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Taco Bell runs past the border

MEXICO CITY

It sounds like a fast-food grudge match: Taco Bell is taking on the homeland of its namesake by reopening for the first time in 15 years in Mexico. Defenders of Mexican culture see the chain's re-entry as a crowning insult to a society overrun by U.S. chains from Starbucks and Subway to KFC. "It's like bringing ice to the Arctic," complained pop culture historian Carlos Monsivais.

The company's branding strategy - "Taco Bell is something else" - is an attempt to distance itself from comparison to Mexico's beloved taquerias, which sell corn tortillas stuffed with an endless variety of fillings, from spicy beef to corn fungus and cow eyes.

Taco Bell, a unit of Yum Brands Inc., made its name promoting its menu to Americans as something out of Mexico. But it's a different dynamic south of the border.

Here, the company is projecting a more "American" fast-food image by adding french fries - some topped with cheese, cream, ground meat and tomatoes - to the menu at its first store, which opened in late September in the northern city of Monterrey.

Other than the fries and sales of soft-serve ice cream, "our menu comes almost directly from the U.S. menu," said Yum Mexico managing director Steven Pepper.

Some of the names have been changed to protect the sacred: the hard-shelled items sold as "tacos" in the United States have been renamed "tacostadas." This madeup word is a play on "tostada," which for Mexicans is a hard, fried disk of cornmeal that is always served flat, with toppings.

Taco Bell has taken pains to say it's not trying to masquerade as a Mexican tradition.

"One look alone is enough to tell that Taco Bell is not a 'taqueria'," the company said in a newspaper ad. "It is a new fast-food alternative that does not pretend to be Mexican food."

It's a mixed message for Mexicans like Marco Fragoso, a 39-year-old office worker sitting down for lunch at a traditional taqueria in Mexico City, because the U.S. chain uses traditional Mexican names for its burritos, gorditas and chalupas.

"They're not tacos," Fragoso said. "They're folded tostadas. They're very ugly."

Taco Bell failed with an earlier, highly publicized launch in Mexico City in 1992, when it opened a few outlets next to KFC restaurants. Now KFC and Pizza Hut are owned by Yum Brands.

But Mexicans were less familiar with foreign chains then and the economy was on the verge of a crisis. The North American Free Trade Agreement had yet to be signed. The restaurants didn't last two years.

With U.S. sales sluggish, Yum Brands has been expanding abroad. Its goal is to have 800 stores in its international division by the end of this year.

It's a tiny slice for Taco Bell, which has almost 5,800 locations in the United States and 278 abroad, including other Latin American countries, Europe and Asia. But Mexico's relatively youthful population of 107-million, and its proven taste for fast food could make it an attractive business.

"Taco Bell wants to take advantage of the perception that if something comes from the United States, it tastes better, that a country that has been Americanized is willing to Americanize food that is central to its cuisine," Monsivais said. "It is an absurd idea, and given that it's so absurd, it may just be successful in upper-class areas."

[Last modified October 11, 2007, 00:28:10]