Everyone has a usual. The usual is the meal you order when you have stopped pretending you are going to try the salad. It is your food identity, your order at 1 a.m., the thing the register person knows before you do. And now, for four dollars, you can order somebody else’s.
Taco Bell launched “Kevin Hart’s Usual” this week: a Burrito Supreme, a Crunchy Taco, and a medium fountain drink, the comedian’s reported go-to, on menus nationwide through October 19. He is the first in a series of celebrities whose eating habits have been deemed a public utility. Paris Hilton’s and Doja Cat’s usuais follow, which means that by November, for the price of a parking meter, Americans will be able to eat exactly like three people they have never met.
The internet’s reaction was immediate and, as always, correct: the real news is that a man of Kevin Hart’s means and access eats the same Burrito Supreme a night-shift nurse eats. This is the great equalizer of the value menu. The rich have yachts, estates, and chefs — and at 11 p.m., they have the same Crunchy Taco as everyone else, standing in the same parking lot, in the same car, thinking the same thoughts.
We asked a few customers what their own usual is, since apparently that’s a question you can now ask strangers.
Darnell, 19, a college sophomore, ordered the Hart combo and ate it in his car in four minutes flat. “It’s exactly what I thought it was,” he said, which is the highest compliment fast food can receive. “It’s what I would get. I would get this. I’m basically him now.”
Maria, 44, a dental assistant, ordered her own usual instead — two Bean Burritos, one mild, one not, “there’s no in-between” — and called the celebrity meal a nice idea for tourists. “Kevin Hart comes here, he gets what everybody gets,” she said. “That’s not a celebrity meal. That’s Tuesday.”
Dr. Ellen Marsh, a nutritionist who asked that her clinic not be named, was asked for a medical opinion and immediately regretted giving one. “The Burrito Supreme,” she said carefully, “is a food group that exists in its own jurisdiction.” She paused. “I have one on Thursdays. This story is off the record.”
The combo runs through October 19, which gives Americans five days to eat like a millionaire, and then the menu reverts, the way it always does, to the true national cuisine: whatever the person in front of you ordered, but for you, tomorrow.