"choco taco" news and stories

Frank Bruni reviews the Choco Taco. Video: ABC's Nightline.

As we mentioned last week, outgoing Times critic Frank Bruni will be on ABC's Nightline this evening, talking about his childhood bulimia and taking down the Choco Taco.

"I believe that food that rhymes is almost always better than food that doesn't rhyme, don't you?" he says in the outtake released to the press, in which he calls a reporter "namby-pamby" for ordering a soft-serve ice cream cone instead of his own adventurous "South of the Border" choice.

Who knows if new national critic Sam Sifton will have Bruni's talent with one-liners, but we do know that, after reading this morning's (very accurate) description of the dinner review process, we will miss him: About a woman who "fumed" if her steak arrived at the table already cut, he writes, "People are as strange about eating as they are about love. They want what they want."

Perhaps our favorite description, though, is of those who just don't eat. One friend demanded that they order a fatty porterhouse with fries, and then "She commenced such frantic knife and fork movements that a veritable cloud of dust rose around her -- I was reminded of a Road Runner cartoon. When the dust settled 15 minutes later, I took a close look at her plate, and almost nothing was missing. The food had just been reconstituted and rearranged, a Picasso of its former self."

If this is the stuff of his new memoir, we'll be reading it.