Growing up, our family didn’t eat tacos. Largely because we lived in a country where no one had heard of tacos (Japan in the 60s and 70s). I knew of Taco Bell. I must have eaten there the few times we visited the US during my growing-up years. Taco Bell tacos were tacos: hard shell, flavored ground beef, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream if I felt like it. Everything else? Not a taco. I didn’t know what it was, but my certainty never wavered. A hard-shell taco is the real taco.

Fast-forward decades and enter the adult me. I watched Samin Norsat eat flimsy tacos in her Netflix show based on her book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Aghast that no one on the show fact-checked what a real taco is, she ate away her taco. I later learned the flimsy taco is also called a soft-shell taco. Soft taco? Soft taco? When did the taco become soft?

“You’re being tricked!” I wanted to scream at my laptop screen. “They’re not giving you the real taco because you’re not ‘one of them’.” This I followed with, “You’re being pranked!” which then I followed with, “You wrote a cookbook. How did you not research this?”

I kept these feelings to myself for years because I knew there was a divide between what I knew/assumed and what was true. That’s the polite way of saying this arrogance didn’t appear until I lived in the US again. Every taco truck and Mexican restaurant I went to had soft-shell tacos on their menu. I knew a lot but, but only because no one told me about soft-shell tacos, and because I didn’t know to ask. I knew a bit about tacos, and I took that small bit of knowledge and applied it to all tacos. “I know what a taco is because I ate one at Taco Bell way back when,” I told myself and believed it.

Today I know better. I, of all people, do not get to decide what a real taco is. Period. There’s a lesson in this, folks.

And, that’s where I’m leaving it today.