When eating a taco after a long day, nobody wants a wimpy soft shell. Eating a taco, as any taco traditionalist will tell you, needs some crunch to it.
- Paul Wong
- Need a little excitement? Grab a hard shell taco! (EMMA FOSDICK/DAILY)
For LSA senior Adam Rouls, whose family made tacos every Friday night when he was growing up, hard shell tacos were the only tacos in town.
“I’m a man, I don’t want to waste my time with soft shell tacos. I consider myself hardcore, so I can’t walk around eating tacos that are going to hurt my reputation with the ladies.”
Guys aren’t the only ones on campus who can’t stand soft shell tacos. LSA sophomore Haleigh Peters claims that you can find out a great deal about a person from the kind of taco they eat.
“My ex-boyfriend used to only eat soft shell tacos. To be honest, I was a little bit embarrassed by the whole situation. He didn’t like hard shell tacos because they were too sloppy,” Peters said. “It was one of my reasons for dumping him.”
For other students on campus, the sloppiness of a hard shell taco makes the taco eating experience more enjoyable.
“When I’m at Taco Bell, the hard shell taco breaks really easy, but I don’t really mind. I kind of enjoy grabbing a spork and eating it that way,” LSA senior Carl Matter commented.
Another reason Matter believes the hard shell taco is better than a soft shell taco is its versatility.
“Recently, I realized that I could make my own nachos out of hard shell tacos. I simply break up the shell, mix around the toppings, and I have cheap, delicious nachos,” Matter explained.
But while taco creativity is a bonus of the hard shell taco, for Rouls the biggest asset is the crunch.
“With meat, cheese and vegetables, the taco already has plenty of soft parts. The shell has to be hard. You wouldn’t want an Oreo with a soft cookie crunch, would you?” said Rouls.