Section A · Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, November 22, 1999
Chalupa madness
The customers aren't always right
Local restaurants become frustrated by unruly patrons
By Amanda Kaschube and Amben Stuever
writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writers
When Kathryn Dodson, owner of Pyramid Pizza, heard about the chalupa tantrum that police say got Kansas football player Dion Rayford stuck in the Taco Bell window. she laughed.
"He got what he deserved," she said.
Obnoxious behavior is familiar to Dodson, who has seen her share of customer misbehavior during late-night shifts at Pyramid Pizza, 701 W. Ninth St. At its old location at 14th and Ohio streets, for example, customers regularly would try to steal pizza out of the pizza warmer behind the counter and run out the door.
"You get some really drunk people coming in," Dodson said.
Similar drunken misbehavior occurs in many Lawrence restaurants that stay open as late as
bars.
John Christen has witnessed several burrito fights while work-
Dodoson recalled several of these episodes, including a customer who couldn't balance himself on a
"You see all kinds of people around here," he said. "You see funny things all the time."
guy who has to deliver it because they are delivering it to a bunch of drunken idiots," he said.
Drive-thru restaurants have the same problem in dealing with college students such as Jesse Ehert, Coral Springs, Fla., junior.
Ehert went to Arby's, 1533 W. 23rd St., during finals to order snacks for himself and his friends.
"They close at 11 o'clock, and at five minutes to 11, I ordered 20 roast beefs with cheddar and they were really rude to me," he said. "They were pretty pissed."
Hodes admits that service isn't always perfect at 2 a.m.
"They do leave out stuff in orders sometimes," Hodes said. "But usually I just sympathize with them dealing with people going 'blah blah blah' into the microphone."
Sometimes, Dodson said, customers' rowdy actions can get them in tighter binds than just being stuck in a Taco Bell drive-thru window.
She remembered episodes in which fights broke out, the police had to intervene to stop a drunken driver and where customers made crude comments to employees.
"I guess they may think they're being sexy, but they're not," she said.
— Edited by Mike Loader
Media focus on chalupa scofflaw
Continued from page 1A
"Everyone coming through is asking about the story," Brinkmann said. "One guy came through and asked for hot sauce. He said we better give it to him because he didn't want to have to jump through the window to get it himself."
Rich Bowers, Topeka's 97 Country radio station personality "Radio Rich," mentioned the story Friday on his morning show, touted to be the most listened to morning show in Northeast Kansas.
"We used it in our Who's in Trouble in Sports Today segment," he said. "People were calling in to defend him. One lady said the Taco Bell Chihuahua was in his car with him and made him do it. We kind of had fun with it."
Rayford was suspended from the last football game of the sea.
son Saturday against Iowa State University.
He was also not allowed to suit up and stood on the sidelines in gray sweats during the game.
Angela McGuire, Lawrence graduate student, said she saw the story on NBC Friday.
"It's unfortunate that it went national," she said. "Kansas already has a negative image, and now it has a negative image with the university name behind it."
Jerrett Fulton, Dallas, Tex., junior, said he did not think the national coverage shed a negative light on the University or its students.
"If it was something with more severity, I would understand why we wouldn't want people to know about it," he said. "But this is a lighter thing. I though it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard."
Chalupa roots go beyond fast food
— Edited by Mike Loader
By Todd Halstead
writer@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
Did Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara chow on chalupas during his doomed insurgence into Bolivia?
To know the answer is to know the history of the chalupa.
Tomas Chacon, Chihuahua, Mexico, graduate teaching assistant, said the chalupa was an integral cultural food in central Mexico.
Chacon said that the original meaning of the name stemmed from a woman who sold flowers from a boat on a lake in central Mexico.
“This is very old,” Chacon said. “Maybe since the age of the Aztecs. But the name of the dish did not exist until the beginning of this century — maybe not until the 1930s.”
"The only relation is the boat had the same shape of a chalupa," he said.
The soft tortilla came to symbolize the boat, and the woman was symbolized by the inner goodness of the chalupa.
"Everybody makes them differently," Del Campo said. "It depends on what state of Mexico you're in."
Maggie Del Campo, whose parents own La Tropicana, 434 Locust St., said the chalupa came from years and years of culture dating back to when Aztecs and other indigenous empires inhabited Mexico. She said the chalupa varied throughout Mexico, and that in the south the chalupa was called a tostada.
"I'm sure that he was eating something like a chalupa," Chacon said. "But it wasn't called a chalupa then."
Chacon said that he was not sure if Che ate chalupas because of his geographical location, but Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa may have dined on some incarnation of the food.
- Edited by Jennifer Roush
The chalupa could have been to blame
Chalupas, which are similar to gorditas but with fried flatbread, are available with three meats — beef, chicken or steak — and three styles — Santa Fe, Baja or supreme. Photos by Matt J. Daugherty/KANSAN
Three Kansan reporters review three varieties of popular item
By Derek Prater, Emily Hughey and Chris Borniger writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writers
Just what in the world of sports would drive a grown man to force himself through a drive-thru window and menace fast-food employees? Alcohol and idiocy, you may say, but maybe there's more than that.
Maybe the real culprit is the irresistibility of pillowy flatbread, fried and filled with delicious toppings. Maybe the real culprit is the mysterious Taco Bell chalupa. In both advertisements and real life, the chalupa has the power to draw law enforcement to the scene. What is going on here?
We set out to investigate firsthand the elusive power of three variations on the chalupa theme supreme. Baia and Santa Fe.
Reviews and ratings (on a scale of one to four Dions — one Dion being barely edible and four Dions being a chalupa you'd risk national embarrassment for):
Supreme Chalupa — 1.5 Dions
Emilv Hughev
Welcome to Taco Hell. Have a chalupa. Despite the recent hype surrounding the flatbread-wrapped T-Bell ground beef, the uneven blob of sour cream, an occasional tomato and a smattering of lettuce, the supreme chalupa is nothing but a euphemized taco. Its redemption? Crispy fried flat
Edible, but not worth getting stuck in a window.
bread and fresh lettuce.
Baja chalupa — 2 Dions
— Derek Prater
I have a strong suspicion that you have to be drunk for a true chalupa experience, but I went ahead and tried it anyway. For the first bite, I didn't add any Taco Bell Fire Border Sauce so I could get a pure feel for the Baja Chalupa. The Baja sauce is strangely reminiscent of a
Whopper's special sauce
whopper's special sauce with a just a touch of jalapeno pepper. I decided to add one fire sauce packet for a more authentic Mexican taste. Close, but not quite there — so I added two more packets of fire sauce. By the end of the chalupa, I was sucking fire sauce straight from the packets. The best thing about a chai- pa? Its pillowy flatbread soaks up fire sauce nicely.
Commentary
— Chris Borniger
Santa Fe chalupa — 3 Dions
Taco Bell is notorious for using the same essential ingredients in everything it sells — meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato and a whole lotta fat. Add the chalupa to that list. The Santa Fe version with ground beef weighs in at a lofty 440 calories and 29 grams of fat, more than the other two styles. Attribute that to the fried shell and a truly intriguing Santa Fe sauce. Taco Bell throws in salsa, and I throw in mild sauce. The multiple sauces and resulting-low viscosity make it difficult to eat the thing without losing its contents. But hey, it's tasty. I don't recommend going to jail for it, though.
*Editor's note: Although our drive-thru order was incorrectly processed by Taco Bell employees, no one was hostage or threatened with bodily harm while conducting research for this review.
Edited by Brad Hallier
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