear yard is nothing special but is an appreciable size with some climbing opportunities, while the deer have more room than some zoos’ giraffe herds get. Fun fact: one of the deer is a movie star! Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri? When Frances McDormand is talking to the deer that wanders up to her? What a natural.




The path continues on towards the rest of the zoo’s carnivore collection – and a fairly comprehensive one at that. A pair of exhibits are shared first by a Bobcat and a Puma; this is followed by two fantastic yards for Gray Wolf and Red Wolf. The gray wolves are on a slope right before the loop turns back towards itself and goes uphill, so glass viewing windows are located upslope and downslope. The two exhibits give great views of the majestic wild dogs, while another chain enclosure nearby rounds out the large American dog trio with Coyote. In my experience, wolf enclosures in American zoos tend to be very good – but the excellent viewing angles are not usually a given, especially for smaller facilities that often rely on cheap chain-link.




The next exhibit is fairly new, and houses a pair of every American’s favorite cuddly red carnivores: Red Pandas. For all of you who are already furiously typing up a snarky remark like “Wow, I must’ve missed Red Panda being an American species ” or some diatribe about blatant crowd pandering or something like that, take your carpal tunnel braces off and let me explain. About an hour north of Asheville in the Tennessee Appalachians, a Miocene fossil deposit contained a very large relative of the red panda (dubbed “Bristol’s Panda”), so at one point a kind of panda *was*, in fact, a North American native. In an Elephant Odyssey-esque idea, the Nature Center decided to bring in Red Pandas as part of a planned exhibit expansion showcasing living species alongside their extinct American relatives. It’s unclear how much of that idea is still on the drawing board – none of the Nature Center’s plans for the next few years involve expanding on the concept any further – but for now the pandas are here and everybody can just deal with it. The panda exhibit itself is a small and basic affair, but does have a glass-fronted indoor shelter giving a view of a very modern and sleek holding area equipped for a breeding pair.



A trio of (native) fox enclosures follow; while one was home to Raccoon during my early 2020 visit, now a pair of Gray Foxes live separately while Red Fox inhabits the other. A cool feature about these fox enclosures is a simple but effective detail, also found in the Red Panda habitat: boards attached horizontally to the enclosure wall – some with small tunnels – give the foxes vertical space as well as places to hide from the weather and the people-peeping. Nearby, a pair of rocky enclosures for crowd-pleasing River Otters rounds out the outdoor exhibits – one with a built-in pool and underwater viewing.




The final part of the zoo is Appalachian Station – a rustic-looking wood-and-stone building housing the zoo’s ectotherm collection (and for a time recently – though unfortunately no longer it seems – a Least Weasel). The building has 22 species split across two rooms, with some very nice displays for a comprehensive collection of eastern American herptiles. Though none of them are particularly rare, a few species are not common among larger zoos that focus more on exotic species and “popular” natives like rattlesnakes.

Spoiler: Appalachian Station Species

Species List: Eastern Garter Snake, Rough Green Snake, Black Rat Snake, Northern Pine Snake, Timber Rattler, Copperhead, Carolina Anole, Eastern Box Turtle, Eastern Mud Turtle, Eastern Musk Turtle, Painted Turtle, Spotted Turtle, Common Snapping Turtle, Hellbender, Marbled Salamander, Spotted Salamander, Eastern Red-spotted Newt, Gray Tree Frog, American Green Tree Frog, Spring Peeper, American Toad, Brook Trout

With some recent construction projects done, the zoo’s plans for the next 4-5 years include adding a boardwalk extension with new raptor aviaries and a native songbird aviary, both of which will expand the zoo’s currently meager bird collection. While again the WNC Nature Center is a blip on the landscape and will likely always be out of the way even for most American ZooChatters, it’s a must-see if you’re ever in the area and serves as a model for what a lot of small zoos could look like if they turned to focus on the wild animals in their backyard. Mill Mountain Zoo has expressed a desire to move their collection towards a similar Appalachian/Virginia-focused collection, so I believe the interest could exist.




