apologies / poncho no.8, soho

So, first of all, apologies. Since my last post here, months ago, I’ve had various tooth troubles – a partial extraction followed by surgery, followed by dry socket and a final infection that I’ve currently still got (don’t worry, it’s just a side effect of the antibiotics for the dry socket). Anyway. All of this means that I can’t/shouldn’t eat rice (any food that comes in small particles really), so burritos are difficult. Hopefully I’ll get back to it soon.

Before the first extraction though, I was contacted by somebody who works for Poncho No.8 to go and try out their new Soho branch. I went along and had a free burrito, but was too nervous to review that one. I thought I’d go back and get another one, then review that. I went back twice, and so have eaten there three times, but still didn’t manage to write it up. It’s probably partly me being a flake, but mostly nerves about how to review something when you’ve been in contact with the people you’re reviewing. So I’m going to write this up now, as it’s shitty of me not to, but from now on I’ll just be going along and eating at places normally.

kitsch value

It’s actually pretty classy – the biggest decoration the last time I visited was the big leaf thing above. They don’t just rely on beer to be their decorations here. Having said that, they went all out for Halloween, giving out sweets and things, which shows a deeper commitment to kitsch than just having some silly bottles hanging up everywhere.

the burrito(s)

A chicken burrito is £6.10, which is fairly standard. Poncho No.8 are like Tortilla, in that they have two sizes available – medium and large. I ate medium twice, but had a large once – the medium makes for a much better lunch unless you’re incredibly hungry, since the large is pretty difficult to manage. Your mileage will probably vary, though. But it’s good to have both options.

Poncho No.8 is nominally a healthy option when you’re going for Mexican food. I say “nominally” not because I’ve discovered that they’re secretly unhealthy, or anything – just because you can’t really taste that in the food, so it really is a healthy option that doesn’t feel like you’re having to compromise taste or anything else. The burritos are still very hearty and filling and full of everything you want – I think the meat in particular is cooked in a healthier way than normal, but the meat’s still nice, if not as smoky as it is when it’s smothered in chipotles or whatever else elsewhere.

I’ve tried both hot and medium salsa here. The hot was particularly hot – I usually go for the hottest one (or the next to hottest one if, like The Mission, the restaurant offers four different salsa strengths), but here it was almost too much for me. It’s not necessarily that the salsa was too spicy for me – it’s more that it really permeated the rest of the food, and it was most of what I could taste for most of the burrito. The same thing happened with the medium salsa, but I’m not sure why – maybe there was slightly too much of it, or maybe the food is cooked in a way that makes sauce soak into everything particularly well. I’d rather eat here than at Benito’s Hat, but I’m a fan of less salsa and more sour cream and guac, so it probably wouldn’t become my standard burrito place – because of its nice decor and larger dining space upstairs, I think it makes a better place to meet cool friends when they’re coming to Soho to meet up than a place to grab a quick meal to take back to my desk.

The medium size is very welcome, and I like knowing that the food I’m eating is at least a bit healthier than it would be from most over burrito outlets. The food is good, although not great – maybe I’ll go back soon and be pleasantly surprised, since the salsa’s overpowering taste was really my only problem. The rest, from what I could taste, was fine, and the burritos are wrapped and assembled well and so can be eaten as tidily as any burrito can.

I am now craving some guacamole and smoky chicken. I hope my mouth heals soon. Until then, drop me a line if there’s anywhere you’d like to recommend.

food 4/5
speed 5/5
kitsch factor 3/5

benito’s hat, oxford circus

So the second place I tried was Benito’s Hat, which I’d never been to before. It was very busy – maybe busy than Tortilla normally gets, although maybe it felt like that because it took slightly longer to get served here. It was less frantic, and although I can easily imagine first-time visitors to other burrito places getting confused while ordering because of the speed at which you have to tell them everything you want, here they have MASSIVE menus explaining everything to read while you queue, so by the time I got to the front I knew exactly what I wanted.

