Why Seattle lost its mind over the Wallingford Taco Time closure

But one of the strangest aspects of the sturm und drang over the Wallingford Taco Time is that Taco Time, the chain, is not closing. Even with this location gone — it shut the doors in mid-July — there are still 67 other “Taco Time Northwest” franchises in Western Washington. Add stores that operate under the slightly different corporate umbrella of “Taco Time International” and expand to the broader region, and you’ll find several hundred Taco Times in the Northwest. If you have a hankering for Mexi-Fries — Taco Time’s version of tater tots — you can find them within five miles of the Wallingford restaurant.

Yet it was the story of the one Wallingford Taco Time closing that filled my feeds. Was it the unique mirrored window design, which made the building look like something out of a science fiction film? Were the Mexi-Fries particularly awesome at this location? Was it that this Taco Time was closest to the state’s largest university, and therefore generated a lot of “Husky burrito” nostalgia? Or was it simply that in Seattle we really enjoy complaining anytime a business closes? 

I spoke with a number of Taco Time superfans, as well as journalists who covered the story, and found it was all of that, and more.

Most of Seattle’s TV and radio stations covered the news of this restaurant closing — during a time of multiple shootings and other local headlines. A 400-word story in The Seattle Times garnered nearly 300 reader comments. Readers lamented the loss of a longtime favorite (“a lot of 50-year nostalgia for me”). Others blamed political decisions for the store’s demise (“the city’s soda tax didn’t help,” or the state-mandated 2020 COVID-19 closures were “the death knell”).

In addition to the firestorm on the Times website and social media, people called into radio talk shows like the one hosted by Spike O’Neil on KIRO-FM. “It wasn’t the last Taco Time, but it is still a revered Seattle institution,” O’Neil said. “I think part of the reason people in Seattle cared, and feel proud, is because Taco Time is something that is ours.”

For those who missed it above: Several hundred Taco Times are still feeding people across the Pacific Northwest. Taco Time itself is not closing; just one store. But let us continue.

Taco Time versus Taco Bell

That word “ours” came up a lot with the people I talked to. Kim Warnick of the band the Fastbacks is such a fan of Taco Time that almost all our text streams over the years have included the word “Mexi-Fries” at some point. For six years Warnick lived on the East Coast, but she’d start every trip back home with a Taco Time meal, which she often immortalized on social media.

When I asked Warnick how she would describe what Taco Time means, she said “I don’t even know how to start.” Then she told me that once she was in a touring band with musicians who weren’t from the Northwest, and an argument ensued about whether to eat at Taco Time or Taco Bell. 

“If you’re from Seattle,” Warnick said, “this is not something you have a debate about. I just decided that if I had to explain it to them, it wasn’t worth trying to come up with the words. If you’re from Seattle, you understand what Taco Time is, and, more importantly, you understand what Taco Bell isn’t.”

Taco Bell is not to be confused with Taco Time by anyone who has spent more than a year living in Seattle. Taco Bell has over 15,000 locations around the globe, and their food is cheap and uses heavily processed ingredients. The chain is known for wrapping some of their fried foods in even more cheesy fried foods. It’s enough to have inspired a Saturday Night Live parody “Taco Town,” which shows a taco wrapped in a burrito, wrapped in a pizza (true Northwesterners will also note this skit was inspired by an earlier Almost Live bit called “Big Billy’s”). 

A dietician in Parade magazine last year called out Taco Bell for its “grilled steak cheese burrito,” which has 730 calories and 38 grams of fat. Taco Time, in contrast, includes healthy options (maybe not the Mexi-Fries).

Warnick, who had eaten at the Wallingford Taco Time often, said she was sad to see it go, but in typical Seattle style, she was already worried about another Taco Time she’d heard is due to be plowed under in West Seattle, where she presently lives. “I finally move to an apartment that is a block away from a Taco Time — I practically live on top of it, which is great — and now with the light-rail expansion may make that go away. There is no justice.” (Light rail is slated to open in West Seattle in 2032, but construction could affect Taco Time and other businesses well before then.)

