Not Worth Complete Sentences

Warned by friends. Went anyway. 2984 Russell St, Berk. Bad idea. Crowded for some reason. Nonexistent chips. Worse salsa :




























Squirt bottles. Ugh. Practically water. Soggy burrito:




























Flavorless. Messy. Ten napkins. Out-of-bounds :

























Cheese/mucus ambiguity. A pig in a cage on antibiotics.

La Cascada con Raj

As promised, Raj and I returned to La Cascada so I could get better pictures. Here's one of them :




























That's from the 2975 College Ave, Berk location we visited. Another friend claims the food from the Center Street location is noticeably different, so there might be a follow-up review in the future. I figured La Cascada would appeal to Raj, pictured below, because of the extensive and tasty vegetarian options.




























I was right. You see, even though you pretty much only see my carnivorous side on this here blog, I have been known to consume the occasional vegetarian burrito. Entirely too often, that means a bean and cheese burrito with lettuce and tomato. Weak. But not at Cascada, where they have squash, string beans, eggplant, mushrooms, peppers, and on and on. In case that sounds like a gross burrito, let me point out that La Cascada has four different vegetarian burritos, none of which contain all of those. I got there after Raj ordered and didn't see what he got or think to ask, but I remember he liked the Picante burrito the time before. Since I was 45 minutes late, Raj was finishing his burrito as I was just hitting the salsa bar, pictured below :















Cropped out of the photo are the out-of-focus signs above the salsas, rating their spiciness with red peppers. From left to right, we have salsa rojo (3 red peppers), limes, salsa la cascada (2 red peppers), onions, jalapeños, cilantro, and something green (I didn't bother looking). There's a 2 cup limit, so I'd suggest one rojo and one cascada, with a lime slice if you're worried that the rojo might be too strong. And you should be worried. My unscientific guess is that the rojo is significantly more than 50% spicier than the cascada. What I usually do is take a few heaping scoops out of the cascada cup with the chips and pour the rojo in the crater. There's a crater because salsa la cascada is the thickest salsa out there. Look at how it holds a chip upright:




























Unlike salsa fresca, though, it's not all solids, so you can scoop it without breaking your chip. It's also delicious. The salsas are for sale, so you can take some home with you if you're so inclined. I've never tried, as I'm not sure the salsas would make it home. As evidence, I submit to you my burrito sporting only rojo because I inhaled all the cascada :




























The burrito was awesome. It didn't displace La Casa Latina from the #1 spot or taste like candy, but I didn't anticipate it dropping from the top 5 any time soon. I say "didn't" because I realized for the first time out of who knows how many trips to Cascada that they had been cheating all along. Look :



























Say cheese!















From left to right : La Cascada, me.

I suppose I didn't notice earlier because cheese shredded that finely melts fast enough that I usually just figured the burrito was extra juicy and delicious. That's my excuse, at least. That said, my money's on the burritos still being awesome after a "hold the cheese" request, which is the plan for the Center Street Cascada review.

La Cascada even cheats with the view from their restaurant. This isn't the outside at all; it's painted by one Cynthia Kelly :























By the way, if you know any other artists whose work has been featured here, let me know so I can credit them. It just never occurred to me earlier.

Spare the Air

Friday was a Spare the Air day and the budget had not yet been depleted, so public transportation was free. That was pretty awesome, so I'm hoping next year's budget will cover all Spare the Air days. Of the friends I contacted, one was sleeping, one was working, and two had plans that involved biking back from San Leandro after a number of beers. So I headed across the bay. I got out at Balboa Park and hopped on a bus, which was free. Eventually, I found myself at 30thish and Mission. I wanted to see how high the numbers went on Mission, so I started walking. After a few blocks, I realized the numbers were decreasing, so I started walking the other way. I had never been to the Sunset during the day before. I like it. After half an hour, I realized that I had no idea how far Mission went, so I changed my goal-- I was going to take it out of the city. I finally made it to Daly City and turned back immediately. Nothing against Daly City; I just had a growling stomach and a new goal : I would eat the southernmost carnitas burrito on Mission in the city.




























Here's where I found it-- 5300 Mission St, the Fran. My brother refuses to eat at any place that shows pictures of the food in the window, so I can only imagine what he'd think of a place that puts pictures of the food on the sign.

