The Case For More Veggie Burritos

A friend of mine who is vegetarian asked me about the best veggie burritos I have had. This made me realize two things: 1. though a quality selection of vegetarian options exist like here and here, there are too few represented in this blog, and 2. I eat A LOT of meat.

To do the math of how many animals I have consumed is kind of shocking. One serving of meat equals one animal -- maybe -- per meal. Bacon for breakfast, turkey sandwich for lunch, and an asada burrito for dinner is at least 3 animals. Multiply that by 365 days for the last 20 years, and I am confronted with an astounding figure of over 20,000 animals.

I don't eat meat for every meal, but for every meatless meal there is probably a barbecue somewhere with a smorgasbord of chicken, sausage, and steaks to rack up the total.

This does not weigh down on me. I don't lose sleep over the food I consume, nor do I have any strong feelings one way or another what any person chooses to do with their diet. One of the quickest ways to see my eyes fog over is to mention "no harm" diets or list all the ways one idea is superior to the other.

That being said, I do believe the future of humanity will be vegetarian. Not because everyone will develop a distaste for meat, but because SCIENCE!

Scientists at the University of Missouri worked more than a decade developing a soy-based chicken substitute with all of the textures and look of chicken. Plant-based proteins have become so sophisticated when the labels on two different chicken salads, one meat-based and one plant-based, were accidentally swapped in production no one was the wiser until the company came forward to admit fault.

Soyrizo is a healthier alternative with nearly identical flavor and texture to traditional chorizo. Whenever the option is available, I'll go soyrizo every time.

Eliminating the need for massive farming operations, slaughterhouses, manure lagoons, and all of the resources going towards the raising and maintaining of millions of animals requires a meat substitute that is as tasty and, most importantly as cheap.

I think the main reason people are so quick to defend an omnivorous diet is socioeconomical. In America a McDonald's hamburger is cheaper and more readily available than an assemblage of produce needed to create a salad. As long as it is cheaper to eat meat vegetarianism will never be a viable option to the vast majority of the world's population.

Personally, I love meat. The vast array of flavors within a single cow boggles my mind and gets my salivary glands all worked up, but I'm willing to admit if I could experience all of it and never force a person to work slave wages in a field, harm another cow, or destroy the environment, I would prefer to be a vegetarian.

What this boils down to, for this blog anyway, is an attempt on my part to incorporate more vegetarian reviews. I want to be able to point towards the best chili relleno burrito just as easy as I do the best arrachera. More burritos for all!

Velo Rouge Cafe - Monday Morning Breakfast Burrito

And we're back. I apologize for the long delay, but I did some travelling, some vacationing, and then a lot of catch up work. Let us start fresh this beautiful Monday morning with a vegetarian option found in the lovely town of San Francisco.

Velo Rouge Cafe down on Arguello Blvd. is a swanky spot to grab some light grub. The menu sports only one burrito with add meat options of bacon or sausage. However, I opted for the traditional Leipheimer breakfast burrito foregoing the meat to see how satisfying a veggy breakfast can be.

When the plate hit the table a smile my face never knew emerged as I gazed on pure burrito perfection. A clean cut on the bias exposed black beans, cheese, avocado, sour cream, eggs, potatoes, and salsa fresca all within a golden brown grilled tortilla.

This breakfast bombshell employs pleasant unexpected flavors. Such fresh complexity demands a pristine meatless experience as crunch precedes mouth fulls of bliss. Black beans and potatoes provide a pleasing resistance and savory component in place of bacon or sausage. An improvement. Not a substitute.

How satisfying can a veggy breakfast be? The most. I want you forever in my life, Leipheimer BB. Never leave.

Any Suggestions?

I would like to begin by saying thank you to everyone who has liked, reblogged, subscribed, or even took the time out to read this collection of burrito reviews. Your support and suggestions make this a rewarding endeavor more so than I ever expected.

So far I have created a twitter, tumblr, and blogspot for Burrito Life, but I would like to continue expanding and offering more for the readership. Would more visual content with burrito-themed posts to pad out the days in between reviews be helpful/fun? I want to keep the focus of this blog on burrito reviews, but if I can make the site more interesting with a diverse array of supplemental content, then let me know.

The question I am most often asked, "what's the best burrito?" is a tough one given the subjectivity in tastes not to mention the complex creations that are burritos. My question to you, reader, is what kind of lists would you like to see? Top asada, best breakfast burritos, spiciest chile verde and other lists documenting the best I've found in each category could be made, and clear links then added to the homepage.

