They took the Taco Bell Seafood Salad away from us, but today, we’re bringin’ it back. Before Taco Bell was living mas, before they invented the technology to turn Doritos into taco shells, they were serving up seafood in 1986. Today, Trevor and I will attempt to bring the surf back to our turf and recreate the Taco Bell Seafood Salad, a tortilla bowl filled with shrimp, white fish, crab, and all your favorite taco toppings. In 1962, a very popular fast food chain introduced the world to a square fish patty on a bun, and it became a hit. The popularity of the Filet-O-Fish inspired Taco Bell to join the seafood craze. Taco Bell’s commercials for the Seafood Salad were grand and splashy, marketing the salad as adventurous, tantalizing, and fresh. But the menu item didn’t live up to the grandiose marketing as it was quickly removed from the menu due to several alleged cases of food poisoning. The Taco Bell Seafood Salad was taken away from us, but today, we’re bringin’ it back. It’s time for Past Past Food! Food! That’s not what we discussed! Why are you just going off script? Do it again and do it… No, not that. Don’t do that. Trevor, when I say Taco Bell, what’s the first thing you think of? Tacos. That’s right, fresh, tender snow crab meat. Because that’s what they put on their Seafood Salad, 1986. So they basically waited 24 years like the Count of Monte Cris, or, did he kill the Count of Monte Cristo? I read the SparkNotes in high school. Waiting in prison to get their revenge. Filet-O-Fish comes out in 1962 at McDonald’s. It’s their way to get into the Lenten universe, right? They’re like, “People, we gotta market ourselves to Catholics. They’re not out there eatin’ beef.” You know, John F. Kennedy, first Catholic president. So they needed a Lent option. And so, the first idea, Ray Kroc was like, “Put a piece of pineapple and some cheese on a bun. We’ll call it the Hula Burger.” And everyone’s like, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, Ray. You’re a freakin’ idiot.” And then they made the Filet-O-Fish. And so, in 1986, 24 years later, Taco Bell goes, we’re finally gonna get into the seafood market, and this is known as, like, one of the worst ever fast food items. And I’m excited to try it because I think we need more fast food shrimp in the world. Okay, so, can you explain that all in Fortnite terms? Yeah, so you know, like, Slurp Juice, right? Yeah. So you get the Slurp Juice, you’re powerin’ up, you’re out there, you’re like, pop, pop, pop, pop. You airdrop into the game. Yeah, from the? Yeah, from the Fort Chopper. Battle Buss. Battle Buss. To battle Bots. And then when you finally get there, so the Slurp Juice is like the Filet-O-Fish in the sense that when you eat it, you powered up your Catholicism. Right? But then you gotta do the griddy. My knees hurt too much to even attempt it. All we got from Taco Bell is the tomatoes, which, what the hell’s goin’ on with those? Those look like they’ve been fermenting for a couple weeks. We just got these from a Taco Bell recently. And the lettuce and the cheese. Now, we have to make our own tender snow crab and fish blend. Okay. We’re gonna figure that one out. The thing I’m most excited for is the olives ’cause Taco Bell, they used to put two little slices of olives in all the Enchiritos, and then they got rid of those. And so now, black olive’s back to Taco Bell. It’s the ’80s, Reaganomics are boomin’. You know, a lot of weird cults springing up all around the world, Aum Shinrikyo, stuff like that, you know? Totally. Branch Davidians were a glint in David Koresh’s eye. And people are out there suckin’ down shrimp at Taco Bell. Bring it back from the past. We’re bringin’ it back Back from the past! from the past! God, that felt good! Up top. Bingo bango. Josh. Huh? Have you heard of Good Mythical Evening? Yeah, I’ve heard of Good Mythical- Because it’s back! This year, the theme is Pain or Pleasure, you decide. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “What do you mean you decide?” You decide because this year, there’s gonna be a live voting system. Throughout the show, you’re gonna be voting live on things that, the stuff going on, who knows? You’re gonna have to come find out August 24th 7:00 PM Pacific Time. Tickets are on sale now at GoodMythicalEvening.com. So check it out. Josh, we have some stuff here. The first one, you drenched me in olive oil, and I went and fed Rhett and Link lube. The slogan at the time, 1986, right, was The Cure for the Common Meal, a reference to the cure for the common cold. The Cure for the Common Meal. So, we’re makin’ surimi, is what we’re sayin’. We could’ve bought surimi from the store or artificial crab. It’s also known as kani, but most of that doesn’t have actual snow crab in it. And Taco Bell says in the commercial that it is a blend of snow crab and fish. Okay. Which is crazy. Yeah. So we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it ourselves. We’re just gonna throw a bunch of slop in a blender, and we’ll figure it out. So we have a bunch of pollock. Pollock is the fish that McDonald’s makes their Filet-O-Fish from. I don’t know why it’s so cheap. Does anyone know what a pollock is? No. I didn’t know that that was… God, okay, how long has the fish been on the counter, do you think? Like, a couple hours? Couple hours. If you told me a couple hours ago and said, “What is a pollock?” I would not have guessed fish. You didn’t know it was a fish that existed at all? No, no. I wouldn’t have known what that word meant. Oh, what would you have thought if I’d said like, “Trevor, we’re gonna blend up some pollock”? I don’t know. It sounds kinda like pollen. So maybe it was, like, a plant. What is pollen? Could you explain to me what pollen is? It’s, like, bee poop. It’s bee poop. So the idea is to make a fish paste, and then we’re gonna layer that fish paste upon itself, and then we’re gonna shred it up. Here, use the Mythical Kitchen… Get that crap outta here! That’s useless. Use the new Mythical Kitchen Smatula, now available at mythical.com. We came out with a line of cooking utensils, and they work. Check this out. Check it out. Holy effing S, dude. This is the effing GDest best day… I don’t know what I’m saying. Well, fiddlesticks. They actually had a really crazy promotion that went along with this, where if you wrote the word help on a, this is real, if you wrote the word help on a piece of paper because you needed your common meal to be cured, your common meal had infected your entire lymphatic system, and you needed Taco Bell to cure it. So you’d write help on a piece of paper, bring it in to a Taco Bell, and they would give you a discount on it. You would write your own coupon. Just pick up a pencil and a piece of paper and write help. That’s H E L P, help. Rush that piece of paper down to Taco Bell no later than Sunday. We’ll give you a delicious Seafood Salad for just $2.99. So if you were being like, you know, stuck up or held hostage, and you needed to communicate silently and you wrote help, ’cause, you know, there’s someone with a gun to your back, give it to a Taco Bell cashier, they would merely hand you and the gunman shrimp. This is a lot of fish. The smell coming off of this is nice. It smells like crab. I mean, it smells like artificial crab. Good. Which is good. I love artificial crab. I just like to eat those sticks by themselves. Yeah? You’re a stick guy? It’s a nice, healthy snack. You get a little crab stick in there. Yeah, yeah. My definition of a healthy snack is, it’s changed over the years to not resemble health whatsoever. Do we have anything else we get to hit it with? Can I see that rolling pin? Yeah, yeah. That’s good. No, you gotta smack it on a downward angle. You gotta smack it down. You gotta, no, you gotta ah-tah! Ah-tah! Ah. Ah. So we’re gonna dye the outside of this right now. That’s good, yeah, yeah, add some yellow. We’re adding red, white, and yellow ’cause if you see artificial crab, crab meat has, like, a natural orange on the outside. Now, that is from the crab’s lycopacious pigmentatiousness. Okay. And what that