r/burritos

I grew up in East LA and I've eaten a million burritos in my life. I've ordered burritos a million times at all sorts of restaurants. I've eaten burritos all over the world, and I am aware of wet burritos. In Southern California groing up I associated wet burritos with fancy Mexican restaurants, and I love them. But mostly when I want a burrito, I want to eat it with my hands, otherwise I'd just order a plate of carne asada and eat it on the platter with a tortilla on the side. In 2014 I moved to Macon Georgia and I of course quickly embedded myself in the Latino community as I speak fluent Spanish. I even worked for a Latino restaurant and market chain... I have concluded that it is impossible to order a "dry" burrito in Georgia. I'm actually sitting in the restaurant I used to work at right now. I order in Spanish and explain in detail that I want the burrito "seco" (that doesn't really tell the mesera or cocinero what I hoped it would). And I have eaten burritos here dozens of times before too, and I usually order it dry and laboriously explain what I mean, and almost every time it comes to my table smothered in salsa snd melted cheese and the ends are not folded so stuff won't fall out. It is the same with every restaurant here. Try and DoorDash a burrito from any redtaurant, there isn't even an option to have the burrito any other way. Yet, growing up in California, I never had to say anything but "burrito" and it came to me like a neat package ready to eat in my car while driving if I wanted, and everything you'd find on a plate, rice and beans and even salsa would be inside, and not fall out the bottom because it was folded properly. I never had to explain this in my life. And if you are thinking this is because the cooks are not Mexica, you are wrong. Mexican food here in Georgia, and in the restaurant I am sitting in right now, are current Mexican nationals. The owner is from Tamaulipas, and all of the other workers are Mexican or Guatemalan. The owner has worked in Mexican food retaurants his whole life and is just as confounded and confused by the concept of eating a burrito with one's hands as anyone else in his retaurant. I was literally just talking about it with him, like I have many times before, but it's like explaining a 4 dimensional object to him. He litterally just told me, "No podemos hacerlo asi aqui?" Today they first brought me a wet one, after the waitres swore on her life it would come dry and Knew that I would be eating it with my hands, I even used elaborate festures. When I sent it back, what came later was truly the driest meat you could imagine, like they patted it down with napkins to absorb the juice, sitting on a tortilla rolled up, but ends not folded, so I still could not eat it with my hands. In 12 years, number of burritos succesfully ordered what I would call "California style" : ZERO. They even have a burrito called Calihornia Burrito here, but it is only served wet, like no Californian I have ever known eats them usually, but it has avocado in it. How do I get this message across? It seems that California may be the ONLY place a burrito is served "dry" without gooey junk on top of it, and the whole rest of the world understands burritos to be something buried in sauce to be eaten with a fork. Of course, Taco Bell, Del Taco and other similar American fast food restaurants serve burritos "dry" and you never have to tell them not to cover it in sauce, so you would think everyone would be familiar with the concept. But here in Georgia, no. I've also lived in New York, and there the concept of eating a burrito dry, with your hands seems to be known, but it's still not automatic. Order a burrito and it comes smothered unless you spell it out, and that is so unbelievably difficult in English or Spanish.

Chew on this.