Speaking of a homepage, I am thinking about creating a source webpage that seeds the tumblr, blog, and twitter. This way tumblr feeds are no longer filled with huge blocks of text, and the media isn't so diluted across the different social networks. If you are interested in finishing the article, simply click the read more.

This would also allow me to provide more tools to you in which to search the blog. I'd like suggestions on what kinds of links you'd like to see on the page. I'm thinking an FAQ and reviews by location are of the utmost importance, but any ideas as to what I could add?

T shirts are in the concept stage, but I want to make something nice. Once the art is nailed down I will start shopping around for the manufacturer.

Once again, thank you so very much. The people I've met and conversations I've had because of this blog make it more than worth it. You guys are truly amazing, and I'm glad to share my burrito experiences with you. Please comment, message, or shoot me an ask for all suggestions.

Sincerly,
Jimmy Holliday aka BurritoShepherd

Taco Truck Tuesday - Taqueria Tacambaro

After compiling a list of every taco truck I could find in the Kern county area my first stop was a little hidden truck on Olive Drive in a gas station parking lot called Taqueria Tacambaro. Promising handmade torillas and sporting a healthy amount of patrons gathered under the adjacent tent I had a good feeling about this one.

Most everyone there was eating nachos. Huge piles of chips covered with every ingredient that has ever graced a nacho looked glorious, but this is not Nacho Life.

I order the Asada burito for simplicity's sake, and wait a healthy amount of time for my burrito to be prepared. Whenever it comes out quickly in a one-man taco truck outfit BEWARE!

A clean brick of a burrito is served neatly with a lemon wedge and salsa cup, and my mouth is beginning to water.

Ain't nothing wrong with my first bite, so it has to be right. The steak carries the burrito as it should with a supporting cast of beans, rice, lettuce, cheese, and sour cream. It's exceptionally satisfying and more than enough food to satiate the hungriest of us.

It may seem a bit expensive with the $7 price tag, but with handmade tortillas and quality ingredients I cannot complain. If charging an extra dollar nets quality gains as opposed to the majority of haphazard slapdashery that passes for burritos, then I will gladly pay $2. Too often have I been burned by the promises of a $10 restaurant burrito.

Please excuse me, I think I hear nachos calling my name.

FAFU Friday - Del Taco

 Over the years Del Taco has found a place in my heart by pushing Taco Bell into obscurity. Heavier reliance on seasoned meat rather than gimmicky sauces, ground beef that actually resembles ground beef, and an overall less expensive menu with seemingly higher quality ingredients have more than swayed my opinion on the superior fast food Mexican spot of choice. I find myself almost excited to review some of the new Epic burritos.

For this review we will be taking a look at the Steak & Potato and Chicken Chipotle Ranch burritos.

Chicken Chipotle Ranch

First, the bad. The CCR burrito hosts two sauces, pico de gallo, AND guacamole to accompany fresca lime rice, bacon, lettuce, cheddar cheese, and grilled chicken. Seems like a bit much, but when I tasted the chicken, I needed every bit of sauce to take the edge off the over-powering black pepper. The chicken tasted as if it had been encrusted with black pepper for days. The rice is flavorless and mushy without a hint of lime. This burrito needs to be simplified down to the BLTA it is trying to be.

Steak & Potato

The Steak & Potato, on the other hand, is a straight forward California burrito crinkle-cut fries and all. Sour cream, cheese, and a chipotle sauce add an appreciated creamy respite from the meat and potatoes combo. I've had great California burritos, and this option here is a solid substitution for those outside the realm of acquisition.

A notable difference between the two is the use of sauces. The S&P employs the chipotle sauce traditionally: accentuating and elevating the contents. Where as the CCR's sauces seem to mask and, at times, dominate the burrito which creates a wash of pseudo-spicy blandness.

Both are only $5, but for my money I'll go with the Steak & Potato every time. It does an adequate job recreating the flavors found at yellow sign Mexican spots in Southern California, and for a widespread fast food joint to even get close to such perfection is a thing of beauty.

The smallest voice, "burrito life."

Burritos With My Grandfather

I started the day looking for a new burrito spot. I did not start the day looking to be leveled by nostalgia.