does is it makes it red so that way Predators, the Nashville hockey team, Yeah? don’t see it as a predat… Yeah, well, this looks like crab if I’ve ever seen it. This is lookin’ like a good natural color, right? When we steam it, it should get lighter ’cause the color should kind of bleed out into the white, right? Okay. All right, so we’re gonna take this, we’re gonna matte it out. Oh God! It’s not a good move. Oh my goodness, that looks like- We’re gonna fold it over. Looks like frosting. Well, we gotta make it like a sandwich. ‘Cause there’s only red on the outer layer of the crabs ’cause that’s where they’re most susceptible to predators. I feel like this is a good method. Okay. You know what I mean? I trust the process, man, you know me. It’s nice and thin. Dude, if you think about it, this is just like cake decorating. It’s like a fish-based cake. That’s gonna be the new thing in the keto market. Fish cake, really? Fish-based cake, but not a fishcake. A fish cake. Fish cake, I see. You know what I mean? I see, I see, I see. Okay, so now we’re gonna spread this in the middle. Okay. Yeah, that’s what that looks like. Now we’re gonna sandwich this over itself, we’re gonna fold it up, and we’re gonna steam it. We’ve got the steamer goin’. That’s why we’re sweatin’ so much. Oh! You sweatin’? I’m sweating. I feel so hot. Feels so hot. My back hurts. I got this pain in my, like, left shoulder blade. Hell yeah. It’s like really, I don’t know. I’m getting old, man. I’m gonna be 24. Just gotta seal this like a pouch. We’re folding it, oh my God! And we’re gonna wrap it. Okay, wrap it and shplap it. Do you need more plastic wrap, or are you chillin’? I feel good about this, right? Okay, yeah. Gonna put it in there, steamer basket. I didn’t do anything. I know, man. I don’t know what happened. I kinda messed it up. This crab’s real red. But again, it’s gonna get lighter when it cooks, and that’s the good news about it, you know what I mean? I say to thee, thine crops will be withered by the blight and seven of thine nine sons will fall to the plague. Sir, you insult me, sir! I challenge you to an honor duel. That was an excerpt from “Hamilton” Ow. by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Good play. Oh, I’m sorry, are you okay? Yeah, well, that’s a big tortilla. I’m sorry, that kinda got a little bit lashful. I’m eating this. Save this for me for lunch. We need to make the tostada shell. This is a thing that was really big in the ’80s. People were like, “We’re gonna make a very healthy salad, and then we’re gonna deep fry the coverings of a burrito and serve the salad inside that.” And so, that’s exactly what we’re doing right now. We got a device. We bought it from a local store. Your local mom-and-pop-tostada-shell-frying-utensil store. I tried to buy Taco Bell on Amazon, so I don’t even know. Listen, I’m sorry, it’s convenient. All right, so we’re… Hold on, no, no, no. Let’s back load this a little bit. It’s very hot. Yeah. Okay, yeah, it does hurt. We should kind of mash it up. Yeah. Oh, cheese and rice. Yeah, yeah, we’re gonna mash that in there. And then we’re gonna try and…. Oh, this is a giant pot of oil. So we’re gonna, yeah, bring this over here. We’re gonna gently submerge it. I’m gonna kind of spot you. Okay, I feel like a scientist. Yeah. There it is, there it is. And then, yeah, tortilla’s gonna kind of float up. We’re gonna try and just, like, poke it back. Listen, there’s probably a better way to do this. We just don’t know it. And every time Trevor and I have had to deep fry tortillas on this show, somehow it just goes horribly wrong despite the fact that I once owned Chimichanga Papa. Yeah, and despite the fact that we’re also incredibly smart and talented. We are incredibly smart and talented. Some would say we’re even… Some would say we’re even wicked smart! Wicked smart! Oh, it’s going to burn! It’s going to burn! Oh no! This is going well though. You can see it’s frying. It’s just a slow process. I’m sorry it’s not more entertaining. Does someone wanna, like, throw