Mr. Sato gets some tacos for his tummy and serves up some food for thought.
Our ace reporter Mr. Sato is a true renaissance man, with a wide range of interests he pursues. Regular readers will already know of his forays into fashion, fitness, and urban exploring, and recently he’s also developed a passion for tacos.
It’s not just Mr. Sato who’s felt his taco cravings intensify, though. He’s says that Japan, and the Tokyo area especially, is in a full-on taco boom these days, and recently we’ve even come across taco sandwiches and taco spaghetti. But Mr. Sato also says that there’s one chain that’s not catching on with foodies in Japan, despite tacos supposedly being their marque specialty. So what’s the problem? We’ll turn it over to Mr. Sato to explain.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when the number of taco specialty restaurants around here started increasing, but it feels like we didn’t have all that many before the pandemic. Once we got out of that crisis, though, more and more taco shops started popping up, and now it I get photo and video posts about taco places in my social feeds all the time. My coworker Inaba even has a list of close to a dozen good ones in Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture, and since the start of this year, I keep seeing notices about new taco restaurants opening up too, so it’s safe to say the taco boom isn’t slowing down.
So that got me thinking about Taco Bell, which was already here in Japan before the taco boom got started. How are they doing these days? To get a general idea, I decided to visit the Taco Bell branch in Shibuya’s Miyashita Park entertainment complex.
The Taco Bell chain started out in the U.S., in California, in 1962, and today it’s one of the biggest Mexican food restaurant chains in the world, with thousands of branches, most in America. In countries where it’s a hit, Taco Bell is loved by fans as a place to quickly and affordably grab some Mexican food.
The chain first came to Japan in the 1980s, but didn’t last very long before shutting down. Then Taco Bell relaunched its Japanese division in 2015, with their first branch for their second try opening on Dogenzaka Street in Shibuya. I actually went to it on its opening day. There was a line of about 300 people to get in, and they gave out T-shirts to the first 100.
So now, 11 years later, I was wondering how many branches in Japan Taco Bell has expanded to, but according to their official website, there are still only 10 Taco Bell Japan locations. Taking into account how much more popular tacos have become, 10 branches doesn’t seem like very many at all.
So why aren’t there more Taco Bell Japan restaurants opening up? That was the question running through my mind as I got lunch at the Shibuya Miyashita Park branch.
Looking at the menu, I noticed that their taco selection is actually extremely limited. Really, Taco Bell Japan only serves one kind of taco. You can choose between hard shells or soft tortillas, but as far as what’s inside, you can get their standard beef tacos, and that’s it.
By the way, Taco Bell Japan’s “Lunch Bell” lunch combo isn’t available at all of its branches. For example, at the Dogenzaka branch, until 3 p.m. on weekdays you can get a taco, nachos, and a drink for 690 yen (US$4.25), but the Miyashita Park Taco Bell doesn’t offer it. So instead, I settled for a set with two beef tacos, French fries, and a refillable soft drink for 1,200 yen.
▼ The self-service drink bar had Dr. Pepper, which isn’t always easy to find in Japan.
It had been a long time since I’d eaten at Taco Bell…but did the food always look like this? I mean, I knew it wasn’t going to be a big or luxurious spread, but still, it was a little sad-looking.
I’d chosen one soft taco and one hard one, and as I unwrapped them, the visuals got even sadder. Come to think of it though, this is the standard way that Taco Bell has always presented its food. Recently, I’ve gotten used to more stylish taco restaurants that serve their soft tacos opened up and flat not he plate, and so Taco Bell’s style has become pretty underwhelming.
Opening up the soft taco’s tortilla, I could see lettuce, cheese, and ground beef.
I took a bite, and the taste was plain and unadorned. With no sauce or additional toppings, there was nothing to help draw out more of the ingredients’ flavors or tie them together. If you wanted to phrase things gently, you could call the flavor “simple”…and if you’re not feeling so generous, you could call it “kind of boring.”
Taco Bell’s hard taco at least gives you some stimulating crunch as you bite into the shell, so it’s more satisfying than the soft version, but it’s not a dramatically more delicious eating experience. It’s still a sparse, simple flavor.
So why isn’t Taco Bell Japan riding the wave of taco popularity in Japan these days? After eating their tacos for the first time in a long while, my takeaway is that the Japanese taco market has changed a lot since Taco Bell came back to Japan in 2015. At that time, there were hardly any places to get tacos, and so it customers were more accepting of how Taco Bell makes theirs, since, after all, it’s a globally famous taco chain.
But now there’s a lot more competition in the Japanese taco scene, including many more taco specialty restaurants than we had when Taco Bell first came back. Tortilla Club Tortilleria, for example, which is also in Shibuya Ward, mills its own corn to make its tortillas in-house every day.
▼ Tortilla Club Tortilleria soft tacos
At Tortilleria you can get two tacos for 1,100 yen, pretty much the same price as Taco Bell charges, but they’re beautiful to look at and delicious to eat. So with places like that around, really the only advantage left for Taco Bell is maybe having a more convenient location by being located closer to a major train station.
Taco Bell’s unphotogenic presentation is also a big weakness. At other restaurants, they lay the tacos open and let you see all the different fillings that are going to be inside. With Taco Bell serving their tacos already closed up, customers aren’t as excited about photographing their food and sharing the pictures on social media, but that’s one of the major ways for restaurants to get publicity, so they’re falling behind in that aspect too.
I’ve heard that part of what makes Taco Bell successful in the U.S. is that its prices are cheap, but here in Japan Taco Bell isn’t any more affordable than a bunch of other fast food options we have. When you combine that with an unappealing presentation and plain flavor, people in Japan might even have the impression that Taco Bell is overpriced.
So I think Taco Bell Japan needs to restart by rethinking their pricing and presentation. If they don’t do something, they’re going to be at risk of missing out on the taco boom and their chance to secure long-term customers. They did a great job of raising awareness of taco themselves in Japan, and I hope they can somehow turn things around during the boom so they don’t end up having to leave Japan again.
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