Word to the wise: never order fish tacos at a pizza place.  More specifically, the new fish tacos at California Pizza Kitchen should be avoided at all costs.  The flour tortilla is stale, the fish is gummy, and the chips it comes with are straight out of a Doritos bag: triple yuck.  Why on earth would you order a fish taco at a pizza place to begin with, you might ask.  It’s like those people who try to order a cheeseburger at Arby’s. Touché I might respond.  Except, I am one of those people. Or at least when I was 17 I was,  and the conversation went something like this:

Arby’s Counter

Me: I’d like a cheeseburger with no pickles and a chocolate shake please.

Cashier: (BLANK STARE)  Have you ever been to Arby’s before?

Me: No. Why?

Cashier: (Profusely rolling eyes.)  We-don’t-sell-cheese-bur-gers.

Me: What? That’s absurd.  (Start looking around and noticing all of the pictures of roast beef.  This place is weird.  I don’t want a roast beef sandwich.  I want a cheeseburger. With a milk shake. Because I’m high.)

I think Arby’s eventually wised up and started selling cheeseburgers, but I never stepped foot in one again.

Anyway, you get the idea. So, today when I sat down for lunch at CPK my eyes were immediately drawn to the picture of the fish tacos on the little fold-out thing they keep on the table for people exactly like me.  Weak people.  Easily influenced.  People who love fish tacos even though they know that the probability of that taco tasting anything remotely like it should is very low in a pizza place.  But the picture was so pretty.

I want to remind you here that I am not a professional food reviewer.  Obviously.  I say this only because I don’t feel bad in the least telling you that that thing I put in my mouth today was not a fish taco.  It was a stain on the existence of all that is good and right in the world. A blasphemous imitation lost in a sea of thousand island dressing drowning in watery salsa.

Think I’m being histrionic? You’re lucky you weren’t actually present when I bit into it.