Your weekly burrito consumption

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/rids/20060502/i/r2048252209.jpg

Is a burrito a sandwich? The Panera Bread Co. bakery-and-cafe chain says yes. But a judge said no, ruling against Panera in its bid to prevent a Mexican restaurant from moving into the same shopping mall.

[...]

Among them was Cambridge chef Chris Schlesinger, who said in an affidavit: "I know of no chef or culinary historian who would call a burrito a sandwich. Indeed, the notion would be absurd to any credible chef or culinary historian."

If I are making Mexican food at home ("chilli" doesn't count, even if you squirt some lime on it, right?) I make TACOS, which is chilli inside a strange large bendy crisp with some cheese on it. You can also have FAJITAS which involve peppers and WRAPS.

I think - in 2000?? - I went to a Mexican restaurant in Camden. I had a burger and got food poisoning.

I have, however, learnt from VERONICA MARS that when you go to "Tijuana", you call it "Tee Jay"! But she didn't say anything about burritos. I'm sorry.

salad burrito: classic or misguided hippie utopianism?

i have feta cheese and hummus as the binding agents, croutons as the internal starch, lavash as the tortilla.

my girl just bought a george foreman grill. can i make burritos in those?

sure!

i've made quesadillas on the foreman and they came out great!

OK, now I eat at Wahoo's like 4 times a week.

who the hell grills burritos

Taco Bell?

They also stuff them.

i heart wahoo's

I had a burrito today!

burrito for lunch yesterday, one for dinner on super tuesday too

Wahoo's is like the best semi-fast food ever.

jbr that sounds like a veggie shawarma.

Jonathan Gold FTW

Dear Mr. Gold:

I have a friend in town from Berkeley who loves burritos. What do you suggest? I'm thinking of ignoring her habit and forcing her to go to for mole at La Tia instead, but she seems set in her ways.

--Erica, Los Angeles

Dear Erica:

Bay Area residents tend to have peculiar ideas about burritos, which they regard as monstrous things wrapped in tinfoil, and filled with what would seem to be the contents of an entire margarita-mill dinner, including grilled meat, rice, beans, guacamole, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, orange cheese, and probably a lot of other things that neither God nor man ever intended to see the inside of a tortilla, much less the soggy steamed pup-tents that are but mandatory up north.

If you want to show your friend that San Francisco has no patent on the oversize burrito, you could always drag her to El Tepeyac over on Evergreen, where the Manuel's Special or Hollenbeck, which is to the Mexican-American table what a giant plate of spaghetti and meatballs is to the Italian one, is massive enough to feed a family of four for a weekend. If you want to show her the burritos that generations of Angelenos have snarfed after Dodger games, there's always the original Burrito King on Sunset at Alvarado, although the chile verde isn't quite the elixir I remember from the misty days of Fernandomania.

But if you would like to prove that Angelenos had been eating burritos for decades, when the Mission was still an unreconstructed Irish neighborhood, take her to Al & Bea's, a block down from the new Hollenbeck police station in Boyle Heights. Al & Bea's isn't fancy, and your choice of burrito is basically limited to red and green, but what it churns out by the hundreds is the lean, classic Los Angeles burrito: refried beans, a bit of cheese, and a ladleful of stew if you want it, a reminder of the burrito's origins as a way to turn a bit of the previous night's dinner into a delicious, transportable taste of home.
--Jonathan Gold

Al & Bea's
2025 East First St., Boyle Heights, (323) 267-8810.

:( I LIKE my burritos to have every possible condiment and vegetable in them (minus cilantro, mind). Give me the SF version, pls.

i like em both ways, alot. basically i just love any kind of burrito

due to my relocation to the West Side of St Paul, my burrito consumption in the last year is up like 100000000%

Some of us like those super burritos, Mr. Gold.

My lunch today will be a frozen burrito and a can of Red Bull.
One day, in a hospital bed, I'll wonder if it was all worth it.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, August 5, 2005 1:03 PM Bookmark

Ha, it was less than two years later that that prophecy fulfilled itself.

so was it all worth it?

The prophecy was fulfilled and so was I.

gold is making a weak case for LA burritoes

I found a place near my house that sells chile rellenos burritos with TWO rellenos in them (wrapped in beans & then MORE asadero cheese!). Fucking joyous.

now that Burritoville is dead (RIP), I do not eat burritos

My favorite lunch at work item is the burrito (made with whatever's in my fridge, so not very authentic in any way). My favorite lunch at home item is the quesadilla. Probably only buy burritos once, maybe twice a month...I'd shell out for chile rellenos burritos though.

I don't like rice in the burrito. The tortilla is enough starch.

My chicken burrito has caramelized onions (cooked in red wine and brown sugar), refried black beans, jack cheese and chicken shredded and moistened with salsa. Serve with huge dollops of guacamole and sour cream. Damn good. Can do the same with ground or shredded beef.

http://fashionablygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/burrito-glasses.jpg

is that like beer goggles?

I thought it was a roll of burrito paper.

you know that part in trains planes and automobiles where Del Griffith was all "i haven't been home in years" and then Neal Paige thinks about it a lot, all voice echoing in his head and stuff

well i haven't had a good burrito in years

nm, dry spell broken

got a california burrito from my favorite taco shop in the World (victoria's on main and lincoln in el cajon) and took it to torrey pines state beach for the eating

http://i48.tinypic.com/dh3g4k.jpg

a california is carne asada and fries btw, less a burrito newb not know it

wait, so it has fries inside the burrito?

¡claro! eating the fries on the side would just make the burrito a burger i think.

I think I've actually had a burrito from there - it was excellent. I was in El Cajon for all of three days.

really? down the street from city hall, next door to a chaldean market? it's my all-time favorite, my friend used to live in the taft apartments behind it and we'd always stumble over there to get our late-night burritage. el compadre on second street, right off the 8, is also good and features the popular drive-thru thru the a-frame setup. el cajon is my hometown, i'm glad you had a favorable visit, burrito-wise anyway.

My weekly burrito consumption might increase in the near future. There's a new Meixcan foodtruck at 16th & Callowhill in Philadelphia (right near a major INS office).

This truck turned out to be owned and run by an Indonesian couple who had been taught by Mexicans. Obviously, my burrito consumption has increased substantially since moving to Albuquerque.

i haven't had a real burrito in months. i've had burrito bowls from chipotle, but it's not the same. must remedy soon.

i think the last one i had was the carne asada burrito from the la estrella taco truck in highland park, the night i went to see william basinski and lucky dragons.

Moving back to SF from NOLA on Saturday. I'm gonna miss the poboys, but taqueria Cancun here I come!

Do french fries belong inside of burritos? What do you think?

you know, there was a time when people questioned whether or not potatoes belonged inside french fries. nowadays, most people don't even know about that struggle. that's kind of where we are with french fry burritos today, i think