In a world of mashed-up quesalupas, sometimes you just want a clean, simple taco. How about one for 19 cents at the original Taco Bell?
This rare photo shows Kermit Becky, the very first Taco Bell franchisee, hunched beneath his restaurant menu board in 1965. The lineup includes five food items, for less than a quarter each. (Burritos may be listed twice because they came with both green sauce and red sauce, sources say.) See a larger photo here.
Taco Bell began as a small, stucco taco shop in the early 1960s, as the final effort of starry-eyed food entrepreneur Glen Bell.
Its no-frills menu featured tacos (which are still Taco Bell's number-one seller), burritos (the current number-two seller), frijoles (aka beans and cheese) and tostados (similar to the tostada on the Taco Bell menu today).
Everything was classic. Everything was 19 cents. Everything was awesome.
By the late '60s, Taco Bell's menu had gotten slightly more adventurous, inching toward the wild taco mashups we see today. See a larger photo here.
The Bellburger -- the item depicted as a hamburger bun with taco meat, cheese and spicy sauce -- disappeared in the late '70s, Taco Bell historian Matt Prince told HuffPost. It was replaced by the Bell Beefer, a 1980s favorite which is no longer available.
Nowadays, you can visit the original Taco Bell at its new home near headquarters in Irvine, California. But we don't blame if you'd rather live in the nostalgic T-Bell days, as one Imgur user recently showed us:
Keep calm, and taco on.
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