something at us? A rotten tomato? Oh, I bet I could catch an olive in my mouth. There you go, yeah. I’m ready. Entertain ’em. Keep throwing olives though, I like that. Olive me. We almost kissed. Ah. Ah! Wait! Wait, wait! Wait, slow-mo! That bounced off of my head into his mouth! It came off with so much velocity that I hurt my tongue. It, like, slapped me in the tongue. That was the most incredible thing that’s ever happened in the Mythical Kitchen. Oh my God, can we go home? We can go home, right? I think that’s the episode. Yeah, we’re good. I think that’s it. That’ll fry itself, leave that on. Hey, we’ll catch you next time. Cut to the packaging. We’ll see you later. Sir, I say you have the- Oh God, right in the glasses! Oh, those tortillas are so heavy. That’s what you experienced? Dude! Double miracle! The tortilla’s surely gotta be done by now, right? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you. Tortilla’s gotta be done by now. Yeah. Here, take that. Well, the great part is that it’s a bowl for oil. Yeah. Well, now we just got a soup. Oh! It’s fallin’. That looks great, right? Dude, that’s … Sick! Man, we’re crushin’ it. We’re excellent. All right, let’s put this slop trough together. So I saw you doing that, and then I went down to do it, and as I scrunched down, I almost just farted. Wouldn’t be Taco Bell without it. Pushed outta me. That’s nice! We made food flubber, and that’s very exciting. We got our surimi here. I’m gonna chop it up. But Trevor, you wanna start assembling the salad? Yeah. I’m gonna do a little hacky hack on this. Okay, so I’m gonna layer it ’cause in the blurry photos that I’ve seen from the 1980s- You wanna eat a little fish nugget with me? Yeah, man. Yeah, let’s do it. It doesn’t shred like most surimi we’ve had, but it’s… We got it. That’s a big one. I’d like a small piece. Oh no. Oh no! Wah-ha! Well, we’re puttin’ this on the salad. Listen, do you think people were happy with their Taco Bell fish salad? I guess there’s a reason why it was discontinued, huh? Like, Subway used to have the Seafood Delight, which is like, hey, do you want some seafood slop in your oat bread with sugar sauce? No, nobody did. You gotta just keep hittin’ it with some of that. Do you want more? I’m gonna layer this. Yeah. Okay, this is gettin’ freaky here. Well, I don’t think I filled it up enough, but I didn’t wanna take stuff out, so I’m just puttin’ more stuff on top. Yeah, wait, hold on. You keep doin’ that. Okay. You keep doin’ that. What is he doing? No way he’s drawing a diagram. He’s got a marker and a piece of paper. Look out, everyone. Okay, give me three bucks. I’m being held at gunpoint, you idiot! All right, so now we’re gonna take bay shrimp, which this is very common in Scandinavian cuisine, little shrimp bobbers. Oftentimes, I wanna eat about 100 to 150 animals at a time, and bay shrimp can help you get there. This sucks, dude. What do you mean this sucks, dude? Of course this sucks! Nobody wanted this! That’s why they discontinued it. It’s known as, like, one of the worst fast food items of all time. Add some shrimp around there. But wait, we haven’t even gotten the olives, Trevor. Trevor, Trevor, Trevor, Trevor, hold fast. We haven’t gotten to the olives, buddy. If the canned black olives are the best thing in the dish. Plop in there. We’re just gonna scatter some of the crab. Oh God. No! Oh God! No, no! Yeah, scatter some of the crab around there. I’m so sad. It’s so pink. It’s so pink. This is making me so sad. Yeah, is this the worst fast food item we’ve done to date? This might be the worst food we’ve ever cooked on the show. I don’t know, man, we’ve had some bad food. I don’t know how many olives to do. Get them scallions on there, man. Yeah, there we go. Like, what, four? Yeah. I’m gonna throw up. This is, yeah, this is horrifying. I’m gonna throw up. No, we don’t have to eat this, we get to eat it. You know? And you know what? If anything bad happens, just hold this sign up, and we get a discount. God. God dang it. They’re out there, they’re