Here’s the biggest mistake Chipotle makes with its burritos

People love burritos. I love burritos. Who doesn’t love burritos? In the US, that love mostly means Chipotle.

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Here’s a Chipotle burrito before it all gets stuffed into a burrito-like shape.

But here in New York City, there are dozens of burrito spots that are as good as — and often far better than — Chipotle. I’m not talking about fancy restaurants with Michelin stars. I’m talking about places that do exactly the same thing that Chipotle does — fast meals at slightly higher-than-fast-food prices — but much better than Chipotle. So-called “fast casual” restaurants.

Eating at these burrito spots, you realize pretty quickly that Chipotle consistently makes the same mistake: treating the tortilla as a dump for food instead of a canvas for carefully laid out ingredients.

Put simply, Chipotle treats its bowls and its burritos identically: by dumping ingredients into a pile in the center.

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This results in an inconsistent, sloppy burrito eating experience where one bite is all rice, another all beans, and a third results in something else entirely. Every bite is a surprise, and that’s not a good thing. But what makes burritos so good is their combination of several delicious ingredients, all in one bite.

It’s a disservice to customers and ingredients alike to make such little effort in the burrito crafting process.

Thankfully, a local burrito shop named Dos Toros — there are 10 scattered across Manhattan and Brooklyn — does things right. Having eaten there a few hundred times across the past several years, I can attest: Dos Toros makes a mean burrito. It’s the closest I’ve come to a California-style burrito in NYC. Most importantly, it’s a well-prepared burrito instead of a slop of ingredients forced into a burrito-shaped object.

Here, look at this:

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Yes, sour cream is for the weak. But we’re not discussing that right now.

It may sound like quibbling, but this one small change makes all the difference in the world in crafting a delicious, perfectly balanced burrito. 

Places like Dos Toros share a lot of similarities with Chipotle. There are a bunch of prepared ingredients in a hot/cold prep area, waiting to be assembled:

Even the order of ingredient application is near-identical. Like Chipotle, Dos Toros starts with rice and beans. But the similarities end there — look at how these beans and rice are laid out:

The rest of the ingredients are laid out in a similarly linear fashion. In this case, a generous portion of succulent, luscious carnitas is being laid gingerly over the carefully placed foundation of rice and beans:

Beyond just making the difference in terms of flavor composition, laying out the ingredients in a linear fashion makes rolling the burrito far easier.

The next step is crucial: rolling the burrito could mean shoving everything together into a mess of ingredients (a la Chipotle), or it could mean carefully packaging a perfect blend of ingredients.

At Chipotle, you’ll notice when staff roll burritos that they push in hard from both sides and attempt to “smooth” all the ingredients into a rollable line. This mushes together ingredients and redistributes them in a messy, disjointed way. It’s lazy and unfortunate.

Since Dos Toros carefully lays out its ingredients in the first place, this step is replaced by a far more casual fold-in from each side. Setting those two folds about three fingers apart — a best practice that demonstrates an attention to detail I don’t believe Chipotle realizes could exist — makes all the difference. It ensures a smartly considered burrito where every bite is as delicious as the last, rather than a bunch of ingredients shoved into a burrito-like shape inside of a tortilla.

The rolling process after this is a simple measure of tucking the tortilla closest to the preparer over, and then under, the ingredients. Like so:

And the result? This gorgeous burrito that’s perfectly wrapped:

I want to be clear that burritos are wonderful. But like all other foods, burritos can be easily ruined by something as simple as lazy preparation.

You may not love the ingredients inside Dos Toros burritos like I do, and that’s fine. You may be a staunch Chipotle fangirl. Great! The more you love their ingredients, the more you should demand Chipotle respect those ingredients by preparing your burrito in a more careful way than the “slop in the middle of a tortilla” method currently being employed. 

Dare I say it, given that you’re paying close to $10 for a burrito most places, you should probably demand a better product than the one that Chipotle currently produces. Don’t you deserve better?

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