I was driving down North Chester towards La Tapatia which happens to be a lot of Bakersfield's first experience with Mexican food, but I've never once eaten there because my grandfather always took me across the street a few businesses down to El Taquito.

See, this small shack on a broken asphalt slab was right across from his then favorite bar Bud's which later turned into the Long Branch. He spent many a night drinking, fighting, and earning the stories he would one day impart to me across a small wooden table in the brick corner of the burrito joint across the street.

My grandfather ran a lawn service of sorts, and, on the days I would help, we would head over to El Taquito dragging our heels towards the day's beginning. He would tell me, "You can never be late. You arrive when you get there." I may have lost a few jobs over that bit of advice, but I've been able to keep a few more hairs than he had at my age.

Plied with chips and salsa, my grandfather would jump from story to story whether it was about the time he knocked a guy out and his head went under the cigarette machine saving him from further pummeling or the time his wife shot him after she and my great-grandmother were good and drunk arguing over who was going to pull the trigger.

This was the only time in my life when I felt equal with Jim. Like both of our voices were valid. When we were out earning money together, eating asada burritos, and shooting the shit over a bowl of chips. He gave up drinking before I could ever get one in, so the the Coke's over crushed-ice would have to do.

Now, I'm older, and I'm not much on family. Too many wrongs demanding too much to ever make it right have left me stronger and more independent, but sometimes I can feel the hole. It sneaks in and spreads out during quiet times, and then I'm stuck waxing poetic through the dirty window of a taco shop as an old junky pedals his daughter around in the basket of a beat up bicycle.

I savor the asada taco in between bites of everything else. Holding on to it, knowing that the steak is the last thing I want to taste this morning. I mix the pico de gallo with the red sauce like we always did. I spooned it over everything like we always did. But I'm alone, there is no conversation, and I can see his gap-toothed smile like a ghost pulled up a chair.

The man behind the counter didn't understand what I meant when I said I used to have breakfast here with my grandfather. Why I tipped $5 for the $10 meal. I recognized him from when I was a kid, but I'm sure he didn't recognize me. But maybe someday someone will look back on a meal we shared and the good hurt will wash over them, reminding them to slow down and savor what you have with those you love.

Delimart - Bakersfield, CA

If you ask most any oilfield worker, shop hand, or truck driver in the Rosedale area where to get the best breakfast burrito, the majority will steer you towards a convenience store on the corner of Rosedale Hwy and Fruitvale Ave, and the majority would be lying.

Delimart serves up all the typical diner foods, but the breakfast crowd comes for one of two things: the biscuits and gravy or the humongous breakfast burritos.

I'm a large dude with a good appetite, and finishing one half of the petite burrito at Delimart is a monumental task. Any sane person ordering the regular sized BB solely for themselves needs to be reevaluated.

Scrambled eggs, hash browns, and cheddar cheese make up the base to which ham, bacon, sausage, or the combo, consisting of all three, can be added. My own spin is The Big Bad Wolf doing the burrito combo style and adding gravy inside to blow the three little pigs down.

The misconception with Delimart's BB is that biggest translates to best. I prefer a smaller more concentrated effort in my burritos with the focus being on flavor and consistency. When burritos begin to take on the weight, cost, and dimensions of a brick, I tend to lose interest. One has to question the quality of a $5 dollar burrito that weighs upwards of 2 pounds.

I pleaded with the cashier to cook down the hash browns until they are well done, but he told me the potatoes, eggs, and cheese are all in a mix and preparing them any other way would be impossible. Thus, I received hash whites and a bunch of meat flotsam on this final voyage to Delimart for breakfast.

There is no body to this burrito. Everything chews like paste providing zero depth or separation of flavor. The gravy is of the bland white variety, but does a good job melting down the bag cheese. There's Tapatio and Pace salsa cups on offer, but nothing really helps wash away the whiteness.

There are better options on Rosedale highway for a BB fix like here or here, so don't waste your time with this one.

King Taco, Los Angeles

Let's get one thing clear before I divulge my experiences with King Taco. They make a good taco for a good price, and I could eat 10 of them. They pile on the asada, there's good spicy red salsa, and the onions and cilantro deliver as one would expect from a quality Taqueria.

Now, if I really wanted 10 tacos, would I be willing to put up with the overall experience of ordering at King Taco? Hmm...

I guess that's a long line...

