Burrito Bracket on the Radio!

Oops, forgot one important thing. Last week, Burrito Bracket did an interview with Mike Stephen and Andy Hermann of Outside the Loop Radio. They have a podcast available -- scroll down to November 9th (Episode #59) on the page I just linked you guys too.

I've actually done a decent about of radio before for my day job -- not that you could likely tell by listening to me -- but for some reason, talking about burritos had me a lot more nervous than talking about baseball. A big thank you to Mike and Andy for setting up a great interview.

Burrito Bracket Gets Its First Free Taco (Still Working on Burrito)

Burrito Bracket has now earned exactly one dollar and sixty cents in advertising revenues, which should be just enough to buy me a taco at Dona Naty's. This next taco is on you, readers!

Pasada and Pasadita: All in the Familia?

Reader Brian G. writes:

"I could be wrong, but I've heard that De Pasada and La Pasadita are owned by the same people. Not that this should change anything in the burrito bracket per se, but if you can confirm it, it might give you a useful baseline from which to evaluate the two."

It's an interesting theory, and one that would seem to have some merits on its surface. Pasada and Pasadita are right next to one another, and they share a reputation for sourcing comparatively high-quality meat.

More intriguing, perhaps, is the similarity in their names: pasadita is the diminutive of pasada. What does de pasada mean, by the way? It's not an easy phrase for a gringo like me to translate, but the most likely candidates seem to be "of the past" or "in passing" (as in "he mentioned to me in passing that he was looking for a new job"). It also seems to have a somewhat idiomatic, perhaps even existential meeting: "es agua pasada", for example, is the Spanish equivalent of "water under the bridge". In this context, I read de pasada as basically meaning "the little things of the past" or "from the tradition", with pasadita meaning pretty much the same thing ("the little tradition").

But in fact, there is even more of a potential smoking gun. Both La Pasadita's website (which contains some fascinating diatribes against yuppified Mexican food) and De Pasada's website say that they are owned by a family named Espinoza. Have we proven the case beyond any shadow of a doubt?

I don't think so. For one thing, the restaurants opened in the wrong order. If there were a restaurant called De Pasada, it would be fairly logical for the owners to name the spin-off La Pasadita ("the little Pasada"), particularly if it were more of a downscale, take-out joint. However, La Pasadita opened up in 1976, while De Pasada opened in 1981. There are all sorts of Mexican restaurants that are named after derivatives of "tradition" (this one, for instance), and it's possible that the similar names are just a coincidence.

Similarly, it's possible that the common surnames are just a coincidence. There is generally a great deal of commonality in Mexican last names; 8.5% of Mexicans are named Martínez, for example, while 8.1% are named Rodríguez. Espinoza isn't "Smith" or "Martínez" or "Andersen", but it isn't "Funkhouser" either: there are 191 entries for "Espinoza" in the Chicago white pages, and another 99 for "Espinosa".

Moreover, if the restaurants are owned by the same family, why is there no mention of such on their respective webpages? La Pasadita's website lists the locations of all three La Pasaditas as well as four other "business affiliates", but none of them are De Pasada. De Pasada's website says that the family Espinoza came to Chicago in 1981, at which point La Pasadita was already open. In addition, the respective Espinoza families appear to have hailed from different regions of Mexico. The De Pasada Espinozas come from Nuevo Laredo, a border town near (you guessed it) Laredo, Texas, while the Pasadita Espinozas are from San Luis Potosi in central Mexico.

It's tempting to speculate that there is still some relation. Perhaps the Espinozas are part of the same extended family, for instance. I guess you can conceive of the San Luis Potosi Espinozas calling their cousins in Nuevo Laredo and saying "Hey hombre, business is good here, bro! Why don't you come and open another restaurant right next door to me?". But really this doesn't make any sense. In fact, when De Pasada opened in 1981, the La Pasadita Espinozas were busy with their own plans: that was exactly when they expanded into their second location at 1140 N. Ashland. Can you imagine any worse business plan than trying to open two locations right down the block from one another at the same time (or trying to compete with a restaurant that your cousin was opening)? Not even Starbucks would try that.

