A Review Of The Burrito I Had From Chipotle Friday Night

I’ve been to Chipotle a handful of times, but I usually get the same thing: a burrito. I have no interest in their bowls or tacos; just give me that fist-sized tortilla capsule of meat, beans, and cheese and I’m happy. So last night was par for the course. We waited in line for a good fifteen minutes—it’s a new location so I guess that justifies the ridiculous lines—and we waddled sideways down the line, answering the servers’ questions. White rice or brown rice? What kind of meat? Black or pinto beans? Sour cream or cheese?

Some options seemed inaccessible to me. I saw a tray filled with grill onions and green peppers, but why didn’t they ask me if I wanted some? Do they not go on a burrito? Surely they could just as easily dig a plastic gloved-hand in to sprinkle some greens on my burrito as they do the handful of carnitas. Is there some burrito etiquette I don’t know? No peps on your B?

Here was my burrito: carnitas with pinto beans, corn, hot salsa, and cheese. Nothing extravagant, just a hearty burrito made of things I like. The corn was a new addition to my usual burrito, and I figured a healthy addition to my meat-heavy meal. It’s part of Chipotle’s charm: nothing flashy, just a quick and dirty burrito that’s hefty and filling.

I brought the burrito back home and spoke to my parents on the phone for a bit. Finally, I unwrapped my culinary present made with love and took the first bite. While there was some heat to it, it tasted much blander. I suspect it may have been the carnitas themselves since I usually get the barbacoa. The salsa was spicier than I remember, but even that didn’t add much to the flavor. I didn’t expect much out of the corn or beans except filler, and I had to struggle to taste the cheese.

A few more bites and no more flavor could be found. I wondered if I had been burrito bamboozled. I know when I made carnitas a couple weeks ago, there was far more flavor to them. How do you make your carnitas, Chipotle? I demand an answer. Surely you don’t get them in from a wholesaler and just nuke them right before you open? Listen, I'll bring my Crock Pot over, I'll throw a pork shoulder in there with all the fixins, and we'll just let that baby cook overnight. Then, you'll have some fresh carnitas to serve instead of the spongy replacement you gave me Friday night.

Get Your Fill in Fayetteville: Grabbing a Bite at Hammontree’s Grilled Cheese

It’s true for many states—regions within their borders feel disparate—so it’s no surprise that I felt a combination of culture shock and longing for home in Fayetteville in its surrounding area. Topographically, you couldn’t be more different than central Illinois: mountainous hills abound the landscape. But something felt homelike. Perhaps it’s Fayetteville’s inherent college town-ness that evoked the feeling of Champaign-Urbana, yet bigger.

We spent barely an afternoon there, but I felt comfortable there. It’s a definitely a flagship university town with modern looking buildings. There was a street that seemed like you could stumble out of one bar and end up crawling into another without difficulty. There was even a used bookstore that we could’ve spent all day there, though that was due in part to my futile attempt to decode its organizational system. There was something about the city that just seemed right.

We stopped at a restaurant that Sam had been recommended called Hammontree’s Grilled Cheese. As you can guess, they have a very specific menu. As you may well know, I have reservations about gourmet burgers, so I was reluctant to sample what Hammontree’s had to offer. Then I saw how the place ran rife with Star Wars memorabilia and artwork, particularly the Admiral Ackbar painting hanging above the bar. And then I saw the restaurant’s companion food truck is called the GrilleniumFalcon. They tickled my nerd sensibilities, but would they satisfy my appetite?

“Grilled cheese” here feels somewhat like a misnomer. In my book, a grilled cheese sandwich is one without meat, one that sticks to a simple pairing of melted cheese between toasted bread. Several of Hammontree’s sandwiches have ham or pork or some other meat on them, which isn’t to discredit the place—they know how to make a damn fine sandwich. It reminded me of a place we had in my college town called Planet Wiener that, though it touted itself as serving hot dogs in its title, half of its menu were hamburgers. Oddly enough, Hammontree’s serves hot dogs as well. Thankfully, Hammontree’s made a better sandwich than the now-defunct Planet Wiener made hot dogs or burgers.

I ordered the “Cheebacca”—again, Star Wars—which has “Sharp White Cheddar, House Cheese, bacon, pulled pork, grilled onions and garlic cilantro sauce on sourdough.” I wasn’t huge on the garlic cilantro sauce, but everything else on it came together beautifully. It wasn’t a heavy sandwich, either, so it was ideal for a lunch meal. It was disappointing that they served generic potato chips with the sandwich, though again, anything more would’ve made the meal heavier.

Sam got their Chicago Dog, so she looked to see if it held up to her homeland’s traditions. Hammontree’s Chicago Dog is comprised of “Quarter pound all beef frank soaked in Old Style beer, grilled and topped with mustard, tomatoes, relish, onions and a pickle spear on a poppy seed roll.” What impressed me was its Old Style infusion, as even in Illinois you were lucky to find Old Style if you weren’t within an hour of Cook County.

Though I don’t know if we’ll make it to Fayetteville again anytime soon, I’d return to Hammontree’s. It’s an ideal lunch location, and though our wait for food was a little long, it’s an amusing dining experience. If nothing else, we could scout out for the Grillenium Falcon. 

