Addicted to Chipotle
Burritos are supposed to be big, but this one may have been too big.
Are you addicted to Chipotle? I’m not talking about chipotle peppers, but Chipotle – the growing restaurant chain that’s owned by the McDonalds Corp. I must confess, I like Chipotle just as much as the next guy, but I’ve had better. Call me a burrito connoiseur if you will, but I’ve spent the majority of my life eating burritos. Growing up in Northern California, there are always a lot of migrant workers around and I can remeber the Taco Cart truck pulling into my grandfathers yard in order to feed the work crew. That was probably my earliest memory of eating burritos.
In high school, I would drive acrosss town to get to the Taco Cart for lunch. When I was stationed in San Diego I found Fred’s Burrito Shop in Old Town San Diego – Pretty tasty burritos and they have a rubber chicken in the kitchen. Everytime the wife and I got to San Diego, we go to Fred’s.
In college, I had my brother drive from California to Oregon, just to bring me my Taco Cart burritos. I even mourned the loss of the Taco Cart when I learned that the original Taco Cart had caught fire and was destroyed a few years back.
When I lived in Oregon, some friends and I would take lunch at the Original Burrito Amigos in Eugene. Talk about killer burritos – Don’t take my word for it, check out the reviews here. We would bring about 5-10 bottles of hot sauce between us and eat until we were sweating and crying. Talk about good food.
Now, for those of you that live in Oregon, you know that there are two competing chains, Burrito Boy and Burrito Amigos. If you’re living in Oregon and have never been to either of these places, please just stop reading this blog and go get yourself some greasy goodness. Buy one for me too!
Now that I live in NYC you would think that there would be a wealth of burrito places for me to try out. I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am with the burrito scene of NYC. There’s a restaurant called ‘Burritoville‘ that we tried out when we first moved here. The burritos weren’t bad, but the entire menu was health oriented. I don’t want a whole wheat burrito with tofu anywhere near my food. When buying a burrito I want choices of meat I’ve never heard of like Cabeza & Lengua. (Yes, those were on the Taco Cart menu) Call me old fashioned, but I like my burritos.
We live in Midtown Manhattan, so you would think that there would be a lot of food choices in the area, which there are, but these places cater to the Theatre crowd and not necessarily the ‘foodie’ crowd. I’ve heard rumors that there are some good burrito joints up near Harlem, but I’ve yet to make it up there. Frankly, I just want to find a good breakfast burrito place. I’m tired of bagels and cream cheese for breakfast. I want a heart clogging burrito with lots of salsa on it. Is that too much to ask?
Burrito Sites:
Yeah, I been to Chipotle before. Twice I believe and I wasn’t able to find anything to eat that would bring me back. Excellent Mexican food in the San Francisco Bay Area is easy to find, for the most part. In fact, some guy in our neighborhood has been selling Tomales door to door every Saturday. I bought 12 last weekend, hooyah. Now if THAT ain’t a good use for hot sauce, I don’t know what is!
Oh, speaking of large burritos. Some years ago I used to do the following (phycically can’t now). Ya know how on burrito menus they say, extra meat 1.25 or howmuchever? Well, I used to order Double Meat, Double Beans, Double Cheese, Double Rice, double guac, you get the idea. The cooks would point and smile and shake their heads. Sometimes they used 3 or 4 large burrito tortillas to hold it all. These would drape over the sides of the dinner plate. The best part was going out with my coworker on one occasion. He wasn’t paying attention to what I ordered and just said, “I’ll have whatever he ordered.” YEAH !!!! I didn’t say a thing. That was awesome how that was.
Biggles
I am addicted to Chipotle. I get 2 scoops of their hot salsa on my double steak (bean-free)burrito with cheese and I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and often do.
I grew up in Los Angeles and I could get Mexican food anywhere I went – even the Roach Coaches had good tacos. I could even buy a few pounds of prepared carne asada and grill it myself.
Now I’m sad and lonely without my mexican food out here in NY, NY. No tortas, real gorditas, carne asada, al pastor, etc, etc…