I think Guy Fieri is about to do what Corel did to Paint Shop Pro

I think Food Channels Guy Fieri is about to ruin one of my favorit taco shops.  I walked into Los Taquitos Mexican Grill in Ahwatukee today for some lunch time tacos today.  I decided on their marinated pork tacos (I had not had them before, as I usually can’t turn down the perfect Carne Asada ones).   While waiting for my number to be called I noticed, on the side of a garbage can, a paper announcement taped on.  To my amazement the notice was that Diners, Drive-ins and Dives host, Guy Fieri, would be visiting the restaurant October 17th to film for the show. I am a fan of the show, and I often watch it hoping someday to visit some of the places he spotlights. This announcement however hit me differently though. Los Taquitos is not a destination restaurant to me, it is a place I found close to my work that serves up wonderful authentic Mexican food pretty unassumingly.  Now here was a was Guy coming to to this place to put it on the map, and probably give it that marketing gleam he seems to give all the places he goes too.

What I fear the most is what I see on his show, full homey restaurants over filled with loving fans.  You see, Los Taquitos in its current state is rarely packed (I’ve never waited in a line more than one and never feel bad taking up a four-top table to read the paper while munching tacos), and certainly has zero to no marketing gleam.  I worry not just about the over publicity and crowds the show will bring, but that afterwords the owners will rethink things like the sloppy condiment tray, haphazardly placed salsa squirt bottles, the odd streaky paint job in the bathroom, and the “everything in tinfoil” presentation of the food.  These are the things that give the place interesting character and flavor and hopefully will not go away with the new found celebrity status Guy Fieri will undoubtedly bring.  I’m tempted to go through my taco review with all Guy Fieri catch-phrases so maybe he would decline to visit after I used up all of them in my taco review. They are not very original catch-phrases however, so I doubt that strategy would work.

For now I’ll say the marinated pork tacos I had today were wonderful (Not “Money” as Guy would say).  Pork can go wrong in so many different ways, especially when it is grilled.  Much of the time pork offerings leaning towards chewy and tough or mushy and tasteless. These were none of that, perfectly cooked and the dehydrated remnants of a red chili marinade coated every inch of the meat.  Throw in perfect proportions of chopped red onion and shredded cilantro leaves on top, and you’ve spelled T-A-S-T-Y.  These tacos are on the small side, but I wouldn’t consider them mini-tacos. The soft steamed corn tortillas are around CD sized and properly dual-layered for strength. Placed flat with a mound of meat and toppings in the middle, you are in command of how you pick them up and fold them. You are always free to grab any fixings or squirt red or green sauce on them, but I only chose to put the green on one of the three I ordered as the marinade looked like it was going to pack more than enough flavor.  It certainly did, and the pork was tender but had that grilled bite.   Tacos here have no cheese, lettuce or cabbage.  The meat does the speaking, and the toppings are more of a fine tuning then a condiment.

Back in 2004 Corel did a similar thing to my favorite graphics editor, Paint Shop Pro, as I fear will happen to Los Taquitos.  I had stumbled upon and fallen in love with paint shop pro years before (around version 7). I had been looking for a editor that could  do things I noticed people were doing in Photoshop at the time, but without the heavy price tag.  What I found was made at the time by a company called Jasc. Paint Shop Pro 7 was a wonderfully powerful graphic editor that while mostly Raster, had Vector capabilities.  It used a layer based approach very similar to Photoshop and had very similar tools and layout as well. One was also able to use Photoshop compatible plug-ins, so access to the powerful third party plug ins like Alien Skins line, was right there. I soon discovered that the that at least for me, PSP was probably a better fit than Photoshop anyway. PSP was more intuitive and its vector tools really shined at ground up creation of digital graphics, and wasn’t to shabby at photo editing and graphic design applications. PSP also had a interesting and diverse user community that really leaned toward the crafty and creative side, rather than then the slick and professional that Adobe products seamed to call to.  I got every new version as soon as it was available, and combed the Internet for new tutorials, plug-ins, tubes and other things the PSP community would come up with. Then right around when I was waiting to get version 9 it happened, Corel bought Jasc. Corel was a much bigger player in graphic software, but continually seemed to be loosing ground to Adobe.  Corels software blanketed over PSP though. It was like a big tool box, compared to the Swiss army knife PSP was.  I really didn’t see where PSP fit, in their lineup, and It came to be that I don’t think Corel did either.  They went about right away cutting away PSP crafty background and creative community, and have been since trying to squeak the image out of PSP as a slick bargain photo editing app.  I really wish they had maintained PSP as the sharp all around editor that continually poked at Photoshop in its utter usefulness.   So sad too, version 9, the last to be labeled by Jasc, was a masterpiece of usability, expandability and potential. It had a Python scripting engine, new photo tools, for the first time had at least some form of CMYK export.  I have tried Corels newer versions, but see that they have tucked many of PSPs great tools behind the scenes (some can only be activated in configuration) and maybe even removed some, in favor of some digital camera user market share, that in my mind don’t really want or need something like PSP anyway.   Ironically the market they seem to be after, looks to be ready to move to online apps or go to free software like picasa. As Adobe looks to be moving in this direction, I suspect they will get there first again.  The PSP tutorial, tube and frame sites and portals are full of dead links and remnants of a grand time and great program.   They went for the masses with it and really missed it’s true calling.  Corel tried to build it up but really brought it down.  Corel really ruined that taco shop.