"burrito" news and stories

Tacos are as synonymous with Austin, Texas, as the South by Southwest Festival. The breakfast taco, the energizing early rising big brother, is to Austin what the bagel is to New York. A breakfast taco is required eating in Austin, available at regional fast-food chains and mom-and-pop shops to mini-empires and trailers. They are Austinites' go-to, on-the-fly morning meal.

Just don't confuse them with breakfast burritos, those bursting-at-the-seams paramours of Californians. They might have similar components, but breakfast burritos are all-in-one leviathans of a tortilla envelope found only in a few Austin restaurants. They are clearly in the minority.

A breakfast taco can include bacon, egg, cheese, potato, refried beans, chorizo, barbacoa and migas, all hugged by a flour tortilla. Of the myriad amalgams, bacon, egg and cheese as well as chorizo and egg are big crowd-pleasers. Migas tacos, fried corn tortilla strips with eggs, chiles, tomatoes and cheese, are also much adored. But eggs aren't sacrosanct. "Our biggest breakfast seller, the Otto, doesn't have eggs in it," says Roberto Espinosa, owner of Tacodeli. It's made with refried black beans, bacon, avocado and Monterey Jack.

Who says vegetarian can't be sexy? The colors alone on this burrito are absolutely mouth-watering. Traditional Mexican ingredients (black beans, chiles, rice) are combined with Caribbean flavors (allspice, mango salsa, plantain) and a few all-American touches (carrot and bell pepper) for a meal that's just as hearty and satisfying as any meat-based version.

Want to make it for dinner? Check out the recipe on our Flickr pool.

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot of having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

There are some restaurants that you just don't go to. Maybe you don't go to them because they're further than you'd like to drive, but – admit it – there are some in your neighborhood, like the restaurant a few blocks away that you have just never been to. It just isn't in your list of possibilities. You might not be able to say anything bad about it, but you don't want to go there, either.

I have a restaurant like this near me. Actually, it's one neighborhood over from mine, a branch of a chain of Mexican restaurants that I happen to like quite a lot. A big part of the reason I like the chain is that the one in my neighborhood had a great chef and was one of its original restaurants. The reason I'm saying "was" is that the restaurant's lease recently expired and, due to a huge spike in the rent, they opted not to renew it. Twenty plus years of good Mexican food and memories – gone.

When I discovered that the place had shut its doors, I was actually standing just outside of them. After I read the notice announcing their closure, as well as the notice announcing the grand opening of its replacement, I decided that I might as well head to the chain's other location. I still wanted Mexican food and my options were limited.

How bad could it be, I thought. I'm sure that the only reason I don't go there is because the parking is lousy.

What's in a name? Enough to lodge a class-action lawsuit if it's the name of a seafood burrito at Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill. The popular fresh Mexican restaurant settled the suit a few weeks ago by offering class members and other customers a one-time coupon worth $3 off a $10 purchase at any of Rubio's restaurants in California.

Disgruntled customer Lisa Marie Meier filed the suit against Rubio's last June, alleging that the restaurant's "langostino lobster burrito" was nothing more than a "langostino burrito." I'm not quite sure if she was looking to find a burrito chock full of lobster given that Rubio's prices top out at about $7.

I must confess that I've never really known what a langostino is. I've heard that it's Spanish for prawn. The plot thickens, however, it seems that in the restaurant biz langostino is used when dishes include the meat of the squat lobster, which is not a lobster, but a cousin of the hermit crab. Either way I gotta say "squat lobster burrito," would be a terrible name.

Source

So I forced one of my friends to snatch a copy of this past Sunday's edition of the San Francisco Chronicle with the knowledge that the Sunday magazine would have the annual Bay Area Top 100 Restaurants. I got it in the mail this morning, and was excited to look through it, but the first thing that caught my eye was the story about a Burrito Eater.

Charles Hodgkins is the Burrito Eater. His website, www.burritoeater.com, is basically a food blog in which he chronicles his quest for the "nine mustache" (out of 10) rated burrito in the Bay Area, ranging from Baja Fresh to holes in the wall. When he started, he thought he would have hit them all by the time he had eaten from 50 or 60 taquerias, but he says that there are over 170 places to get a burrito from a walk-up style stand. His top two favorites are Taqueria San Francisco and Papalote.

I wonder if Charles has ever pondered the idea of coming to Los Angeles.