They give you the chips




























and salsa




















right away. A thoughtful gesture, but you have to fold the burrito reasonably fast when you do that. You don't want your average customer running out of chips and you really don't want your burritoblogger reducing the cup of salsa to a puddle before he takes his camera out to take pictures of everything. I'm perhaps overly concerned with getting the same burrito everyone else gets, so I try not to let on that I'm documenting anything until I get the burrito, you see. Another reason the salsa disappeared so quickly was that it was the hottest I've had without some sort of warning. The salsas with warnings, from Berkeley Cancun's "Salsa Infierno" to Cascada's Salsa Rojo (they use the o, there's nothing I can do) with the 3 red peppers on the sign to HTB's Nuclear Salsa are all significantly hotter, I just didn't expect much heat at all from this stuff. Now tell me, is this or is this not high-quality foodporn, worth billing to your credit card so long as it shows under a discreet name on your statement:




























They give you an option of salsas to put in the burrito, but the "spicy" salsa didn't meet the expectations raised by what they gave me with the chips. The meat, as you can see, was nice and crusty. Fans of the edge of the roast will feel right at home here. It wasn't out of boredom with the burrito but my rather reckless nature that I found myself experimenting with the bottled salsas. Not squeeze bottles this time, gracias a Dios, but this crew instead :























I first tried the one on the left. I got one drop out of it and it refused to yield any more. When I looked closely to see if there was an obstruction, I noticed that it was for seafood. I couldn't taste the drop on my burrito.

I have a bottle of the one on the right in my fridge. It's good stuff, but then again, it's in my fridge.

I'd recognize the second from the left anywhere. It's for housewives and little girls. Also? That's a white guy with a fake moustache on the front. Nothing against white people. I'm just saying.

That leaves Kutbil-ik. I realize that, despite my awesome photogramaphy, you might not be able to read the "Original Mayan Recipe." I found this a little creepy, eating an extremely hot salsa associated to people associated with predicting the end of the world in 2012. Only just now did I discover that the Mayans didn't predict that at all; they just have a rollover date in 2012, like when your car hits a million miles.

Anyway, back to the salsa. It wasn't fiery. It didn't produce any searing, lasting pain. It was actually pretty smooth. But at the same time, I had no doubt that it was, in fact, extremely hot. I investigated this enigma until a few bites into the second half of the burrito, when my tongue said "that's all I can stands and I can't stands no more!" Oddly enough, I felt fine immediately after stopping. I meant to buy a bottle, but never got a






















Some of the condiments are probably feeling pretty left-out now, so I present them to you in all their extremely-out-of-place glory :























KETCHUP???

The place is pretty sweet. They had the same mirrors as La Bamba, a big honkin' flatscreen TV and sixpacks for sale (although you can't drink there). I wanted to capture two pieces of art, this



























and a couple rather creative Jesus paintings. I don't mean like Jesus as a rabbit with an atomic bomb for a head on a turquoise-and-pink checkerboard background, just a little artsier than the Jesus from the side of the candle. Somebody was obstructing my shot, so you'll just have to check those out for yourself.

Cheap Bait, Watch for Hooks

I hiked to San Pablo in search of a new burrito. I found one place where carnitas weren't on the menu and one that didn't take credit cards. Having no cash on me, I walked up Solano to the bank and back, only to find that the second place was out of carnitas. At this point, I was starving enough to walk into the fancy-looking place without first thinking that there's no way I could afford it.




























Montero's, as you can see, is more than just a Mexican restaurant. This is a great thing for the cheapskate. Instead of charging $8 for a superior burrito, they charge $5.50 and hope you spend a lot more than that on drinks while dancing the night away. In fact, they don't have a "super burrito;" you can add the trifecta of fatty goodness for free. The reviews I've seen focus on the nightspot aspect of Montero's, which is perhaps why the place was nearly deserted when I showed up around 12:30.























You can see why the "Cheap Eats" guy didn't bother glancing at the menu. The chips were a sign of great things to come :























No, that's not a tiny basket. Those are huge, greasy (in the good sense), five-bite chips. Awesome. The salsa photos didn't turn out, but it was of a hearty, chunky brown variety, if not a little lacking in the zing department. Even without any patrons ahead of me, I was amazed at the speed with which my burrito materialized, especially considering the extra decoration on top.

