Well, almost exactly. Most burrito places have three different salsas, but here they have four, all of which have a Spanish name that I didn’t understand. I’m not an American or Mexican ex-pat; I don’t speak Spanish, and if you don’t explain to me what is actually in a salsa then I don’t know if I want it or not. I knew I wanted one of the two hot ones – but which? I like salsa with chipotles in, and I’m not so keen on the stuff that some places put in theirs (The Flying Burritos’ pineapple and sweetcorn salsa comes to mind). In the end I went for the less spicy of the two “hot” salsas, but I don’t really know what was in it, and it looked more like a fairly standard sauce anyway. The Mission (in Oxford, not London) deals with this well by having a big poster on the wall explaining what’s in what salsa, if I remember correctly. This works well – they should do this. They explain what’s different about the different chicken options – why not explain about their different salsas?

Generally, this is a less stressful place to order than Tortilla, and the serving staff are friendly. The woman in front of me seemed to have no idea what she wanted or what she was even doing at the front of a queue in a restaurant at all, and they seemed fine to just be patient with her and serve me while she waited.

kitsch value

Disappointing. There were lots of Mexican flags dotted about (see photo above) and some beer displays again (I sense this will be a recurring theme), but no real main event. Possibly because it’s very narrow and cramped and there’s not much space. The menus on the wall are very beautifully designed, though, and all the massive photos of food that cover the walls are nice. It’s just not garish and strange enough! With a name like this one I at least expect a display of ridiculous hats. They didn’t deliver.

the burrito (and tortilla chips)

For a grilled chicken burrito with guacamole (70p extra) I paid £6.90 (or so – there’s no pricing on their website, which is very bad form, and I don’t have a receipt), which is more than a pound more than I paid at Tortilla earlier this week. They do give you a generous portion of tortilla chips included in that price, though. The chips are nice but not salty enough, and kind of dry on their own. Also, I didn’t really need them as well as my burrito.

The burrito was quite nice, and actually surprisingly refreshing. Usually when I ask for all the extras to save the server having to ask me about eight different things, all of which I say yes to, they kind of ignore the salad. But here I got a good helping of lettuce and tomato. They were also generous with the guacamole, which is nice – often you pay extra and get a tiny amount that tastes of nothing. The guacamole wasn’t massively tasty, but at least I could taste it.

The hot salsa that I got in the end gave me a good kick in my first bite (I wrote down “HOTTER THAN TORTILLA” in my notebook) but quickly dissipated, and my burrito wasn’t particularly spicy in general, which helped with the strangely refreshing feel, but could have been disappointing if I was in the mood for something less cool. But then I didn’t go for the hottest salsa they do, and it was fine.

Benito’s Hat offer two different types of chicken, which is a novelty to me – braised and grilled. I went for grilled, because it was meant to be marinaded in chipotles, which sounded good to me.

The chicken was actually very nice when I could taste it – some of it was particularly charred on the outside, which is what I like. But too much of it was swamped by what surrounded it – especially the refried beans. They were the main problem – usually I get pinto beans and they’re in some sort of sauce, but you can still taste the rest of the food too. But here they were cooked in a lot of sauce, and this became the main taste, mixed with the fairly boring guac. I didn’t taste the cheese at all (I’m wondering if they remembered to put it in), and I couldn’t taste much sour cream, possibly because they only squirted a tiny amount on. I could also barely tell that they’d given me rice at all.

It wasn’t actively bad – I still enjoyed it, and it was probably a nicer, lighter lunch than a standard burrito from somewhere like Chipotle, precisely because the cheese and sour cream were very much subordinate to the beans and salad. But if the beans had been drier I think it would have been a better mix. However, despite being quite a wet burrito it was well-wrapped – it never fell apart, and the slightly loose foil was fine to just eat it in at my desk. As it’s further from my office than Tortilla and not as tasty, I probably won’t go back here regularly, but it’s probably worth visiting if you want a fairly relaxed experience and a less spicy meal.

food 3/5
speed 4/5
kitsch factor 1/5

Tortilla, Oxford Circus

First up to be reviewed is Tortilla, which is a small chain across London. Local to my office is the Oxford Circus branch, where I go for lunch once or twice (or three times) a week.

