7-Eleven – Buffalo Chicken Taquito: The Bite

THE BITE: Robert is still under the weather, so, in this week’s The Bite, I will provide insight into the gut-wrenching, colon-blowing diet required to maintain this immaculate, gourd-shaped physique.

On its face, the 7-Eleven taquito is the perfect food for the on-the-run New Yorker. It’s fast, cheap and mobile, and like all the best food items in the culinary universe, it’s phallic.

I believe all foods are made better when converted into bar-, stick- or phallus-form. A sandwich is upstaged by a wrap, which, really, is just a phallic sandwich. Ice cream is always best in a cone – a pointy, upside down phallus – rather than a cup. Granola? Screw that. But smother it in honey and, hell, throw some chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers in there, mash it into a bar, and I’ll buy a box of that.

The taquito takes this formula to all new heights. Want a bacon, egg and cheese without all the work of ordering one up fresh and, ugh, having to remove tin foil? Well, jam that bastard into a self-contained dough-stick, deep fry it, and make it rotate for 16 hours behind a glass case – problem solved! E tu, taco filling. E tu, Monterey Jack and chicken.

The origin of this delectable creation owes itself to the same nation that most delectable things, like bulk-rate meth and Montezuma’s Revenge, come from: Mexico (pronounced Meh-hee-co).

Taquitos, or the alter-ego, flautas, are usually seasoned beef, chicken or pork wrapped in a golden-fried corn tortilla. We have no basis for this claim, but we’re pretty sure Mayans invented them as a last hurrah when they realized the world was going to end.

Similarly, 7-Eleven reinvented them in, let’s say, because I have no idea, 1992, when they decided the world was not ending quite fast enough.

But that’s enough of that. Let’s zero in on one specific taquito: the Buffalo Chicken Taquito.

I ordered – ney, demanded – one of these heavenly incarnations on Sheepshead Bay Road yesterday while rushing back and forth between bank and office and stores and stories. I can’t remember my thought process exactly, but I think I must have said to myself, “Hot damn, all this running around has me all backed up and it’s been a while since I’ve had a colonic and – hey! – two for $2.50? That’s a steal!”

I had never had the Buffalo Chicken Taquito before. I usually lean towards Monterey Jack and Chicken. It’s more authentically Mexican. Especially if, when you order, you say “Da me un taquito de Monterey Jack y pollo, por favor” from your South Asian clerk.

Anyway, the point is, get the Monterey Jack and Chicken, or get nothing at all.

Why? Because there’s something you should know about the Buffalo Chicken Taquito’s ingredients. I think they’re misleading you. Other than some tangy red food dye used to create the appearance of actual Buffalo sauce – that angelic concoction made of Frank’s and butter –  this had no real flavor or texture resembling Buffalo hot wings.

In terms of texture, it was sort of like someone dumped rubbery tofu, red food dye, salt and hocked a big-ass, bottom-of-the-stomach-to-top-of-the-head loogie into a blender and set all speeds to high. Then deep fried it.

The “meat” itself was not chicken. I dare you to do DNA testing. This is where I think they’re actually misleading you: they call it Buffalo chicken because it might be some hybrid of buffalo and chicken that they made in a lab. But for some reason, the only part of this buffa-kin, as we’ll call it, that they were able to reproduce on a large scale was the anus. So I’m pretty sure I munched on buffa-kin anus.

Now, as for my anus… well, I need to show a bit of appreciation for man’s ingenuity:

Buffalo Chicken Taquito, I raise my glass to you, for teaching me that man has designed a better laxative than nature could ever devise.

7-Eleven, 1509 Sheepshead Bay Road, between East 15th Street and East 16th Street.

The Bite is Sheepshead Bites’ weekly column where we explore the foodstuffs of Sheepshead Bay. Each week we check out a different offering from one of the many restaurants, delis, food carts, bakeries, butchers, fish mongers, or grocers in our neighborhood. If it’s edible, we’ll take a bite.