Fancy, no? Stuff on top of the burrito adds a lot of class. Suddenly, eating the burrito with a fork and knife isn't a dickhead move, it's actually required. Also, it's nice to have some cool foods that can breathe to balance out the hot stuff oppressed in the inside. But it's not a sculpture, it's a burrito. So let's open it up.
























Ah, so there's the salsa. The stuff on top was pretty much as it appeared. I couldn't distinguish the red stuff from tomato sauce. That said, tomato sauce on a burrito works better than, say, sweet and sour sauce on chips. As for the inside, the first bite of pork reminded me of candy, as did the second and third. What the hell? It dawned on me that the pork didn't remind me of candy in general; this was a specific candy I had eaten before. A few more bites jogged my memory : the pork tasted like the Chocolate Orange. This is awesome. When I make carnitas, possibly with the help of a butcher in my fanbase, I'm definitely putting a couple slices in one half of the pan.

Montero's held a few more surprises for me. Are you familiar with the FDA's dietary guidelines that define a serving of meat to be a piece the size of a deck of cards? I found one in my burrito :




























Then I found some corn in my burrito. I've seen corn in my burrito before, but I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, sweet corn may have been responsible for the Chocolate Orange illusion. So that's going in the other half of the pan. Finally, if you order a $3 watermelon agua fresca, it's served to you like so :




























Not that there's anything wrong with that!

You go to Pico,

You take Pico to Colorado
Take Colorado to














And that's how you GET TO LLAMA SCHOOL!

Well, Sifl and Olly got their directions a little mixed up. Las Palmas Taqueria isn't on Colorado, it's on College, 5804 College (Oaktown), to be precise. I hadn't been there in quite some time, owing to a not-so-hot burrito I got a long time ago. Boy was I missing out.

























I was having a bad camera day, but everything on that chip that looks like salt is salt. If that's not enough flavor for your chip, I counted five salsas at the salsa bar. Another review says eight. It's possible that I didn't count the salsa fresca, as that's pretty standard from place to place. I don't know where they might have hidden the other two. There's no suggested two-cup restriction, so I got four salsas, neglecting only the salsa roja in the big bucket.























Counterclockwise from the top :

Pretty standard salsa roja. Maybe the other stuff was spicier.

Pretty standard salsa verde. My views on salsa verde are well-known, though, so you may like it.

Glue with red food coloring? No, not quite. Rubber cement? No, no fumes. Oh, yes! It's sweet and sour sauce! Maybe the salt on the chip or my tolerance for spiciness kept me from determining what differentiates this stuff from sweet and sour sauce with a few suspended pepper seeds. An innovative idea, but ultimately a bad one.

Very watery stuff. I don't know if this is salsa verde or not. Usually salsa verde has so much pepper content that you know that the green comes from green bells. This was so watery that it could just be watered-down pulverized chilis, which would account for the kick. I liked this a lot. If you feel bad about getting more than two salsas, I recommend this one and the red stuff from the big bucket. Let me know how the big bucket fares. Herrrrrrrre's the burrito!
























Remember the time I tried to crush a piece of pork between my tongue and the roof of my mouth? That actually works here. By the way, there are two varieties of pork on the menu and neither is called carnitas. "Traditional spiced pork" or something along those lines seemed like the best approximation, so I went with that. The spices didn't lend much kick to the pork, but that just leaves you more freedom to customize your burrito with various combinations of salsas. Finally, in a why-didn't-I-think-of-that move, they left one end of the aluminum foil unfolded. Folding both ends shut on a for-here burrito only puts time and effort between a hungry customer and his burrito. Thanks!

Sorry for the delay.

I'm three burritos behind now. Or maybe ahead, depending on how you look at it. I've eaten three since the last post. The first was a Cascada burrito, which was excellent yet unbloggable, thanks to my horrible photography. So Raj and I will have to go back there some time.

The next was El Sombrero Tacqueria, 2101 University Ave, the Berk.


















I ate here a lot when I first got to Berkeley, the housing market was horrible, and I was stuck at Francisco & MLK. It wasn't stellar, but as I rediscovered a few days ago, it wasn't horrible, either. Here's the first carnitas burrito I ever got there:



























No foil, broken tortilla. It would seem to be a repeat of the Pico Paco incident, where the filling must be too dry to cause trouble when the foil is forgotten. Thing is. . .



