takin’ swings. And you know what can save this, Trevor? What? If we cut to the packaging. Cut to the packaging. It gets the nooks and crannies that you can’t reach. Trevor, at long last we have a fully formed Taco Bell Seafood Salad. Yeah. And now, we don’t have to eat it, Trevor. We get to eat it. We get the opportunity to taste living history. Don’t be gentle on the sauce. I know it says mild, but we’re gonna need all the help we can get. I need this to be drenched. It didn’t come with dressing per se, but they did have taco sauce. And this isn’t- Do we have any more packets? We have to try it with… We’ll have this on standby. Okay. I mean, it’s just iceberg lettuce with a bunch of, like, cold pretty poor provenance seafood on here. Oh my God. But I’m open to it. This feels Swedish. Yeah? This feels like what a Swedish person would think Mexican food is like. Like, “Oh, we’ve made tacos.” All right. You get shrimp? I didn’t get any of the fish goo that we made. Here we go. I can’t tell. Yeah, you got an olive in there? I got two, brother. Let me get an olive. Come on! Where’s the scallion? We got six of ’em on there. There we go. Wait, are we gonna get chip? I feel like you have to eat it, and then you gut it, and then you eat the chip. Okay. Well, cheers, boss. I’m not mad about it, you know? I’m not mad about it. Hold on, hold on, hold, hold on. Hold on, well… The fish paste is the worst part. That’s on us, that’s on us. You know, the fish paste is the worst part. But I feel like if you use this as a vessel for hot sauce, I feel like it’s pretty good. ‘Cause hear me out, You’re a joker. cheddar cheese and shrimp, that’s a good combo. And one in every 12 bites you get to eat a slice of olive, and that’s fun. I was so prepared to put this in my mouth and wanna throw up. Do you like it? This is just scientific proof that you drench anything in enough hot sauce, and it just tastes good. That’s Taco Bell though. That’s their business model. It’s good. It’s weird because there’s not that much cheese on here, but somehow everything has turned cheddar cheese flavored. You eat a shrimp, boom, cheddar shrimp. You eat the fish paste, boom, that’s cheese fish. You know, it’s pretty pleasant. How bad are we gonna poop our pants later? Do you think Taco Bell should bring this back from the past and actually serve it today? No. God, no! Absolutely not. No. No. The world has not been kind to fast food seafood, which again, I hate because it turns me on, you know, it twirls my beanie a little bit. It gets my bilges pumpin’, if you know what I mean. I’m just so mad because I wanted to die. Before we ate this, looking at it, I wanted to die. I was like, I don’t wanna eat this. I don’t wanna put it in my mouth. And I ate it, and I didn’t hate it. And so now, I just, like, I hate myself now ’cause I had to hate either this or myself. And I don’t hate this, so now I hate myself. With that said, if you want Taco Bell to bring it back, tweet @tacobell, say, “Bring back the Seafood Salad,” and they’ll be like, “What the hell are you talking about?” And you’ll say, “I have a bad case of the common meal, and you need to cure it with the Seafood Salad.” Overall though, I had a fun time. We like to have fun here. Come on! We like to have fun here. We had a little hot sauce, we drank a little drinks. Yeah, we drank a little drink. I’ll tell you what, bring this design back ’cause this cup is sick. That’s sick. It’s a cool cup. And Trevor, you ma ma ma makes me happy. Thanks so much for stoppin’ by Mythical Kitchen. We got new episodes out every week. Oh, hot sauce. We got new episodes of our podcast whenever. Leave a comment, like, subscribe, do all that jazz. Go support your local family-owned Taco Bell. And get tickets to Good Mythical Evening. GoodMythicalEvening.com. We’ll see you all next time. Tickets for this year’s Good Mythical Evening are on sale now. Go to GoodMythicalEvening.com for tickets and more info, and tune in August 24th to see Rhett and Link’s night of Pain or Pleasure, decided on by your vote.