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by going to youtube.com slash doughboys media in 1948 world war two veteran glen bell opened

bell's drive-in in the inland empire city of San Bernardino,

California. But it wasn't the Bell restaurant that would make him his fortune, or allow his name to

persist after his death. Bell was known to frequent San Bernardino-Tacaria Meat La Caffe, which also

counted labor leader Caesar Chavez among its regulars, and eventually he learned its recipes for

the Mexican-American

kitchen staff, though it's disputed how transparent Bell was about his eventual plans.

In 1952, after test-driving tacos at his own hot doggery, Bell officially shifted from long

meat in a bun to ground meat and a tortilla, and spent the next decade attempting

taco-focused concept called Tocotia and El Taco to some success.

Then, in 1962, he opened his eponymous Mexican fast food restaurant in the greater L.A.

suburb of Downey, California, implementing the recipes he acquired and or pilfered from

Meat La Caffe.

It was this version that became a global brand, and perhaps it explains why the company has, more than any other fast food chain,

focused on recipes themselves. At its corporate headquarters in Irvine, California, just a county

away from the first Downey location, stands its Innovation Kitchen,

which has cooked up wholly new and wholly inauthentic items over the decades

that conceptually pushed the very boundaries of food itself.

The Mexican pizza?

The crunch wrap Supreme, Doritos Locos tacos, the cheesy gordita crunch,

and the sadly discontinued bell beafer, taco meat on a

...