Chipolte in the Loop

For dinner, I had a burrito from Chipotle. And a blueberry scone.

I had remained blissfully burrito-free since last January. To summarize that post, Freebirds is not great, the best burritos in the world are in Colorado (at Big City Burrito- their logo is the best, too), I really hate most burritos, and I really, really hate Chipotle.

Unfortunately, Jon loves Chipotle. He stealthily snuck a "maybe we should go to Chipolte" into our heated discussion about who leaves the mail in which inappropriate place in the house while we were on our way to Panera. I was too distracted to notice where we were (their parking lots look identical, and they're about a block apart) until we'd parked. I decided to give Chipotle another try, rather than walk to Panera or try something else. I'm open-minded like that.

Never again.

First, the employees were incredibly stoned. I'd like to think that was the problem, anyway. The first guy assumed I was having chicken, and was thisclose to dumping chicken all over my burrito, before I said anything. Is it because I'm a girl? It was weird. The second dude somehow managed to scoop my pico without trouble, but became bogged down in Jon's request for corn salsa.

I got my usual burrito order- black beans, no rice, pico de gallo, and protein (carnitas or barbacoa- tonight, carnitas). With the first bite, my legion of reasons for hating Chipotle came back- the salt overload; the flaccid, moist carnitas; the lack of whole-wheat wrap option. There's also the weird stink, sort of like a wet, oniony dog, that always seems to plague their burritos.

Guess who has oniony wet dog breath? It's awesome.

The last bit of weirdness was the black pepper. My burrito tasted overwhelmingly of it. Jon concurred, although we couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Our best guess is that Stoner 1 and Stoner 2 accidentally added an extra half-cup or so of black pepper to the chafing dish of beans.

I had a blueberry scone at home to complete the meal. It was flavorful, with nice, crispy edges, and good texture. It was much better than the burrito. The sad part? It was a scone I bought yesterday morning, promptly forgot about, and just found this afternoon at the bottom of a bag full of crap.

It's not normal, indeed.

Tonight, I had a taco plate from Freebirds Burrito, with chips, salsa, and a diet Dr. Pepper.

Freebirds (it's driving me crazy not to put an apostrophe in there somewhere)is a small chain of burrito joints that I always thought was from Texas, but was apparently started in California. They're very popular in Texas, particularly with the college student market. I'm picky about burritos, and mostly ambivalent about Freebirds, which to me tastes identical to Chipotle (ie, badly seasoned, salty beans and textureless meat). My favorite burritos in the world come from Big City Burrito in Colorado, also a small burrito chain that also is popular with college students. They have a much cooler logo:



But I digress. I wasn't in the mood for a mediocre burrito, so I decided to try the items on their menu that differentiate them a bit from Chipotle- in this case, tacos. The burrito girl flirted with me shamelessly while making my burrito, which caused her to repeatedly screw it up. Nice compliment, I guess. I'd love to know why it's always girls in the food service industry who think I'm a lesbian. Anyway, I ended up with carnitas, pico de gallo, onion, cilantro, and cheese in corn tortillas. One also contained iceberg lettuce, because I didn't catch burrito girl's last mistake in time.

I'm still unimpressed with Freebirds. I'd forgotten how much I dislike their beans, so their presence sort of ruined the whole taco. I couldn't taste the carnitas at all through the beans' salty, smoky haze. Their chips were decent, and the accompanying salsa was actually very good, if acidic. The salsa's tomatoes had a pureed but still chunky consistency, with onion and lime flavor and some heat.