Fast Food Review of the Day: Sonic

While Sonic’s food is underwhelming and not really worth the trouble IMO, there’s one very close to the WNC Nature Center and I felt there were a couple reasons to give it a paragraph or two. Sonic is a reminder of a past era in American dining that has largely been disappeared by early versions and progenitors of the very restaurants I’ve been reviewing so far. Back in the early post-war era of the 1950’s, the common model were drive-in restaurants: you park your car at a menu, order over a speaker, and then the food is delivered out on a tray to you by a carhop. If any of you have seen The Founder with Michael Keaton, you’ll remember it as the restaurant style Ray Kroc thought sucked and should be replaced nationwide with rapid-fast chains like McDonald’s. He eventually got his wish... almost. In the 21st century, Sonic is the primary chain still employing this style across the American heartland; its carhops roller-skating out to your vehicle with hot dogs and popcorn chicken in tow is a hearkening back to an era myself and the majority of others on this forum were not alive for.

There is one aspect in which Sonic remains notable besides its dining style, and that’s its drink menu. Offering over 40 different individual beverages, its main claims to fame are its slushes (for those unfamiliar: like shaved ice with drink consistency) and various flavors of limeade. I’ve known people who frequent Sonic solely for the drinks, and I can’t blame them; if you want to break out of the mold of Cokes and milkshakes, finding a sweet fruity beverage to enjoy at Sonic is easier than accepting free tickets to the San Diegos.

Aside
If today’s review felt a bit brief or slightly less clever than usual, my apologies; I slammed this out last night and this morning so that I’d have something done before half the forum scatters for the weekend (where do you all go, anyway? It’s like you have families or other hobbies or something, it’s weird). That being said, I’ll start working on Monday’s review tomorrow and I’m very excited about it. Unlike the semi-recycling I did today, the next review will cover a brand-new, undocumented exhibit complex that flew under most people’s radar last year... and yet having seen it for myself, I’m confident in saying it’s now one of the best of its kind I've seen and might be enough to put the zoo on the map for a lot of you. Anyway, go enjoy your weekend, doing whatever it is you all do then. You’re not all hanging out without me or something, right?

... Right?

 

Hell yeah we are!!

 

While there aren't any Sonics in my area (anymore, there used to be one), there is a surprising amount of little family-owned drive-in style restaurants with great food. I don't know why this style of restaurant has survived in northeast Wisconsin of all places, but it did.

 

Can't believe a blue hedgehog now have a fast food chain.
Anyway, as much as it's focus in native collection, there's no way this little zoo could make it into "America 100 must see zoos" is it lol

 

Not sure to be honest. As far as I understand their intention, that thread wasn't really a "top 50 zoos in Europe" thread; it aimed to represent a diversity of the different types of collections that are around in Europe, not all of which rank among the best zoos (although it focused largely on the best collections). Whether or not WNC Nature Center would make such a list depends on your criteria I guess. My point was more just that this zoo is a good example of a specific type of American facility most non-Americans wouldn't know as much about, other than big top-tier examples like Northwest Trek and ASDM.

 

Definitely, I think the inclusion for example AlpenZoo Innsbruck for example goes to show it wasn’t a list compiling the 50 best but the 50 must dees in their own rights

 

Call me crazy but AlpenZoo would make top 50 best either way. Somewhere like Obterre wouldn’t, though.

 

A nice review, and great photos. I'd been wondering about the pandas, that's such an interesting reason! If only they followed through with the est of whatever they had planned. While the place is no longer on my "absolutely must stop" list (that's what happens when you no longer have a very tiny weasel), it looks like a neat place to spend an hour.

I've never been to Sonic, it confuses me. There used to be 3 near me, now there's only one. One is a used car dealership, the other got knocked down and replaced with the first starbucks in the area.