Melissa Duane of Edmonds commented online that the Wallingford Taco Time was a perfect place for her to stop while driving home from Downtown. “With Taco Time, you always know it’s going to be done right,” she said when I tracked her down. “It’s inexpensive, it’s healthy, and it’s always good.” She said that when relatives come from out of town, she often takes them to Taco Time.

Not every online commentator spoke kindly of the Wallingford Taco Time, with more than a few throwing out comments along the lines of “Nobody who enjoys Mexican cuisine is shedding a tear.” I thought for sure my friend Winston Saunders would defend the Wallingford location, as he lives a couple blocks away. Several decades ago, when we were both high school students, we ate many meals together at the Pullman Taco Time. Saunders has turned into a bit of a foodie in the decades since, but he surprisingly had no nostalgia for the crispy bean burritos of our youth. “I’ll take the sweet potato tacos down the street [at TNT Taqueria],” he said.

Saunders also was quick to criticize the odd design of the Wallingford Taco Time. “It’s an architectural non sequitur,” he said. “I’m not sure I could ever find the door.”

The “Bauhaus Taco Time”

The distinct architecture of the Wallingford Taco Time was a big part of the online debate in July, and one of the reasons it was revered by many (if not by my old high school friend). The location has been a Taco Time since 1978, but in 1990 was rebuilt into the glass cube. In 2018, for the site Curbed, Meg van Huygen wrote a piece about the building headlined “Taco Time-travel back to ’90s at the weird glass Taco Time in Wallingford.” She called it an “equally beloved and maligned Seattle landmark” and described it as “glass-cube vaporware” out of the video game “Out Run.”

Her story also mentioned that the odd design was not climate-friendly, and she even got a Taco Time representative to admit as much (no representative of Taco Time would return my calls or e-mails this past month). But Wes Benson, franchise affairs and sustainability manager at Taco Time, told van Huygen that the building was expensive to heat and cool: “The consensus is if they could do it over again, they might make different decisions.”

When the Wallingford Taco Time was constructed in 1990, franchisee Jon Hanna liked the design so much, he built an identical location in Auburn (which still stands if you desire your Mexi-Fries to be served from a glass futuristic cube). In 2015, Historic Seattle, the nonprofit that works to preserve landmarks, sent out an April Fool’s press release saying that an advocacy group titled SOFFI (Save Our Fast-Food Icons) was seeking to nominate the Wallingford cube for such status. No such nomination actually existed, and the fake press release noted that one person thought it was a dental clinic, but seeing it served tacos “wondered if it would be a place to get tacos and dental work done.” These preservationists have such humor!

The design does have fans, and that is part of the reason journalist Feliks Banel wrote a piece for Mynorthwest.com calling the location the “Beacon of Tacos,” and he wasn’t joking. He said some online commentators had nicknamed it the “Bauhaus Taco Time,” while others suggested it was the “Flash Cube Building.” Banel himself dubbed it the “Taco Pavilion” in a 1990 April Fool’s joke, when he said it had been “a leftover” from an earlier World’s Fair.

I tracked down Banel after the closing. He said he didn’t anticipate “the outpouring of love for this one location of a chain that remains in business.” His personal interest was both the architecture and the food. “I’ve been a fan of this building since it was under construction nearly 35 years ago, and I’ve been a fan of Taco Time for longer than that (as long as I can remember),” he said. “So I felt a little stunned it would simply be shut down, and with so little notice.”

Banel, who regularly reports on history and landmark demolition, said he’d seen a similar phenomenon with Bartell Drugs locations closing, but that nothing compares to the Wallingford Taco Time. “My post on X with a photo of the Taco Time and word of its imminent closure is my most widely shared post ever.” The reason, he speculated, was because Taco Time is such a beloved local chain, and the location “served a broad and diverse range of communities,” from Fremont to Northgate and especially the U District.

