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Review: The Best Burritos in New York City Burritoville's burritos are awesome, but owners are cheaping out in a big way on salsa to-go by paws o'henry Let's just establish this right now. Burritoville has the best burritos in New York City, which I think is the biggest city in the world. Adding to the magnificence, many of the burritos are completely red-meat free, and others contain no animal products of any kind. This is good news for animals and people who don't like how animals taste. The Sunrise Burrito, in particular, is devastatingly good. This isn't my story to tell, but I'll tell it anyway. Mike, the handsome guy on the left in the picture below, had a friend who moved to New York just days before September 11, 2001. Mike called his friend on the afternoon of the attacks to ask if he was OK. 
"What? Yeah, yeah," the friend said. "But dude, listen. I had the BEST burrito today." Will everyone find the Sunrise more memorable than the largest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil? Probably not. But some will. Though the Sunrise is available with real cheese and turkey sausage, I prefer the variety recommended by Mike and other friends: eggs, soy cheese, soy sour cream, and tofu bacon in a spinach wrap. I know what you're thinking: OK, maybe they are the best in the city. But people the world over know that New York has famously terrible burritos. It's true, nothing in New York comes close to the heartwrenching purity of Filiberto's, the Arizona chain that rests comfortably at the summit of the highest mount in burrito heaven. But by no means are Burritoville's offerings good only in a relative sense. There are at least two other Mexican food establishments in New York that set a respectable standard for Mexican fare. Mary Ann's has burritos as decent as those in a typical California Mexican restaurant, and Fresca Tortilla is a minor miracle: a Mexican chain run by Koreans that offers very fine burritos for less than five bucks. Which brings us to the one super-bad thing about Burritoville: the gringos who run this place are fucking cheap in a big way. Granted: the $9.20 you'll pay for a Sunrise and Diet Coke doesn't stand out in the pornographically greedy price hierarchy of New York, where it's not unheard of to pay twice that for a martini if the bar has a nice view. But Burritoville commits the unforgiveable transgression of charging an entire dollar for salsa with all to-go orders. That's a dollar for a tiny container of salsa that is handed out by the barrelful -- for free -- to any customer who elects to eat his or her meal in the restaurant. They're actually punishing you for not taking up space. Worse, the predominantly Hispanic employees of Burritovilles across Manhattan have informed me that their bosses have fired people for giving out free salsa. This means no method of negotiation can persuade them to spare salsa, not even offering to give them the dollar as a tip. "I'm sorry," you say. "I am from California, or Arizona, or someplace that burritos are a part of life. I cannot in good conscience pay for something that should flow as freely as water or napkins to seated and departing customers alike." "I'm sorry," says the Burritoville employee. "I will lose my job. There are cameras. Sometimes the bosses send people in to check that we are not giving away salsa." It's disgusting enough to make you boycott take-out orders. Or to surreptitiously pour salsa into your own container and flee the restaurant. In Burritoville's defense, the chips, which are good but not as good as those at Mary Ann's, are free -- as are cups of water. And the cups are also pretty good for salsa stealing. To learn more about Burritoville, click here To sign an e-petition and make them stop charging for something that should be free, click here. |
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