Burritos Sin Fronteras

I lunched at



Although I usually don't feel like crossing the street to photograph the whole burreatery, I only had to take four steps back to get this shot :






I haven't reviewed a burrito truck yet, so this will be the protocol for mobile burrito labs (MBLs) : I'll tell you where I found it. You can try to find it at your own risk. If a truck serves up the best thing ever, I'll go into full-on stalker mode until I have its territory and routine mapped out.

I found it at Telegraph and Bancroft, the Berk. No stalking will be necessary. You can pretty much count on the truck being there when school is in session : it's hard to imagine a spot near bigger throngs of hungry Cal students who want a cheap meal fast.

And boy is this meal cheap. $4.75. Comes with chips, salsa, and, if you feel like taking one, a miniature American flag on a toothpick.

If you have 2 minutes to dash to Barrows, you can probably eat one of these while doing so. If you're more civilized, the bag doubles as a plate :






I have to applaud Gerry's for keepin' it real : they could have mimicked the Yum!-corp burritos these kids grew up with, but instead they deliver authenticity. Thing is, this burrito is really, really, really dry. The only way that could be good is if the meat's thoroughly crispified, and that's not the case here. The only way to salvage the burrito is with a lot of salsa on each bite. I'd refer Cal students in the area down the street to Mario's, but if you absolutely have to grab a burrito from this truck, try to grab four salsa cups along with it.

The Carnitas Is In Another Castle

I had only been to





















at 2444 Telegraph Ave, the Berk, once before. The shiny tiled tabletops and presence of waiters made me think it was expensive, so I never set foot in it until three of us had to lunch in a hurry to get back to a film festival on time. Either somebody else paid or we ran up the bill with beer or something, because my impression of it as an expensive place didn't change. Boy was I wrong. I don't remember precisely how much the burrito cost this time, but I remember paying $5 and not feeling like a dick for leaving my change as a tip.

The burrito's qualifications, however, are questionable. I've been OK with reviewing a "pork" burrito instead of a carnitas burrito. Outside of the few with really crispy meat, I'd have a hard time telling them apart. Mario's put me in a quandry by offering no carnitas burrito, no pork burrito, but a burrito with pork in it. I was hungry, so I went with the chili verde burrito.




















They brought out chips and salsa. This is the ideal way to leave salsa on every table. Not only is it not a squirt bottle, but the spoon and the narrow container discourage dipping. Dipping alone isn't so bad, but unless I'm the first customer of the day, I'd be worried about eating after a double-dipper. Both the chips and the salsa were pretty good. You'll also note that there are still chips in the bowl, owing to Mario folding

























my burrito with the B button down (I'll stop now). Garnish and table service for a $5 meal. Unbelievable. That said, what is one to do with a pile of lettuce? Pour the salsa on it and pretend it's a salad? After, er, trying exactly that for a bite, I plowed right into the burrito :




























Tasty. The meat was sliced real thin-like, Philly cheesesteak style. Unfortunately, chili verde is disqualified from future reviews, as it's just too different from carnitas. It's good, though. Kinda spicy. Along with this new (for me) flavor, the burrito delivered a blast from the past : refried beans. I suppose I had some at Downtown Bakery II, but those were black beans and I was in too much pain to really notice. The only time I've had refried pinto beans since my undergrad days was when I was in the poorhouse and paying for bean and cheese burritos at The Burrito Shop 4 years ago. I don't know if I liked the beans or if I liked being taken way back, but I thoroughly enjoyed the burrito.

I meant to get a picture of this, but I didn't : next to my table was a picture of the restaurant. It wasn't done in some faux-historical way like Chipotle's; you're looking at the exact same view of the restaurant you had when you crossed the street. Also, it was a snapshot. Plus, there's an unsuspecting student walking in front of the restaurant at the time, immortalized because the photographer had 10 seconds to take the shot before getting back to folding burritos.

Cascada pt. 3

I ordered a pork burrito without cheese. I got one with cheese.

Striking Gold

Some burreateries raise your expectations. There's Montero's, with decor that cheerfully announces that they attract enough business to afford it. There's La Calaca Loca with its authentically creepy happy skeletons. There's High Tech Burrito, with the implicit promise that a robot will read your brainwaves and assemble your burrito before you can reach for your wallet. It's my job to call these places out when they fail to live up to the hype. There are a few pleasant surprises, like the affordability of Montero's and the amazingly realistic skin on the HTB cyborgs, but the burritos themselves are rarely better than anticipated.

Then there are the places I dread. Places whose recipies were calculated in an office in the northeast, using sparse matrix techniques to minimize outlays while establishing customer loyalty through branding, places that cater to people too busy or unsophisticated or drunk to know any better, and places where the mexican food isn't the sole focus. I usually walk away from these well-armed to craft a review that would get my pants sued off if I (a) had readers and (b) blogged fully clad.