When I arrived there was a bit of a line. Maybe 15 people were ahead of me, not Pink's level, but enough to assume the place is doing something right. The tables all seemed to be filled with patrons not eating but waiting to receive their orders while only two of the three registers available were taking orders.

All told D and I were in line for close to 30 minutes until we were allowed to order some tacos, a nacho, and an al pastor burrito because their huge pork spit was seducing me with its slow turns. Another 15 minutes before our food is called out, and I am able to survey this chronophagic assemblage.

The first thing I notice is how small this burrito I just paid $6 for is, and I'm cautiously optimistic in hoping they aren't skimping on ingredients so -- blah blah balh big things in small packages blah blah -- nope, none of that.

I thought it may have been overly-cooked onions mixed with the raw or possibly heavy use of cilantro, but something was definitely off in the al pastor flavor department. Nothing blends in the burrito, so every bite is an unpleasant hodgepodge of mediocre ingredients.

The nachos took me back to high school lunch lines with the chips being poured out of a 5 pound bag into a bin with Chernobyl yellow cheese sauce pumped out on top. Hardly the stuff of kings, but one may be fooled by the $5 chips and cheese price tag.

I'm almost certain my high school wasn't staffed with above-average, volunteer, teenage food service workers, so I can't imagine why it took them so long to assemble this meal. Perhaps what is even more vexing is why anyone would wait around for this quality of food when Los Angeles hosts more Mexican food restaurants and taco trucks than any other place in the US.

Over-priced food, under-whelming flavors, and thoroughly disappointing wait times leaves me shaking rather than bowing my head to King Taco.

Doctor Strangebreakfast: or how I learned to stop worrying and love poverty (Part 2)

¡Escribe Ahora!

"Write Now Wednesdays" is the day I take time to explain facets of Burrito Life or expand opinions touched upon in previous articles. This week we present the conclusion to last week's story by guest contributor, Devon Ashby.

These tortilla-wrapped masterpieces typically contained cheese – Havarti was a favorite when affordable, but shredded cheddar was my fallback. If it was really a hard-up week, different wet ingredients were substituted for the cheese (or added, just for the hell of it). Chorizo was my standby meat ingredient — beef, pork, cured and uncured – but bacon, diced ham, sausage in its many glorious forms, and even soyrizo all made appearances. The Beverly Discount Market at the end of our block routinely stocked 6-count bags of fresh tortillas, delivered from a bakery just a few streets up, so all I had to do when I ran out of wrappers was put on my shoes and walk to the corner. Other rotating guest stars included black beans, red beans, garlic cloves, fresh cilantro, avocado, rice of many colors and textures, grilled peppers, fresh and stewed tomatoes, and an impressive array of hot sauces and salsas.
 
To this day, breakfast burritos are an important signifier for me, and they’re special for a couple different reasons. I didn’t have a car and there was never enough money for gas anyway, so the frequent need to replenish my stash of ingredients forced me to actually leave my house and explore my own neighborhood. I was living right outside Koreatown in Los Angeles, an area dominated by Guatemalan and Salvadorean small businesses. By going out on foot so many times looking for shredded cheddar or chorizo, I realized that my neighborhood was a fucking goldmine – not just of fresh tortillas, chicharonnes and Guatemalan pastries, but of huge, gorgeous painted mural art. I spent whole afternoons just hoofing up and down the street, gawking at DIY signage for various toy stores, religious icon emporiums, electronic repair shops, and carnicerias, and occasionally wandering inside to examine stacks of 30 year old video game cartridges or mirrored, glass-protected displays of false teeth.

A tortilla stuffed with cheese, meat, and vegetables isn’t the healthiest food on the planet, or the most technically sophisticated. But the cheapness, availability, and raw creative potential of my ingredients usually added up to a pretty happy medium between flavor, nutrition, and affordability. This was the first time in my life I had to make choices about how to manage my resources and take care of myself, and coming home to a meal cooked in 10 minutes that flooded my tastebuds with ecstasy, contained fresh vegetables, and could be held with one hand while watching Jeopardy was one of the few recurring experiences in my life that made me feel I might actually be capable of someday getting my shit together.
 
Most importantly, without fully realizing what was happening, I had the chance to get really good at something, just by doing it over and over again, while still leaving myself some room to play around and experiment. This is probably the most important skill set I’ve ever learned, and the rest of my life’s formative experiences have pretty much just been variations on that same theme over and over again. Breakfast burritos taught me how to be an artist, and how to be an adult. I salute them.