Pizza Wars

Down the street from where I live sit two businesses in opposition: Damgoode Pies and U.S. Pizza. As you can probably guess, they both serve pizza. Their buildings stand across the street from one another like duelists trading jabs and parries of words. To some, it may seem like a friendly rivalry of businesses. To me, there’s something more there.

U.S. Pizza was the first place I tried when we moved down there, in part due to some genuine confusion on my part. I thought Damgoode served pies in the strictest sense like apple pies and all that. My assumption had perhaps been informed by the hipster sensibilities of our neighborhood and the refusal to believe that two pizza places that weren’t national chains would shack up so close to one another. Like many of my assumptions, this was incorrect.

Subtle digs from U.S. Pizza derided Damgoode’s holiday hours this past Christmas, proudly announcing that they were open for Christmas Eve, unlike Damgoode. More recently, Damgoode announced on their marquee, “10% OFF FOR U.S. PIZZA EMPLOYEES.” As they say on the Interwebs, shots fired. It’s impossible to maintain a conscientious objection to an all-out pizza war, especially when you yourself are an acolyte of the Cult of Piethagoras. The line was drawn long before we arrived. I’d have to pick eventually. Thankfully, the decision wasn’t difficult.

My U.S. Pizza experience was nothing incredible. The pizza was good, but it wasn’t anything special. It seemed no different from any other thin crust pizza I’d had before. A few weeks later, we tried Damgoode, and it was an entirely different culture. U.S. Pizza is fairly straightforward: it’s a restaurant that serves pizza. No bells and whistles, just pizza and sandwiches and the like. Nothing unique about the restaurant except that you could bring your dog in, but that’s it.

Damgoode, on the other hand, was like an embassy to a college town. The waiters and cooks are laid back, which is good because they’re the first people you see when you enter the building. Seating’s upstairs since most of the first floor is the kitchen and bathrooms, but it works. Coming upstairs, you’ll hear some music that sounds like it’s someone’s Pandora station. On the wall to your right is a large mural of a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon like a shrine to cheap beer. Get there for Happy Hour and you can have a can of your own for 75 cents.

I haven’t even discussed the pizza. They have multiple sauce options. Red sauce, pesto, spicy white, alfredo and combinations between. We usually go for their “pink,” a combination of red and white that gives the sauce a gentle kick. Want some pizza with more pizza? Order the stuffy, a stripped down stuffed pizza. Nothing groundbreaking or innovative, but compared to their rivals, Damgoode is remarkably imaginative. Some don’t want or need that with their pizza. Some just want their pizza simple and familiar, and they are welcome to that refuge of culinary cowards.

Never before had I been on the sidelines of a conflict between two pizza restaurants. Back home, I had placed I’d like to go for a pie, but none ever seemed in direct opposition, perhaps due in part to the fact that there were so many that they were just top dogs in their respective towns. I had Papa Del’s in Champaign, Pagliai’s in Charleston, Villa Pizza in Mattoon—miles between them so no chance for bad blood. No room for hostility. Just pizza.

Now every time I go to Damgoode, it feels like a political act, a greasy shake of the first to U.S. Pizza. Twice we’ve gone to U.S. since our move, and so many more times have we patronized Damgoode. It’s not a conscious middle finger we throw their way, but the hostility fostered between the two contextualizes the gesture with more hate than we intend. Perhaps it is we, then, who are the casualties in the pizza wars, our clogging arteries the collateral damage. 

Taco Time at Local Lime

Not made with real scorpions.

This past week, I had my cyclical lust for Mexican food, and while the Little Rock area has no shortage of south-of-the-border cuisine, we decided on something slightly different. Enter “Local Lime: Tacos &nd Margaritas,” the brainchild of the same folks that brought me my second favorite LR burger joint, Big Orange. I think there’s a theme.

On their website, Local Lime touts their menu as “crafted by our chefs, from scratch, using original recipes and prepared with premium ingredients (sourced locally whenever possible).” While tacos are advertised on the sign, they also pride themselves on their salsa selection which goes a step beyond the mere red and green options you might get at the average Mexican joint. Here, you pick your salsas from a menu of six options. We voted on the “Tres Chiles,” “Verde Tomatillo,” and “Mango Papaya.” I confess our waitress told us which was which, but by the time I had started dipping their “naturally gluten free” tortilla chips I had lost track of which was which. All three were good, though the Tres Chiles was different due to its soup-like temperature. I’m still unsure of how I feel about that.

The fist-sized tortillas had the appearance of handmade and not factory-spat, which was a good sign. I ordered the lunch special “Local Carnitas” taco plate containing “slow-roasted pork, pickled onion, cojita cheese, red pepper crema, [and] cilantro.” The tacos had a surprising sweetness and little bit of heat that made me lament the fact that the tacos were no bigger than my palm. But a restaurant of this sort is not the place to gorge, and the cilantro lime rice and black beans were filling. You will pay a higher premium than the average Mexican restaurant, but the quality of what you get makes it a worthy investment.

