As I woke up this morning bleary eyed and slightly incoherent I noticed an article on our local sfgate.com about the “California Burrito.” WTF?!?! I guess I’m getting old, but when the burrito came north from Mexico it was beans and rice with a little mystery meat and maybe a little cheese. Californians and Californian-Mexicans wanted a little more since our state has an abundance of produce so they took beans, rice, cheese, guacamole, salsa, sour cream plus the meat of your choice and sometimes a few more veggies [El Toro Taqueria adds peas and carrots to their burrito which is just wrong to me, but I don’t want to get off track]. This became known as the California Burrito.
Now some foodie terrorists in San Diego have infiltrated San Francisco and introduced what they call the “California Burrito.” It got carne asada [steak for you gringos], guacamole, sour cream and FRENCH FRIES! French fries in a burrito?! I’m sorry, that’s just wrong. It’s like a Mexican version of Primante’s in Philadelphia that puts fries on their sandwiches for the truck drivers to eat on the go. In San Francisco, the burrito is like ambrosia any taqueria you go into sells more burritos than tacos first off and the clientele covers just about every race we have in the city. We know burritos. San Diego which probably has a larger hispanic population than SF apparently does not. What’s next? Hot dog burritos? The culprit here is a place called Taqueria Los Coyotes. I suspect it will start showing up in more places just like the baja fish taco did. Fish tacos I don’t have a problem with since they started in Baja and moved here pretty much unchanged. But fries in a burrito I’m not so sure about.
Now I’ll have to eat my words and try one before I condemn it fully. I still have to say though that the best burrito is found outside the Mission District. [Ducks and runs for cover]