South Bay Burritos

Burritos are my favorite food group. (You can tell by looking at my tummy.)

Disclaimer:
This page is extremely subjective, and very incomplete. It's based on the evaluations of a programmer-nerd who really likes burritos, and has them for lunch a lot. But then again, that's what you love about the Web, right? Random people, putting their ideas and opinions out there for everyone to look at. Democratization of information.

Click here to go straight to the reviews.

Qualification: The Tacquerias listed here are primarily take-out or have take-out easily available, as opposed to places which are geared more toward a sit-down meal.

The following items are used to evaluate a burrito's performance. The main factor, howerver, is overall taste and scarfability. [I'm (trying to be) a vegetarian, so I mostly haven't rated the meats at these various restaurants. My apologies to the carnivores.]

Salsa (temperature options, flavor)
Beans (Bean options: Black, Pinto, Refried; and consistency)
Rice (Reg, veg?)
Guacamole
Sour Cream
Tortilla (Thickness, flavor, explodability)
Cheese
Jalapeños
Other veggies available
Size

Once each of these factors has been evaluated, they are assigned a mathematical value, and then added, subtracted, multiplied, divided, integrated, and otherwise put thorugh a grueling series of calculations to produce a rating on:

Ross's Burrito Rating Scale

EED - Eat Every Day
MYC - Mega-Yummy Chow
PDG - Pretty Damn Good
POK - Pretty OK
DRS - Doesn't Really Suck
SSW - Sucks SomeWhat
SPB - Sucks Pretty Bad
BMO - Barf Me Out

So far , only one restaurant hase earned, in my opinion, the EED rating. That restaurant is La Costeña in Mountain View. Of course, I may be a little biased; I once won a TV set there for bringing in the most burrito wrappers to their Cinqo de Mayo contest. But be that as it may, I do truly believe that their burritos are worthy of massive consumption.

Most decent burrito eateries fall in the MYC to POK range. The differences can be subtle, but the ratings are based on the yumminess of the individual burrito components listed above, and on the taste of the whole burrito together.

Joints in the DRS to SSW range are "OK", or "OK if you're really hungry", but may be kind of greasy or just not very flavorful.

Avoid places in the SPB and BMO categories; they're not very good, even if you're really hungry. Actually, I haven't yet eaten at a place worthy of the BMO category.

Reviews -=-=- List of Restaurants -=-=- Back to Ross' Home Page

Be sure to check out the other Burrito Page, too.