The restaurant’s overall aesthetic is very similar to its sister location Big Orange with its artisanal light bulbs and modern attitude. The while padded stools at the bar looked like props from a Cold War spy movie. They were probably very comfortable. My own seat, however, was one in which the back arm rests are a single bar shaped into a U. I didn’t care for it, though I suppose I could’ve just exchanged the seat for the one next to me.

Next time, I’ll remember to do that. 

Image credit: Local Lime.

Wondering About Wiz: A Review of Todd English P.U.B. in Birmingham, AL

Todd English P.U.B. in Birmingham, AL, is attached to a Westin Hotel, which is in turn attached to a Sheraton (which we stayed at). A whole cluster of city blocks are connected by veins of skywalks, no doubt to shelter travelers from the sweltering summer sun of the American South. Because we refused to expose ourselves to the heat after a productive day of sightseeing and museum meandering, we had few choices: Casey’s Sports Bar and Grill, the Atrium Café, or Todd English P.U.B. Casey’s looked hopelessly bland and the Atrium Café looked rich for our blood. So, we navigated the labyrinthine corridors that led from our hotel room on the 15th floor of the Birmingham Sheraton to the very trendy Todd English P.U.B adjacent to the Westin’s lobby.

My first impression of the P.U.B was tainted by the presence of what I imagined was a wedding rehearsal dinner—tables guarded by wine glasses, guests in business casual attire, the nervous atmosphere of a time before the knot gets tied. It elevates a location to a level of sophistication it otherwise doesn’t enjoy. When we returned the next day to dine, I saw behind the curtain.

Now you might notice that not only pub an acronym. If your next question is "Why?", take comfort in knowing that much of this review will be spent on meditating that very question with regards to the aesthetic and philosophy of the restaurant itself. First thing’s first, though: let’s talk about that name.

"Todd English P.U.B." is no doubt a play on the phrase "English pub." But it’s taken a step further. No longer is pub just a word, but now it’s an acronym that stands for Public Urban Bar. Now, any English major or anglophile worth their salt can tell you that pub is a shortening of the term public house. Bar here now just seems redundant since a bar tends to be a necessary factor in a pub setting. Urban, it seems, is unexplainable. I suppose it is located in an urban environment, but there isn’t anything about this place that is distinctly urban. Oh wait. The servers wore T-shirts. Maybe that was the urban element.

The interior decorating doesn’t shout urban, unless urban can be interpreted as an American imagining of an idyllic pub in the United Kingdom. It doesn’t have to be England. It could be Scotland. Hell, why not Ireland? We have a couple of fake dartboards painted on sheets of metal that appear to have dents on them. That’s like an English pub, right? They do darts. Or how about our placemats? We put a bunch of quotes because we’re intellectual, too. We printed them in old-looking typefaces because that’s what an English pub’s printed quotes would look like: fresh off the Gutenberg printing press.

I'm not a stickler on service. You can insult my lineage back to medieval Poland and if you give me good food, I'll still give you a tip. But the service that evening in Todd English P.U.B. was, to borrow very English, very trendy terms, shite and bollocks. After we were sat, we waited a good while before we were asked for our drink orders. In the interim, we subsisted on the complimentary cup of popcorn that the hotel compound seemed hellbent on serving to everyone and Sam left to get ibuprofen from the lobby of the Westin. She took said ibuprofen and returned in time to join me in a game of "Who's Our Server?" in which we craned our necks to figure out who the culprit was. Waiters and waitresses all buzzed by our table avoiding eye contact. It was like Clue except ideally we'd be fed in the end and not dead.

The menu was a collection of modernized pub favorites--burgers, tacos, et cetera--but given that special Todd English touch. What that Todd English touch is I can't quite tell you except pretentiously presented bland food boldly branded with TE before the title. Feeling some Mexican food? Try our TE Tacos. What makes the TE Tacos? They have "wiz." Cheese Whiz but not all share the wiz that makes the TE Tacos oh so TE. A few items are simply branded with Todd's name, like "Todd's Fish & Chips." It's got aioli, just like the TE Tacos, so maybe I'm getting somewhere.

I'm a simple man with simple tastes, so I forewent anything with Todd or TE attached to its name. I ordered the “Pub Burger,” which surprisingly wasn’t the “P.U.B. Burger” in a rare show of restraint for the establishment. An old standard, the fanciest things about it were its “brioche bun” and “fatty fries” (or potato wedges, as we plebes call them). The server asked me if I wanted cheese or bacon. I voted both, with a choice of cheddar. When our food arrived (timely, surprisingly enough), I was presented with my burger atop not a plate but a wooden paddle shaped like a cricket bat with a piece of parchment paper to cover the surface. Cricket bats, as you might be aware, are narrow, not the optimal space to eat anything on at all. Fatty fries came in a small metal pail like one might put peanuts in. The burger was underwhelming, even more so given its $12 price tag. Never before had I been so bored with a burger with bacon on it. I found myself getting distracted by the toppings, thinking that maybe they were to blame for the burger’s poor performance. In truth, it was that “8oz. all beef patty” itself. What happened? I whispered to the burger before I finished it. Expectedly, I received no response.