Tortilla was, as always, very busy when I got there. The service is fast, but you’ll have to queue from practically outside the shop to get your burrito if you’re coming between 12 and 2 on a normal working day. It’s not really a problem, though.You’ll be out within 15 minutes. You can pre-order online and collect when you get there, but I’ve never tried this and the pick up area is also the till area, so it seems to cause rather than alieviate stress.

kitsch value

Now, before even getting to order, I took stock of Tortilla’s interior design and decoration. Since I visited Chilango the other day and noted their toilet graffiti with approval (full review upcoming), I’ve been wondering what other burrito places have to offer by way of wacky adornment. In Tortilla’s case, the answer is: beer. Lots of beer. Beer crates greet you when you enter and are used as general decoration around the walls and windows. But the main focus is the chandelier made from empty Corona bottles (look above for a photo of this strange ornament). Anyway, it’s quite fun but since their burritos are cheap and their beer is expensive (£2.95-4.50 a bottle, which may not be expensive for the West End but is too expensive for me) it’s a bit weird to make beer the main focus here. I guess you couldn’t really have a burrito basket chandelier.

the burrito!

For the medium chicken burrito with added guacamole (70p extra) I paid £5.65. Not bad at all for central London – this is cheaper than similar-sized burritos I’ve eaten almost everywhere else. Don’t let “medium” fool you, either – they’re not small:

The large burritos here terrify me – they’re definitely bigger than the standard burritos other shops serve, for about the same price. Medium is all I need for lunch, and slightly more besides. The servers assume you’ll want either cheese or sour cream but don’t mind when you ask for both (and they were very generous with the cheese today), and are generally quite friendly. Because it gets so busy it can be hard to hear what the different servers are asking at different points in the assembly chain, but once you’re familiar with the process it gets a lot easier, and they’re never rude when you can’t hear them. Make sure you know what you want by the time you’re ordering, though – there’s no time for dithering.

I always get the Mexican rice and pinto beans with my chicken, and they didn’t disappoint today. The chicken was chewy and smoky (I like meat practically burnt so the smoky flavour is great for me), and the sour cream mixes with the rice really well.

Because they’re so busy the burritos aren’t mixed at all, and are sometimes wrapped a bit sloppily – especially today:

It was very messy, and difficult to eat tidily at my desk. But then again, I did buy a burrito – they’re always going to be a bit messy, and this one was actually quite easy to eat. It never fell apart, even right at the end, and the solid:liquid ratio was balanced well enough that it never got soggy or wet (Chilango, take note).

All in all, a very impressive, solid burrito. No crazy pineapple salsa, no sweetcorn, just plenty of good Mexican rice (a nice change from the standard lime cilantro rice, which is also on offer) and the normal extras. It makes for a good, fast lunch. Even if it did also make me want a beer.

food 4/5
speed 5/5
kitsch factor 2/5

about burritos of london

I like burritos. I’m not an expert on tex-mex food, and I don’t know or care how authentic my meal is (although there’s a stall covered in Old El Paso merchandise at the Sunday Up Market just off Brick Lane that sells “burritos”  that I am wary of), but I can tell a spicy, well-rolled burrito from a sloppy boring one, and I think that maybe some people would like a heads up about what they should expect. Hello! Hopefully that’s why you’re here.

A word of warning: I won’t be mixing things up that much. My orders are mostly the same – I tend to get everything they serve put into my burrito (yes, that’s sour cream AND cheese please), usually with chicken as my meat of choice. I get the hottest sauce or salsa, unless I’m feeling particularly wimpy in which case I might go for medium. I don’t really like fajitas and I’m unlikely to get the tacos, and I don’t even really understand why you’d go to a burrito place just to order a salad box, so none of that for me, thank you.

But having a standard order should help me compare these meals best, I think, as I won’t be going to these restaurants with a big group of people and laughing over our three-hour feasts like proper food reviewers do and all that. I just want a nice lunch. I’ll let you know what different shops’ standard burritos are like, how much you can expect to pay for what sort of amount of food, whether they charge extra for guac (hint: they probably do), how friendly/efficient the staff are, and what kinds of colourful decor you can expect to greet you when you visit.

Drop me a line at yourspider.nospam@gmail.com (you know which bit to take out) if you want to recommend somewhere to me, argue with one of my reviews, or otherwise send me some form of spam or hatemail. I’m a bit rubbish at replying, but I’ll try and get back to you in a timely manner unless you have really been astoundingly abusive. If there are burritos on offer then that’s a good incentive (hint, hint). I live in E1 and work in the West End so will be exploring these areas to begin with, but if there’s somewhere I really need to know about then I have an Oyster card and can (and probably will) travel. Just let me know. Onto the food!