At some point, everyone has heard that New York has no good Mexican food. Many warned me of this before I moved to the city from California. However, what these skeptics donāt realize is that New York does not have their West Coast version of Mexican food. The Mission-style super burritos I grew up on stuffed with rice, meat, beans, cheese, and more are not ārealā Mexican food at all. Good luck finding that in San Diego, let alone on the other side of the border.
Real burritos were popularized in the borderlands between the American Southwest and Northern Mexico as a filling meal for working class people. The concept was nothing new, stuffing a tortilla with meat or beans and cheese. What made it unique was swapping the nixtamalized corn tortillas that had been eaten since the Aztecs for flour tortillas made from wheat. They were easier to stretch around fillings because of the presence of gluten in the dough. Yet when burritos made their way to the American market, they got supersized and jam packed with fillings, creating the burritos most people know and love today.
We are lucky to be living in a resurgence of burritos as we know them in the city. In the past year, four restaurants opened in Brooklyn alone that make flour tortillas to order. While I am partial to a California burrito, even I will admit that New Yorkās Mexican food is pretty damn good. It might be different from what I grew up with, but I would argue it is just as good and more authentically Mexican than what you find out West.
Now here I am again to guide you through the best of the burritos (and flour tortilla tacos) in the city, using the ultimate blueprint: bean and cheese. If you canāt make a good bean and cheese burrito, you might as well give up. I ate nine frozen yogurts in one day, how hard could it be to eat seven burritos?
