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!