California burritos are big in San Diego. They have French Fries in them, which is kind of awesome.
Yesterday’s dust-up between Los Angeles and San Francisco burrito fans raised plenty of hackles, but a voice was missing from the debate. As long as we’re comparing burritos, we wanted to hear from a San Diego slab expert. We called up Dr. Burrito, Crawford Coats, to get his perspective on the whole thing. Not surprisingly, he prefers the burritos in the 619.
“If there’s a prototypical LA burrito, I wouldn’t know it. I’ve had good Mexican food in LA and I’ve had really bad Mexican food in LA as well,” Coates said. “The thing about San Francisco is that they usually put beans, rice, salsa fresca, and maybe something else, on everything, so it all tastes the same.” We’ve heard Coats’ perspective on San Francisco burritos before, when his mention of them as “good only if you’re drunk” caused a flare-up on SFist in 2007. He’s a proponent of the San Diego burrito, but what makes that particular slab so great? The answer is simplicity, he said. Letting individual ingredients stride out.
“Usually, for carne asada, you have meat, a little salsa fresca, maybe some guacamole, and that’s it. Chile verde is chile verde, beans, and that’s it. Also, the tortilla really needs to be toasted on the griddle. It needs to be kind of crunchy. Then ample good salsa on the side. That’s key. Little cups of it,” Coates said. “I had a friend who went to Latvia, and he said the burritos there were just like the burritos in San Francisco. And everybody loved them.”
[Photo: Via permanently scatterbrained/flickr]