This brings us to Taqueria & Deli, 1904 Franklin St, Oaktown. You walk in and there's a wall of soda to your left. To the right, a rack of candy. If these don't deter you, you're either a fool or one serious burritorian. Taking a little from both columns, I strode to the back and noticed that they have a wide selection of meats. Furthermore, the regular burrito was under $4 (four dollars!). My expectations began to rise when I saw the expert folding of this burrito. If there's a competition, this guy should be in it. After rolling it in record time, he dropped it onto the foil. If there's any flaw in the way a burrito is wrapped, it becomes apparent pretty quickly after you let it become airborne. Nope.






This thing is big and it's delicious. It's a Mission burrito in character, and would be in the upper crust of those if it were there. Fortunately, it's here. Sorry if I'm award-happy lately, but I have to declare this burrito the Best Find.

Vera Cruz con Erin

The day after the Pacifico burrito, my bro and I lunched at . . . Lederhosen. Sorry, I'm not a machine. It's pretty good for non-burrito cuisine.

That night, we got our asses back into gear and met up with his friend Erin,






at (her suggestion)

,




195 Bedford Ave, NYC.

This is a pretty popular destination in one of the hippest neighborhoods in the city, so it was still crowded when we got there late Tuesday night. Chips and salsa were free. Erin thought the salsa was too thin, but I don't think it was thinner than most west coast salsas.

I'd have balked at the prices if I were actually paying. The cost of a burrito shouldn't break double-digits. The internets seem to indicate that there are $7 burritos from 3 to 7 on weekdays, so if you're poor and not too proud to take advantage of the geezer special, you might want to try that. This is what you'll get:






I don't know what the sauce is. I recall the waiter saying there were 7 types of peppers in the mole sauce and I didn't taste any in this stuff, so let's just call it mexican gravy. It's delicious but not spicy. My brother said that the non-spiciness of his burrito was a drawback. To my desensitized palatte (his friend Summer calls this an "asbestos mouth,") two thirds of the burritos I eat aren't very spicy, and I'm OK with that. The mexican gravy serves to reconcile the boldness of the black beans with the mildness of the carnitas. The Vera Cruz burrito is a big delicious tube of redemption for New York's oft-derided burrito scene, edging out the Potle to win the title of the city's best.

Casa Latina still holds #1 overall.

In Which I Cost My Brother Even More Money

After the Downtown Bakery II experience, my bro got a salad and we walked off our respective lunches to build up an appetite for a dinnertime burrito at . . .

Pacifico,

269 Pacific St, NYC. I totally forgot about getting a shot of the sign, so a larger font will have to do. I did manage to steal a tiny photo of the outside from nymag.com :






If I recall correctly, our table was semi-outdoors. We had something over our heads, but I think there were only a few posts between our table and the street. I should really write my reviews within a week of the dining experience.

The margarita may have been another factor in the slipshod nature of this review. Pacifico has $6 margaritas, cheap for New York. Here's how I managed to have my brother pay $8 instead :
I ordered a margarita and the waitress asked what kind of tequila I wanted. Not having a clue about tequila (other than "tequila is bad news," a lesson we all learn at some point in our lives), I asked her which kinds were available. I found the list on the menu while she was reading it and ordered the cheapest kind by name so as not to look like a guy who orders the cheapest kind because he's a cheap bastard. You see, I figured that if I let on that I know nothing about tequila, they'd try to save a few bucks by making my margarita with antifreeze instead. I should have just ordered the house margarita, the one advertised next to the $6 figure, instead of putting everyone through a transparent charade in which I feign cluefulness. The margarita she brought me was pretty tasty.

Returning to an area in which I'm not such a naif, I present to you half of Pacifico's carnitas burrito :






The other half was out of focus. The innards were pretty standard. The meat wasn't as tender as it could have been. As you can see, the tortilla is the distinguishing feature of this burrito. There was a nagging familiarity about the burnt toritlla that I figured out two-thirds of the way through the burrito : it reminded me of naan. If you've had naan with some black spots and black toast, you'll recall that the former has a delightful crunch and a rich, nutty flavor while the latter isn't fit for the cat. The tortilla, it turns out, is another one of the bread products you can burn without ruining. Kudos to Pacifico for this discovery; I hope more burreateries take their lead.

Miscellaneous notes : Pacifico offers the green stuff, which is no longer in my fridge, as I've killed the bottle. None of the three local grocery stores carry Kutbil-Ik, so I'll be hiking to the West Berk or Fruitvale to find a bottle. Pacifico has great music, thanks to the thin walls separating it from Trout next door. Trout is a cute little bar itself, but they don't offer carnitas burritos.

UPDATE: Reader ninti alerted me to the following picture, ganked off some other blog :