A “Last Taco” party

Even if you don’t know Michael Wansley, who professionally goes by Wanz, you have most certainly heard him: He’s the iconic voice on Macklemore’s monster 2012 hit “Thrift Shop,” which earned the singer a Grammy Award. When Wanz heard about the Wallingford Taco Time closing, he organized a “Last Taco” event on the store’s final day and advertised it online. I attended, along with some of Wansley’s friends.

Wansley ordered the taco salad with Thousand Island dressing — his favorite — and talked about why the chain is important to Seattleites. “I think it hits us because we are losing so many parts of Seattle,” he said. “To me, Taco Time is comfort food, but it’s also Seattle comfort food and so that hits us all a little emotionally, even at the idea that one location might fade away. We’ve lost so many landmarks in this city.”

Wansley lives in Shoreline, and actually had never eaten at the Wallingford location before his “Last Taco” event. Dina Phinney, who works in marketing, attended and said part of the attraction for her, beyond the food, is the way the chain is marketed. “Taco Time is such an iconic Pacific Northwest brand,” she said. “They’ve done so much right, you just would imagine they’d open more stores rather than close any.”

Miro Jugum, who attended, noted one thing unique about the Wallingford Taco Time: “They always had the Taco Burger on the menu at the Wallingford location,” he said. “At other locations, it was a seasonal item, which came and went, but here they kept it on the menu.”

“Et tu, Chipotle?”

One of the odder aspects of how much brouhaha the closing of the Wallingford Taco Time stirred up was that the unusual architecture does not appear to be going away. And people will likely still be eating tacos there, because it looks like the franchisee is selling to a competitor. According to The Seattle Times, the Wallingford Taco Time will soon become the Wallingford Chipotle.

I like Chipotle just fine, but the international chain has 3,500 locations. Chipotle does not serve Mexi-Fries. And generally Taco Time fans are not Chipotle fans, as I found out at Wanz’s “Last Taco” event.

“Chipotle?” said Dina Phinney with disgust when I told her of the future tenant. “When I hear that, part of me starts dying. You don’t close a Taco Time to make it a Chipotle.”

“Chipotle is just not the same,” echoed Melissa Duane.

“I went to Chipotle twice,” said Wanz. “They messed up my order twice. Chipotle is just not what Seattle is about. Taco Time is our place.”

The online chatter was similar, with many longtime residents bashing Chipotle as “not local.” Perhaps that’s part of what connects Seattleites to the local icons of fast food. Dick’s or Ivar’s or Taco Time might not exactly be gourmet, but we feel ownership and local pride in them as if they were actual civic landmarks. They are all places connected to our own personal history. When they get plowed under or taken over by a Chipotle, some of the narrative of our lives feels lost. It’s not a particular taco we miss, but instead the places where our own history played out, and what we imagined Seattle was always going to be. 

The Wallingford Taco Time was packed on its last day. I’d spent many hours in this restaurant over the decades, so this was far from my first visit. It was the kind of place that never was going to kick out a writer working on their laptop, even if all I ordered was one taco and a drink. It was a place without the distractions of home, and had no wi-fi, which was perfect if I needed to focus. My guess is Chipotle will have wi-fi.

Chipotle will have some work to do though to get the place open again. Almost the day after the location closed, taggers covered the outside of the glass walls with graffiti. It now looks like a mirrored abandoned New York City subway car.

I suspect that like many Seattleites who complain about changes in the city, I’ll probably eventually eat at the Wallingford Chipotle (even with wi-fi). But I won’t stop eating at Taco Time’s other locations. Presently I’ve been getting a lot of work done at the Taco Time on Elliott Way in Queen Anne, which seems so empty I’m worried about its future. 

I can report, as anyone who knows and loves Taco Time can attest, that my last taco at the Wallingford Taco Time was as delicious as my first.