But one day at the office, he was struck by inspiration, albeit with a heavy dose of pragmatism. ice cream trucks (a business Good Humor got out of two years later). His main job then was supervising mobile vendors, a.k.a. ”ĭrazen started out driving a Good Humor truck in Philadelphia before going into management with Jack & Jill in 1974. “Man, what a genius,” says Tyler Malek, the ice cream fabulist who co-owns Portland’s Salt and Straw, which offers Malek’s own take on the Choco Taco - the “Chocolate Tacolate” - at its soft-serve spin-off Wiz Bang Bar. Drazen’s email signature heralds this accomplishment: “Inventor of the Choco Taco - The Original Ice Cream Taco - Over One Billion Sold,” it reads. What began as an ice-cream-truck-only treat from the family-owned Philadelphia company Jack & Jill is now owned by Unilever and enjoyed by tens of millions of Americans each year. But it was along the border, where a mighty river separates two interdependent yet often hostile lands: Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Because yes, way back in 1983, Alan Drazen really did invent the Choco Taco. That’s how I got the idea.” This is the story the inventor of the Choco Taco tells when people beg him to embellish. An ice cream taco, rising out of the distance. “I was on an expedition in Mexico and got separated from my party,” Drazen says. Another tall tale comes from Alan Drazen, who claims he saw the Choco Taco in a vision. “They were willing to eat it in frozen dessert form.”īut where exactly did the Choco Taco come from? In 2012, Paul Constant of Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger traced the Choco Taco’s origin back to country singer Marty Robbins’ “cover of the 1924 obscure folk song ‘Choco in My Taco.’” This was a lie (or rather, satire). “Here is proof that Americans loved tacos so much,” says Taco USA author and “Ask a Mexican” columnist Gustavo Arellano. “Here is proof that Americans loved tacos so much - they were willing to eat it in frozen dessert form.” Congressional staffers have been known to revise the Choco Taco Wikipedia, including the anachronistic fiction that former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (who died in 1961) once described them as “like Texas, but in ice cream form.” Employees at the United States Bureau of Land Management demanded Choco Tacos as part of their Burning Man provisions. Restaurant pastry chefs and boutique scoop shop owners regularly pay homage. I had to buy a box and feed him some.”įor just about everyone other than the French inventor of the Cronut, the Choco Taco is the stuff of nostalgic summer sweet tooth obsession - the most beloved and innovative of all the American ice cream “novelties.” Its acolytes are legion. “Dominique, he’s obviously a French dude,” Stupak says. Who wouldn’t want the pastry chef best known for mashing croissants and donuts into one delicious portmanteau to riff on Choco Tacos, especially since Stupak is a former pastry chef himself? There was only one small problem. “Since I was a kid I’ve always been a fan of them.” So when Dominique Ansel approached Stupak in the spring about a limited-edition dessert collaboration, the idea seemed almost inevitable. Could it be, then, that the first taco Stupak ever had outside the home - and certainly the first taco he ever bought from a truck - was made of “light” ice cream, fake chocolate, chopped peanuts, and a sugar cone “shell”? Which is to say… a Choco Taco? But growing up in Leominster, Massachusetts, there was no Mexican food in Stupak’s life (“Old El Paso taco night” aside). "The discontinuation was a result of complex production challenges and not a stunt," Klondike said.Empellon chef Alex Stupak owns four New York City restaurants devoted to tacos. The brand reiterated in a statement to CNN Business Friday. SEE ALSO: Beloved Choco Taco was invented in Philly creator said he was inspired by boom in Mexican food "I knew you loved me, but not THIS much." "I want to address the rumors: I'm really being discontinued, it's not a PR stunt," the ice cream taco said. Klondike addressed the theory in a July tweet, written from the perspective of, who else, Choco Taco. They thought the whole thing was a stunt, and that Klondike was never planning to kill the Choco Taco - just create enough buzz to make sure it was well-received when it inevitably came back. Klondike originally said that it was discontinuing Choco Taco because of "an unprecedented spike in demand across our portfolio." Lots of companies have slimmed down their portfolios or menus during the pandemic to help meet demand for more popular items.īut some people didn't buy the explanation.
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