El Burrito Sabanero va Camino a London

The last 15th of September I went with my friends Carla, EuWen, and Brie to celebrate the Mexican Independence Day in El Burrito. A night when the BT Tower was turned into a lightsaber, shared with frozen margaritas and Mexican soul food, not bad at all.

The Place

The Celebration

El Burrito is part of the El Mestizo family which has restaurants in London and Madrid, the place is some sort of fast food or as they call it Antojitos & Margaritas bar. A simple and unpretentious place in Charlotte Place full of soul and flavour. The name celebrates Juan Mendez story, the man that during the Mexican revolution sold tacos on the streets using as a transport a donkey (burrito) and wrapping the food in tortillas to keep them warm.

Counter

Multiple options that I couldn’t resist so I went almost for every piece in the menu. Tacos Pastor (marinated pork), Alambre de Choriqueso (grilled chorizo with peppers, onions, bacon, and melted cheese) which was my favourite of the night, Tamal with cheese and poblano pepper, Tostada de pata (pig trotters), Flautas Ahogadas (cheese, potato, and chicken in a fried rolled tortilla covered in green tomatillo sauce), and lots of frozen margaritas.

Tostada

Tacos and Alambres 

Flautas 

Tamal

Margaritas... Una Mas!

The food was excellent, the star of the night the Alambre, the choriqueso was superb. The trotters were quite good, as the flautas, the general opinion with the pastor was a little bland and dry. As a plus, the BT Towerlightsaber, and to end a perfect night Mariachis and traditional dancers.

BT Lightsaber

Mariachis

Dancers

Mexico reminds me the Seinfeld episode “The Foundation” where Elaine went on a business trip.

Elaine: It was unbelievable. Six weeks of travelling through Mexico all on Peterman's peso.

Jerry: Wow. So did you get any good ideas for the catalogue?

Elaine: Oh, tons!

Jerry: Anything you couldn't have gotten tearing open a bag of Doritos and watching Viva Zapata?

Elaine: You don't respect my work at all, do you?

Jerry: No, I don't.

El Burrito

T: 020 7387 4064

Mexican Cuisine

Area: Fitzrovia

Borough: Camden
Twitter: elburritolondon

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Gourmet Burrito

These days everything is gourmet, fine dining, or gastro pub. People are asking for better quality, more options, and comfort food is getting to a new level to try to step up to the plate. How could imagine that a fast food chain could categorized themselves as gourmet! In my opinion most of the time the term is used to lightly but sometimes you can be surprised.

I try to avoid as much as I can fast food, but sometimes there is no option, you need a quick/fast snack to get back to work. One of the places I tend to go is Chilango, to have gourmet burritos! Yes gourmet burritos! I honestly can imagine anything being gourmet but a burrito? Seriously!

The meal

I just remember when at Uni here in London near Moorgate we used to go to Whitecross market and one of the best sellers is the burrito wagon, not sure about the name though, but they’re every week day selling burritos there, and in my opinion probably same quality and taste as the “gourmet” options, and even cheaper. One of my friends he usually went on and on with this place in the US name Chipotle, best burrito ever, etc. So last week I spotted one in Toledo and decided give it a try.

The place has been around since 1993, and it’s massive in the US, they have one restaurant in London, but according to my friend Tehbus, not good at all. I went to the place, assembly line concept just like subway and many other places, fast and standard quality. The burrito was good, tasty, good flavour. Now was it better than the other two? Can’t say, not sure! For me honestly is basically the same. Do I think that is gourmet? I definitely no! For me it’s still comfort food, still not buying the gourmet comfort food trend!

All this reminds me the Seinfeld episode “The Reverse Peephole”.

Kramer: I'm on the Mexican, whoa ohh, radio...

Silvio: Eh, what are you doing?

Kramer: Hey, Silvio. Yeah, I'm reversing my peephole.

Silvio: Hey, you know you gotta get permission from me. I'm the super. Who said you could do that?

Kramer: Well, who says I can do any of the things I do in my place?
Silvio: Like what?

Kramer: Well, I... uh, nothing. No, I'll, um, I'll switch it back.

Silvio: No, no, no, no. No, that's all right.

Kramer: Well, that's good. Because, uh, Newman and I…

Silvio: Newman? He did this, too?

Kramer: Well, yeah.
Silvio: I deal with him.