It wouldn't completely shock me if there were some relationship between the two restaurants. But the Occam's Razor position is that there isn't.

The Burrito Spectrum

The idea of taking some kind of protein and sticking it within some kind of carbohydrate wrapping is not new. On the contrary, it has to be one of the oldest and most universal innovations in culinary history. Virtually all culinary traditions employ some version of it, from the burrito to the panini, from the double cheeseburger to the Bánh mì, from the the doner kabob to moo shoo pork. It is not a productive use of one's time to worry about which of these "sandwiches" are authentic and which were imported from somewhere else, since the whole richness of culinary history lies in its tendency to borrow and fuse ideas from as many sources as possible. The "sandwich" (you'll see in a moment why I'm using those quotation marks) serves some basic functions: it's quick and easy to prepare, portable, and relatively nutritious. For a cuisine not to have some form of the "sandwich" is like a language not having a word for "mother".

I was thinking about this recently while snacking on a "Beachin' Buffalo Chicken" burrito from Burrito Beach (a necessary evil; I was stuck in the Union Station food court waiting for my train to depart to Wisconsin). This burrito consists of "spicy buffalo chicken, fat-free black beans, white rice, crisp romaine lettuce, diced tomatoes, and blue cheese dressing". In other words, it doesn't contain any of the ingredients that you'd find in a carne asada burrito ordered at La Pasadita, save of course for the tortilla itself.

So is it the tortilla that makes a burrito? Not really, because we have the problematic category of the "wrap", which can take any filling that can be diced into bite-sized chunks. For that matter, we also have the taco. At restaurants like La Pasadita, the default fillings in a taco and a burrito are exactly the same, and of course both make prominent use of the tortilla. It might be tempting to forge a distinction between the taco and burrito based on their size, whether they remain open or closed, and whether the tortilla is cooked or grilled along with the ingredients, but all of these are problematic, as there are many exceptions to the rules. At many times and places the terms have been used interchangeably, particularly early in the development of the burrito.

Indeed, it is folly to try and determine where the burrito ends and the wrap begins. Instead we have to acknowledge some kind of spectrum, like the one that I have outlined below.
The spectrum has some degree of directionality to it. For example, as you move rightward from taco to "traditional" (La Pasadita-style) burrito to Cal-Mex/San Francisco/Mission-style burrito the size of the tortilla increases, and the list of ingredients generally becomes larger and more diverse. But what is fascinating is that all of these concepts have been invented and re-invented many times over, and that the influence always works in at least two directions. Is the wrap an evolved sandwich or an devolved burrito? (Most people would say "devolved sandwich or evolved burrito", but you know where my biases lie). What do we do with something like the torta, which contains "burrito-like" ingredients but not a tortilla, and predates the modern burrito in its origin?

A Massachusetts judge ruled last November that a burrito is not a sandwich; the case arose because Panera Bread Company owned exclusive rights to sell "sandwiches" in a certain shopping mall, and claimed that Qdoba Mexican Grill had intruded into its territory. The linchpin of the judge's ruling was that a burrito consists of one tortilla and a sandwich two pieces of bread. I'm sure you can think of all the same problems with this definition that I can, although I have some sympathy for Qdoba's position, as they were the defendants in the case and the common usage definition of sandwich probably involves Wonder Bread and tuna fish. Nevertheless, we're left to pick and choose our conclusion:

• A burrito might or might not be a sandwich, but a sandwich is definitely not a burrito.
• As Rick Bayless has put it, the burrito is the original fusion cuisine.
• This whole post has been the equivalent of talking with food in one's mouth.

A Man with a Mission

Here are some facts.

• I like burritos and other cheap Mexican food.
• I work from home, am too lazy to cook, and therefore eat out for lunch several times a week.
• I recently moved to a neighborhood -- Chicago's Wicker Park -- that features an abundance of good, cheap Mexican food.
• Did I mention that I like burritos?
• Mmm, burritos.
  

Put these things together, and you'll see that my mission is obvious: a 15-week quest to find the best taqueria in Wicker Park.