They just don't give a fuck. I mean, first, we have way too much rice that falls all over the place. Then, their spicy (read : not spicy. Tasty, but not spicy) salsa adds a lot of moisture to the burrito, so my hands got dirty eating both halves. I think I've said all I have to say about salsa in squeeze bottles. There's nothing really special about anything but the salsa they added behind the counter, but there is a lot of food in a Sombrero burrito. I had to take a pretty long walk before returning to the office.

The view out the window is the intersection of University and Shattuck, but the view inside is a bit nicer :





















A few days later, I went to the city for sneakers. Mine are near death. Since they didn't have my size (I have X-tra wide feet), I'm still killing them, so you'll see them when I finally lay them to rest. I was hungry, so I walked up Sutter until I found a place. I don't have a picture because I left too thirsty to do anything but grab a can of root beer from across the street, forgetting about the obligatory sign picture in the process. I really like water, you see, so I'm loathe to pay for soft drinks when I think I can get home to my tap water without them.

Anyway, I think I went to La Mexicana, 969 Sutter, the Fran. The kitchen is eerily transparent. You're separated from the ingredients by a pane of glass and a yard of air. At no point in the creation of your burrito is your line of sight obscured, even by the burritologist behind the counter. I looked at the selection of meats and wasn't able to decide which were the carnitas, but I did pick the tantalizing chunks that I hoped were. As chance would have it, I was right!

I had to order a California burrito, as I prefer whole beans. It's the same price as a regular burrito with refritos and even comes with cheese. Naturally, I refused the cheese. She tried to give me guacamole, but that would be cheating, too. She made up for it with a couple really generous scoops of salsa fresca. The added moisture plus the puny little knife provided led to the following mishap :
























Squirt bottles, grr. Here's the view to help you confirm or deny that I found the place I think I found.

Lesbians

So I had popcorn for breakfast yesterday. Then nothing for lunch. Then a two hour walk. Then I realized I had a burrito-sized appetite but wasn't near any burreateries I hadn't yet reviewed. So I took another lengthy walk and found myself at Lupillo's Taqueria, 333 17th St, Oaktown.



















I was starved. You'd think I'd be hungrier after the walk all the way up to Richmond, but temperature is also a factor. It was pretty damn hot on the day I made that trek, but a bit cooler yesterday, so there were no mitigating factors in my desire for a big warm burrito. So even though I tried to think about what to write from the first bite onward, I couldn't help but scarf down the first half before putting any serious thought into it.















Back to chronological order, I was brought a wooden bowl of chips and a bi bim bap bowl of salsa with the chinese soup spoon. Weird. I know, spoiler alert re: the burrito. I don't take the camera out until I get the burrito, so as to not alert anyone that a food reviewer is in the house. I also don't move the burrito out of the way when I'm hungry enough to eat my left arm up to the elbow. The chips were of the good, crisp homemade variety without the surface salt I emphasized in an earlier post. No matter, there was a salt shaker on every table. I'd like to point out that there was no pepper shaker. I thank Lupillo for recognizing that the two aren't joined at the hip. And for the picante piñata.



























The salsa was warm, for some reason. It was a little thicker than the usual salsa rojo. I just googled "salsa rojo" and "salsa roja." Should I go with the former, in more common usage by a factor of 2, or the latter, which seems to agree with my (admittedly weak) understanding of Spanish? Let me know in the comments. Anyway, it was a complex salsa. I liked it, but even after consuming most of the generous serving with both the chips and the burrito, I couldn't put my finger on what was different about it.



























The burrito was exactly average in all respects. Not as good as those I've praised, but better than those I've panned. There were two notable things about it. First, the pork was very dark. I don't know if this exactly correlates with color, but there's some pork that serves as a blank canvas for whatever flavors you throw at it and there's some pork that's very adamant about its porkiness. This was the latter variety. Second, there was a good bit of cilantro in the burrito. You haters will have to go elsewhere. Also note the plastic yellow basket. There seems to be no unifying theme to the serving dishes. Oh well, that stuff's for girls. Here's the whole burrito, for the sake of completeness:




















Speaking of girls, I saw two hot lesbians making out in front of the Y on my way back. And speaking of tongue, you can get lengua at Lupillo's.